I don't disagree with that. It's hard not to praise a guy who does such a kind thing.
To be fair, though, during his career as a politician, Bush Sr. did plenty of lying, cheating and killing.
Think about the dozens of U.S. troops who were killed or injured (one of whom was a friend of mine from high school who was shot in the head during the invasion) and hundreds of Panamanians who were killed when Bush ordered the invasion of Panama in 1989 to topple the thug Manuel Noriega, who had been on the CIA payroll for almost 20 years through the mid-1980s, and who never would have been in power had it not been for the U.S., and George Bush in particular, first during his support for Noriega during his stint in the 1970s as CIA Director and then in the 1980s as head of Reagan's international drug trafficking task force, during which time money was funneled to Noriega to help
suppress the drug trade in Latin America (which Noriega apparently did a reasonably good job of).
PANAMA CITY -- December 18, 1999 (Reuters) -- Residents of a Panama City suburb set ablaze in the December 1989 U.S. invasion to oust military strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega are set to act out their collective trauma at a macabre anniversary rite on Sunday.
Every year since the December 20, 1989, invasion, residents of the capital's El Chorrillo district have built a model of one of the razed homes from their community using tires, cardboard boxes and boards, only to torch it once more, the rite's organiser, Hector Avila, told Reuters.
"Before we burn it, we are going to put Chinese explosives (powerful firecrackers) inside, and throw rockets at it as if it were the U.S. attack," Avila said. "When it's alight, the adults from the barrio are going to rescue the children. We'll have black bags filled with beef to represent the bodies," he added.
The dark rite, which represents a working through of the inner city neighbourhood's human losses, involves a cast of 50 adults and children.
"We do it so as not to forget what happened here, and so that people know how their neighbors died," Avila added.
The U.S. government has estimated that 300 Panamanians died in the invasion, but Panamanian human rights groups say the civilian death toll was 3,500. The number who died in El Chorrillo is unknown. Eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed.
The all-out assault, which involved 26,000 troops -- including elite Navy Seals, Army Rangers and the Army's 82nd Airborne Division -- began with a barrage of artillery fire a few minutes before midnight on December 19, 1989.
Chorrillo residents recall watching from their homes as the full explosive force of the largest U.S. military operation since the Vietnam War rained down on the Comandancia, the former headquarters of Noriega's Panamanian Defence Forces.
"It was excessive, too much. ... It was a war without resistance," Damaris Sanchez, a street stall merchant, told Reuters, recalling the sustained artillery fire from nearby Ancon Hill, and the deafening salvos of rockets unleashed from hovering Apache helicopter gunships.
El Chorrillo was built at the turn of the century to house day labourers working on the Panama Canal. Residents said the district's close-set wooden terraces caught fire as stray rounds set alight propane gas tanks used for domestic cooking.
"It burned very quickly," Sanchez said, pointing to the barren concrete landmarks that have replaced the wooden homes that once lined the three main streets in the heart of the low-income community. "From one day to the next you couldn't recognise El Chorrillo."
[...]
As El Chorrillo readied to exorcise its shared demons on the 10th anniversary of the invasion on Sunday night, local resident Orlando Jimenez remained adamant that the military intervention was unnecessary.
"We paid the price for an invasion which other people called a just cause," he said. "They did not have to sacrifice the community to take out Noriega."
Think about the hundreds of coalition troops and the tens of thousands of Iraqi troops (many of whom were conscripts) who were killed in Gulf War I because the Bush administration bungled diplomatic communications with Iraq through the April Glaspie meeting in the summer of 1990. Here is a transcript of the meeting between Glaspie and Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, eight days before Iraq invaded Kuwait:
July 25, 1990 - Presidential Palace - Baghdad
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?
Saddam Hussein - As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - What solutions would be acceptable?
Saddam Hussein - If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. [Saddam smiles]
Think about all of those Kurds who were killed by Saddam Hussein in 1991 (10,000+ dead and 2 million refugees) after George Bush encouraged them to rise up and topple Hussein, but then provided no military support despite having just defeated the Iraqi military in the south and having vast military resources in the region.
How Could Bush Have Prevented Kurd Fiasco?
By DAVID S. BRODER
April 11, 1991
Iraq's acceptance of the formal cease-fire terms dictated by the United States and the United Nations brings the Persian Gulf war to a close. The end of the affair teaches lessons as important as the beginning.
At the start, the miscalculations were all on Saddam Hussein's side. He did not believe that the United States would respond to his aggression against Kuwait or his threat to Saudi Arabia. He did not believe that his Soviet patrons would abandon him. He did not believe that Arab countries would join a coalition in which Israel was a silent partner. And he did not believe that his army and air force would crumble under fire.
All those miscalculations created a situation in which President Bush, as the creator and leader of the coalition, achieved as much for peace and the rule of law in the world as he did for his own political standing at home. It was a victory well won - and worth winning.
But since Bush declared the hostilities suspended, the miscalculations have been on our side. The victims were the Kurds who believed the United States would support their bid to overthrow Hussein, and the Bush backers who believed that morality and principle required him to do just that. Their cries of disillusionment have filled the airwaves and the newspaper columns, given moral force by the heartbreaking television pictures of the plight of the Kurdish refugees.
The Kurds have reason to cry out against the latest injustice in a history of international abuse. The President did encourage civil insurrection against Hussein by his own words and - it is hinted - by covert actions as well. To say now that he also made it clear the United States would not intervene directly in the struggle is at best a mitigating claim against the moral responsibility he accepted.
If we wanted Hussein overthrown, without our participation, it behooved us to strip him of the forces he needed to quash the threats to his rule. That we did not do. White House national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that, when we declared a halt to the battle, Hussein still had 20 unscarred divisions.
That fact - and not the subsequent U.S. decision to allow Iraqi helicopter gunships to be used against the Kurds and against Shiite rebels in the south - determined the fate of the rebellion. Had we grounded the helicopters, Scowcroft said, "it would have taken the Iraqi forces longer . . . but it would not have changed the outcome."
To change the outcome, we would have had to destroy those remaining Iraqi divisions. We had the capacity to do that, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf hinted in his interview with David Frost that he had wished to do it. But destroying those 20 divisions would have meant slaughtering troops who had abandoned the fight and wanted only to surrender. Those who charge Bush with moral callousness toward the Kurds do not explain how we would have been on a higher moral plane if we had massacred surrendering Iraqis.
Nonetheless, the disillusionment with Bush being expressed by many who supported his war policy tarnishes his victory. It also reveals something of the character of this President, who has demonstrated over and over again that he is ready to "rise above principle" when it collides with power realities.
Bush was in the fortunate position, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, of being able to argue for intervention on a hierarchy of causes, ranging from the American national interest in protecting access to Persian Gulf oil, to international law against aggression, to the moral revulsion against Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait. All of the justifications added weight to a powerful case for U.S. and international action against Hussein.
But no one should have believed that, absent the national interest in the Persian Gulf and its precious resource, half a million Americans would have been fighting in the desert.
Principle alone simply doesn't cut it with Bush. He kept 2,100 Marines offshore Liberia for two months in 1990, waiting to evacuate Americans and other foreign nationals, while volunteer doctors pleaded that they come ashore and protect civilians being slaughtered in the fighting between rebels and the U.S.-backed government.
He sent Scowcroft to Beijing and recommended continued trade advantages for China even after the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square. He sent his secretary of state to Moscow and continued dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev even after the bloody repression in the Baltics last winter. With both the Chinese and the Soviets, Bush said it could not be "business as usual," then went back to business as usual.
The American public seems to accept these compromises as necessary. Principle separated from a clear sense of national interest led to such foreign policy fiascos as Versailles and Vietnam. So voters welcome a President who tempers principle with prudence. But others pay a high price for the selectivity of our moral outrage.
I applaud him shaving his head to make this little girl feel better, but I think that you have to judge him on his overall body of work.
