On U.S. soil, Bush perpetrated a wide array of radical abuses aimed at Muslims in the wake of 9/11. His pretty rhetoric should not serve to justify or suppress that.
The New York Times this morning has an op-ed by Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan, whom I regard as one of the world’s best television journalists. Its primary point is one that has been recently promoted by others such as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: namely, that in the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush diligently avoided, and even forcefully rejected, the anti-Muslim bigotry and animus now prevalent in the 2016 GOP primary race. Titled “Why I Miss George W. Bush,” Hasan’s op-ed argues that Bush and his top advisers (such as Karl Rove and Michael Gerson) “understood that demonizing Muslims and depicting Islam as ‘the enemy’ not only fueled al Qaeda’s narrative but also hurt their party’s electoral prospects.”
There is a significant element of truth to this view, and it’s definitely worth pointing out. In my 2007 book that was extremely critical of the Bush presidency, A Tragic Legacy, I described several of Bush’s post-9/11 speeches as “resolute, eloquent and even inspiring” because he “repeatedly emphasized that the enemy was defined neither as adherents to Islam nor Middle Eastern countries and their citizens, but instead was a band of fanatics who exploited Islam as a pretext for terrorism and violence.” I also praised his September 20, 2001, speech to the nation for including demands that “no one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith,” and particularly hailed his September 17 visit to the Islamic Center in Washington to meet with Muslim religious and civic leaders (photo above), after which he said:
It is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel the same way I do. … Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must not be intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value.
It’s easy now to be dismissive of all that as empty rhetoric. But the post-9/11 climate in the U.S. was dangerous for Muslims, and had the U.S. president ignored the potential for mindless vengeance against a small and marginalized minority, or worse, had he stoked it, some extremely ugly and terrorizing sentiments could easily have been unleashed. To see how true that is, consider what the Paris attacks and subsequent exploitation of anti-Muslim sentiment have generated in the U.S. and throughout the West, as exemplified by a horrific incident, captured on video, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, last week where anti-Muslim residents threateningly screamed at a Muslim-American engineer seeking municipal approval for construction of a new mosque.
But there’s a danger that this valid praise for Bush’s post-9/11 rhetoric can whitewash many of the truly heinous things he and his administration did to Muslims after that attack. The actions he took outside of the U.S. are obvious, from torture to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to the invasion and destruction of Iraq. Hasan acknowledges those anti-Muslim abuses but suggests they were confined to foreign soil: “Mr. Bush’s foreign policy may have harmed Muslims abroad, but at home he courted Muslim-American voters and refused to lazily conflate Islam with terrorism.”
That gives Bush too much credit. The reality is that, on U.S. soil, he perpetrated a wide array of radical abuses aimed at Muslims in the wake of 9/11. In the weeks after the attack, more than 1,000 Muslims and Arabs were swept up by the FBI and detained without charge, often by abusing the powers allowing for detention of “material witnesses.” Thousands of Muslim immigrants were deported from the U.S. in the months following the attack. Bush quickly and secretly implemented an illegal scheme of warrantless domestic eavesdropping aimed largely at Muslims.
As Berkeley professor Irum Shiekh documented in her book Detained Without Cause, “Individuals who slightly resembled the 19 hijackers — those whom officers perceived as being from the Middle East — were subject to surveillance, questioning, scrutiny and detentions.” Indeed, the Bush administration pioneered a radical new theory of executive power that literally vested the president with unlimited authority to do virtually anything in the name of national security, including breaking the law, and those theories were used largely to infringe the civil liberties of Muslims within the U.S.
Beyond all that, the Bush DOJ indicted and prosecuted the nation’s largest Muslim-American charity (Holy Land Foundation), and then permanently smeared the nation’s largest Muslim-American civil rights organization (CAIR) by officially labeling them an “unindicted co-conspirator,” which meant they had no ability to challenge the accusation. They abused new “material support for terrorism” laws to imprison young American Muslims for decades on blatantly trumped up charges, and then stuck them in specially created, hellish Gitmo-like prison wings (in June, my colleague Murtaza Hussain brilliantly documented one of the worst such cases, the “Fort Dix Five,” but there were so many other similar ones). And they pioneered new theories to permit the arrest and imprisonment of American Muslims on U.S. soil without charges of any kind, holding and torturing one of them, Jose Padilla, incommunicado for years without even access to a lawyer (as I’ve recounted many times, it was the alarm triggered by the Padilla case that was the initial impetus for me to want to become a political writer).
As Hasan references, Bush’s pro-Muslim rhetoric was at least partially self-serving. In the 2000 campaign, American Muslims — attracted by Bush’s “humble” foreign policy campaign rhetoric and turned off by the hawkish and devoutly pro-Israel stances of Al Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman — provided substantial and critical support to the GOP ticket, especially in Florida. According to CAIR, “78 percent of Muslims voted Republican in 2000.” As the New York Times noted, “In 2000, a few hundred votes decided the election; an estimated 60,000 Muslims in Florida voted for Bush.” Indeed, a highly influential Palestinian professor at the University of South Florida, Sami al-Arian, actively campaigned for Bush in 2000 in Florida, only to find himself later indicted on extremely dubious charges of materially supporting terrorism, based almost exclusively on his political writings and speeches.
The al-Arian case is illustrative of the key point: The actual domestic record of Bush on American Muslims — as opposed to his pretty rhetoric — is hideous. Its severity is demonstrated by the fact that by 2004, Muslim American voting patterns had reversed almost completely. As NBC News reported in 2004 about the campaign: “To the extent that the get-out-the-Muslim-vote effort succeeds, it will largely benefit the Democrats because it is energized by anger over the Bush administration’s Patriot Act and what is perceived as an anti-Muslim bias behind the Iraq war and Israeli-Palestinian policy.” As one pollster put it in 2004, “The political realignment in the Muslim community is unprecedented in all of American history.” And indeed, according to the NYT, “Arab-American and South Asian-American Muslims, who initially supported Bush in 2000, switched overwhelmingly to the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, in 2004.”
So yes, George W. Bush deserves some qualified credit for his responsible, restrained post-9/11 rhetoric about Muslims, especially as compared to the dangerous bile that has been spewed forth by his party on that topic since he left. But that praise should not serve to suppress or whitewash the truly severe abuses his administration systematically perpetrated against Muslims: not just on foreign soil as part of the war on terror but domestically as well.
The problem apparent in France is that people are being given a choice: put up with a now quite probably indefinite “state of emergency”, extended by a Socialist executive, where anyone’s home can be broken into and searched, and any protest (even about climate change) suppressed, and any rights revoked … or sign up with Marine Le Pen and turn on the Muslims in earnest and drive them out to Azazel. And what kind of choice is that? Of course they’re going for option B, not just in questions of immigration where you can argue it may be within their rights but in matters of discrimination and prohibition of religious freedom where they know full well it’s wrong. If the choice is going to be between everyone with no rights and just Muslims with no rights … you do the math.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/france-votes-amid-tensions-attacks-migration-35605091
It seems to me that defeat of the Israeli-neocons who executed the 9/11 false flag operation is necessary before political reform is possible anywhere in the world.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/911-is-the-weak-spot/
Bush graciously ushered out Bin Laden’s family members, and others in the Saudi orbit, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, secretly flying them out, before any embarrassing questions of his regime’s extremely close collusion with the dictatorship, and its al Qaeda-supporting leaders, could be raised.
One thing that’s been overlooked (as far as I’ve seen) is Obama’s role in creating this dynamic. When he decided to adopt Bush’s unconstitutional and international law–violating “War on Terror” policies pretty much wholesale, along with Bush’s use of (relatively) even-handed and tolerant rhetoric regarding Muslims to mask an extremely discriminatory application of government power, he left contemporary Republicans with basically two options to distinguish themselves and their policies from his administration. One was to take the libertarian-conservative tack and oppose untrammeled executive power and abridgments of constitutional rights. While that type of hypocritical partisan reversal is pretty standard in American politics (after all, even John Ashcroft was a privacy advocate and opponent of executive power during the Clinton administration), and while genuine antiwar and Constitution-revering Republicans like Ron Paul have seen incredible levels of grassroots support, the time-tested script for Republicans is to position themselves as the tough, virile, hawkish alternative to the effete hippie liberal girly-men in the Democratic Party. Needless to say, Republicans who follow that script are the ones who get rewarded with sizable military-industrial campaign donations. So since Obama had already rebranded Bush’s vicious blitzkrieg of criminality as “liberal,” the smart money, for your typical amoral Republican politician, was on appealing to open, naked bigotry.
This by no means absolves the fascists like Trump of responsibility for their heinous ideology. But Democrats should admit that their support for (or tacit acceptance of) Obama’s violent, lawless, and bigoted policies played a major role in creating the ugly political landscape we now inhabit. It’s difficult to say what would have happened if Obama had done the right thing and prosecuted the Bush gang of war criminals instead of joining them. And, to be fair, xenophobia (whether toward Muslims, Mexicans, Kenyan-Americans, or other groups) was hardly absent from conservatism during the Bush administration or the 2008 campaign. But we should acknowledge that Obama’s actions were crucial in moving the Overton window further in the direction of extreme authoritarianism and hatred.
“Indeed, a highly influential Palestinian professor at the University of South Florida, Sami al-Arian, actively campaigned for Bush in 2000 in Florida, only to find himself later indicted on extremely dubious charges of materially supporting terrorism, based almost exclusively on his political writings and speeches.”
He WAS indicted on charges of materially supporting terrorism and that terrorism was BushCheney Terrorist Organization/AIPAC Inc. So the message for anyone and more importantly US Muslims is that no matter who you “vote” for, AIPAC is who you are enabling to torture, oppress, silence, and murder ‘yourselves’. AIPAC is the left arm of Israel in the US and they have hijacked all of Congress/Senate/Military/CIA/FBI/NATO/UN/ICC/MSM. The only remains left by these mafia tyrants is the dust of deception and thanks to alternative info like IT there are a few windows to see the light and change your course. I have gained a “NO TRUST” policy for the US Communists.
Be careful for what you wish for and the seeds you sow to bring it about…
Bush also normalised this abuse against Muslims. He opened the door and made it political acceptable and correct to use Muslim bashing as a national sport. Other politicians just took it further… there is no leadership – each did what they could do in those time and next one took it further. It is shame that we don’t have moral leadership on this issue. Rather we are discussing degrees of discrimination. Bush did as much as public and media allowed at those times. Trump is doing as much as public and media will allow. And both public and media are getting more radical. Tomorrow that could mean killing Muslims and other refugees like dogs on the streets. Are we going to say Trump was not that bad?? At least he did not kill us like dogs? Or are we going to say Bush, Trump etc are the reason why we are in this mess and they pawed the way for all of this…
Glenn baby… Have to come over once in a while and indulge the alternate universe of greenwald (which my auto-correct believes is Walgreen’s… Appropriate insofar as Freudian slips go when you consider Walgreen’s success in dispensing anti-psychotics) where all roads lead to conspiracy, Israel, Bush and Muslim mistreatment. You service an insatiable market which evidently shall be unsatisfied until you prove unequivocally that god is actually a Mossad sleeper. Love the collective dissociation of the Intercept and the next time I check into a mental institution I hope, indeed pray, the inmate’s daily paper is half the quality.
Thesaurus surfer.
I was going with hasbarist troll, all but asking Glenn where’s his knife.
But then, you’re always less harsh than me.
:)
The nuclear-charged wit is fusion (not merely fission)-sized and twice as diverse…
And right on cue the aqua-shirted proggers sing… Come on… take a walk with the paranoids…
We watched TV coverage of the 9/11 attacks and during the first few days saw footage of unidentified persons who were recorded in New Jersey seemingly celebrating the attacks. I don’t know who they were, but resembled Mideast ethnicity – which could have been any, including Israeli. It wasn’t said who they were, citizen or otherwise, but it was very disturbing and provocative.
I remarked to my family that I believed it dangerous to air such video, as the emotional climate was such as it amounted to mob incitement. As Glenn puts it, “the post-9/11 climate in the U.S. was dangerous for Muslims, and had the U.S. president ignored the potential for mindless vengeance against a small and marginalized minority, or worse, had he stoked it, some extremely ugly and terrorizing sentiments could easily have been unleashed.”
I think wiser heads, recognizing this danger, pulled the video and we saw it no more after a day or two, although other images endlessly repeated.
I’m not a Trump fan, but the images he saw that were supposed to be folks celebrating our disaster, really were aired, and I remember them well, due to how dangerous I believed it was to show them. I think that although this now seems to have disappeared down a memory hole, that it certainly contributed to a revengeful “bring it on” attitude and the general persecution of innocents that Glenn is making sure is not buried in a retroactive whitewash of convenient misremembering.
What a desperate and transparent load of bullshit. What TV coverage? What network? Where does this shit about “New Jersey” come from? The coverage said “here’s Middle Easterners in New Jersey seemingly celebrating after today’s attacks?” You think that would’ve been a little side story that got lost in the noise? You think journalists and law enforcement officials wouldn’t follow up on that? Bullshit. Through and through. A juvenile effort to either boost a loser candidate, or promote a profoundly ugly lie. It wouldn’t be the first time that Trump and his “not fans” conjured transparently-racist narratives right out of thin air. Middle-Easterners in New Jersey, like everyone in the region, were confused and terrified. Muslims died in the terrorist attacks. Tens of thousands of Muslims were among the millions of New Yorkers whose lives were shaken. This whole birther-level urban legend was skillfully unraveled by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, but to sum up briefly: there is no footage of Middle Easterners celebrating terrorism in NJ. No such thing ever happened. Sell that shit somewhere else.
When Trump finally? fingers the dancing Israeli mossad spies documenting the event,he will win my vote.
I do believe Fran is talking about the five Israeli men who had theoretically set up cameras aimed at the Twin Towers before they were blown up and were seen dancing in the streets of New Jersey afterward. Then there were the Israeli “movers”, guys with vans, seen high-fiving each other after the attack. Apparently, the FBI was eventually involved, but then the story seemed to disappear into thin air. Along with the Saudis, surreptuously flown out? Anyway, the story seemed to be more than just an urban legend, considering the FBI involvement, but who knows?
I think you regard him too highly Glenn. There are lots of great TV journalists at the BBC or at the CBC.
And I don’t understand what the point of that op-ed was. “Oh Ben Carson and Donald Trump and Chris Christie say Muslims are bad, so I dream of Bush?” What kind of idiotic, juvenile opinion is that?
My problem with Hassan is that he approaches everything from a Muslim perspective, and I don’t think that does Muslims any good. I know you pointed out his recent interview with Michael Flynn as a great piece of good questioning. I personally found him to be quite unfair to Flynn. He could have handled Flynn a lot better, but he decided to berate him on minor points instead of trying to get a real perspective from a somewhat out of the box former US General.
Have to agree on Hassan. He had a US General who appeared to be willing to tell the truth and expose problems and instead of accommodating him, he beat up on him a little too much. I thought that Flynn handled the questioning pretty well. But all in all, we need more television journalism like that.
Who are you talking about? The BBC is a worthless joke, capable of nothing more than repeating the tired lies of the establishment. This has been a slow decline but was completed after Greg Dyke was forced out after the tragic affair with Mr Kelly the weapons inspector. Who first told us of the lies about WMDs in Iraq.
As for Mehdi Hassan I have to say your attitude comes across as a bit intolerant. Maybe you could elucidate, I mean, he is a Muslim so naturally I’m sure that’s a big part of his animus and therefore could be said to dictate where he stands on issues. Now, I really can’t understand why you’d have a problem with that. Is that something you’d say about a Christian or atheist news presenter?
Furthermore I just don’t think what you’re saying is true. I’ve seen a lot of his work and religion is often not even mentioned.
As for the Flynn interview, he was inspired in that performance. He continuously piled on the pressure and wrong footed Flynn on several occasions. I suspect we got a fair bit of info we were not supposed to hear. What more do you want? I mean no offense by this, but I can’t help wondering if maybe you just didn’t like seeing a member of the armed forces getting beat on by someone with a Muslim background.
Bear in mind though, Flynn was in charge of a branch of the American military that exists purely to circumvent international law. You don’t do that without being heavily invested into a very distasteful worldview.
Ok. Yes maybe I’m wrong on the BBC. I don’t get to watch them much anymore and the little I do watch, they reveal a most definite establishment bent. So maybe there are none. Although I still find certain prickly British journalists to be almost perfect, like Jon Snow for instance.
Let me preface this reply by saying that I was born a Muslim and my whole family is Muslim. This is just context, not an excuse, for my impatience with Hassan.
If there is a Jewish journalist who in a debate or an interview constantly takes the side of Israel, right or wrong, I’m going lose faith in the reporter’s impartiality. I would grant that reporter some latitude for the positions because s/he is Jewish, but at some point I’d want to know what really happened.
I’ve seen debates or interviews or these head to head things with Mehdi Hassan, and his perspective is one of a Muslim journalist. I don’t want a journalist’s perspective to be Christian, or Jewish or Atheist. So why would I want a Muslim one. I don’t mind that Mehdi Hassan has a Muslim perspective. I myself have one. But I think he overdoes it. And that means the other side won’t take him seriously. That’s the basis for my criticism of Hassan. Obviously he’s a smart guy. He has a great platform. But he is writing about I don’t know what, something intellectual about missing Bush, that is supposed to make me think? What is that op-ed about? How does that op-ed normalize society’s relationship with Muslims?
And that Flynn interview was nothing but a wasted opportunity. He had this guy, who’s obviously not a dissenting military officer, and instead of spending those 45 minutes trying to understand what the nature of that dissent is and how prevalent it is in the military, if at all, he spent it talking about Flynn’s personal decisions and quotes and running of prisons and other things. I’m not saying that those things are not important. But to examine this guy’s worldview and where it comes from, and how many other people in the military are of similar mindset would have been far more interesting. Instead, he spent the entire interview attacking this guy, for what purpose, I still cannot fathom.
about the Flynn paragraph I meant “obviously a dissenting military officer”
And before I forget, let me add one more thing:
What the hell is that sentence all about? What’s wrong with the Muslims abroad? Are they a lesser form of Muslim? Should we only worry about Muslims like Mr. Hassan who bask in the glory of whatever accolades the establishment decides to award him, and is the friends with the likes of Glenn Greenwald, and speaks with a posh British accent? Are those the only Muslims we should be worried about?
His perspective is a self-centered one, his own, personal, religious, perspective. That’s the problem with it. It’s not inclusive enough. He is only thinking about his kind. And when that happens, it’s obvious and you don’t get a following beyond people who’re just like you. He needs to broaden his appeal to non-Muslims also.
What the hell is that sentence all about? What’s wrong with the Muslims abroad? Are they a lesser form of Muslim? Should we only worry about Muslims like Mr. Hassan who bask in the glory of whatever accolades the establishment decides to award him, and is the friends with the likes of Glenn Greenwald, and speaks with a posh British accent?
I think your response is a bit overboard to that sentence. It reads to me as a statement of fact about the difference in treatments of Muslims that Bush demonstrably engaged in, not as a statement of preference on anybody else’s part.
As for Greenwald himself, it seems to me that you’ve been reading his work long enough to know that he worries very much about how Muslims are being treated elsewhere. If he didn’t then I doubt he’d bother writing stories like this:
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/film-shows-chilling-climate-for-muslims-in-post-hebdo-france/
Glenn didn’t write that sentence. Glenn quoted Mehdi Hassan.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on Mr. Hassan. But I think he has a great platform to engage everybody, and he doesn’t do it. That’s my frustration with him. And that sentence from Mr. Hassan, while factually correct, is still flippant.
I like a journalist with attitude. So Hassan has an attitude, I don’t notice that it’s especially a Muslim attitude. What kind of results will a Kum-Bai-Ya journalist get you? You want someone with broader appeal? Justin Biber maybe?
So if I want him to be less of a self centered media prick, that means I want him to sing kumbayah with Justin Bieber?
Why don’t you send your buddy a love letter thanking him for feeling the need to share with the world his intellectual insights into how Bush was so awesome? Why don’t you do that?
brilliantly written.
Great work Glenn as per usual!
I recall my horror upon first reading about the “material support for terrorism” laws. They were vague enough that almost anything could count as material support. It was clear that they wanted to target any kind of activism on behalf of Muslims and their effect was gravely disturbing.
I love you.
Mr. Greenwald. You are astounding. Four years of reading your journalism has proven to me you are the benchmark of what the establishment would like to kill. Thank you for your courage to spit in their face.
Muslims are not all terrorists.
But most terrorits are muslins.
If there had been a democratic president during 911, Muslims would switch overwhelmingly to the Democrat candidate.
“Every Muslim the minute he can start differentiating, carries hate towards Americans, Jews and Christians, this is part of our ideology. Ever since I can recall, I felt at war with the Americans and had feelings of animosity and hate towards them,” said bin Laden in an interview with al-Jazeera Arab television in 1998.
Who was president then?
If there had been a democratic president during 911, Muslims would switch overwhelmingly to the Republican candidate.
That’s correct. Most terrorists are cotton fabrics of plain weave.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslin
Well I’m glad that’s settled.
The fibers of which were laboriously hand-picked in America by slaves brought over from Africa, no less.
Modernity is upon us.
That’s correct. Most terrorists are cotton fabrics of plain weave.
Well, I find that the seersucker ones are even more terrorifying than the plain weave, but that could just be personal fabric bigotry on my part.
From 1980-2003 most suicide attacks were secular or non Muslim attacks. Since the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan the amount of anti American attacks committed by radical Islam has skyrocketed. Terrorism is a vacuous word only usually used to describe Muslim violence in our culture while our own drone bombing campaigns and support for repressive dictatorships represent a whole other brand of terror.
The idea that terrorism is a Muslim problem rather than a global problem with causation being rather complex is a big stumbling block in actuality fighting and diminishing terrorism.
White Christians are not all pedophiles
But most pedophiles are White Christians
So Rico do you have anymore generalizations?
“But most pedophiles are White Christians”
Source?
“Bush’s actions compare favorably, by the way, to Franklin Roosevelt’s record toward Japanese Americans. FDR rounded up American citizens and threw them into internment camps based solely on their ethnicity. Bush, who did not do those things to Muslim Americas, is still despised by the left. Roosevelt remains liberalism’s hero.”
“I also praised his September 20, 2001, speech to the nation for including demands that “no one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith,” and particularly hailed his September 17 visit to the Islamic Center in Washington to meet with Muslim religious and civic leaders…”
The September 20, 2001 speech was the one in which he specifically named Osama bin Laden as the mastermind of the terror attacks and called on the Taliban to “Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your lands…” without respect for Afghan sovereignty or Pushtun tradition. This demand was made after the Taliban had already offered to try bin Laden by a Sharia Afghan court or other such Islamic court with judges from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and one Muslim country nominated by the United States. There was no extradition treaty between the United States and Afghanistan. Neither was any concrete proof of bin Laden’s complicity in any terrorist action offered to the Taliban. According to Niaz Niak, Pakistan’s foreign minister, the decision to remove the Taliban from power was decided in secret conference in Berlin in July of 2001. Mr Niak revealed the details of this meeting in a Sept 18, 2001 interview with BBC. According to Niak’s source, Undersecretary of State Karl Inderforth, that secret gathering of America’s closest allies agreed that the Taliban’s refusal to comply with all of a number of conditions – which included bin Laden’s unconditional extradition and the right to run a US-Saudi gas pipeline through Afghanistan – would result in an October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies.
Yes, “the post 911 climate in the U.S. was dangerous for Muslims,” but a public display of false concern for the welfare of “Muslims throughout the world” was the cloak in which the knife was hidden.
Um, when your VP’s the dick and your chief advisor’s the turd blossom it’s only to be expected you frequently talk out of both sides of your mouth – and are sincere about nothing. Also, I’m not sure I’ll ever give him / them credit for anything beyond they’re untried mass murdering war criminals proving daily OUR country has no rule of law. And yes I know, not your point, sorry.
How about Cliton?CNN ranked him as the third-greatest president of all time.?Hah~
10 Reasons Bill Clinton Was Secretly A Terrible President
http://listverse.com/2014/02/05/10-reasons-bill-clinton-was-secretly-a-terrible-president/
Clinton’s worst crime.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/2001-01-26-1.html
I’d let none off the hook back to Ike overthrowing the democratic government of Iran – for oil. Clinton was certainly no different, also enabling CIA and military destabilization of multiple regions, including cruise missiles for that African pharmaceutical factory in ’98 that was probably ignoring the West’s bogus “free market” rules that only American oligarchs decide who plays. Looking only forward to somehow forget every (war) crime committed yesterday is just too convenient shit, and was one of Obama’s first war crimes if you ask me.
As Bush, or someone else, once said: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”
The new crop of touchy feely Republican candidates is quite different.
I’m supposed to get worked up about the rights of someone convicted of trying to set off a “dirty bomb” like Jose Padilla, and the “Fort Dix Five” who tried to shoot up a military base? These are your example of Muslim oppression?
I expect better of you Glenn.
@ Anon
Jose Padilla was not “convicted of trying to set off a ‘dirty bomb’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Padilla_(prisoner)
The “government” didn’t “foil” any such crime and the government wisely withdrew all charges associated with such a ridiculous claim.
So maybe it’s you we should “expect better” from, because you clearly don’t know what you are talking about.
I really do not get the gist of this piece. I see Glenn as a freedom fighter for real journalism as opposed to MSM, but throwing a bone to this Moron is akin to locking the barn door after the horse has long since gone.
It’s also worth noting that Anwar al-Awlaki encouraged Muslims to vote for Bush in 2000.
Kanye West gained some notoriety when he said
that George Bush didn’t like black people.
I believe that that was not an accurate assessment.
The truth is that George Bush and almost all of Washington
and its allies are
power grabbers who are not as much prejudiced against any
race or religion as they are against those with less money.
For these allied corporate imperialists,
if you can be pushed into a weakened position by these economic
predators, then you deserve to be abused.
This is the disdain that they hold for the majority of people around
the planet and in their own nations.
This is how they destroyed Iraq. They knew they had weakened Iraq.
This is what the Obama administration and congress have been
doing to Iran and numerous other countries – weakening them for the kill.
Sadism for profit, just like their beloved Saudi friends.
Thanks for providing a more balanced look at GWB’s post 9/11 America.
Another Al Jazeera journalist, Tareq Ayyoub, might have had a different point of view from Mehdi Hasan, if Ayyoub had survived the 2003 US bombing of his news organization’s Baghdad bureau. Plus, there was the UK government’s memo about GWB having contemplated bombing Al Jazeera Doha headquarters in 2004.
GWB is due some credit for his relatively mild anti-Muslim rhetoric, but he spent most of his administration overdrawing on that account.
That said, it is easy to see how people want to scrutinize immigrants who may have been sent to do harm, whether by al Qaida or by ISIS. I think the key is to do it proactively, looking hard at those who want to come in and trying to come up with other alternatives, or those who lied where they are required not to – not retroactively, stripping people of things they’ve been fairly promised, including their civil rights. It’s like with bulimia: don’t binge, don’t purge! The one isn’t the opposite of the other.
Fair enough but if you’re unable to read intelligence reports all the scrutiny in the world be to no avail. Bush’s greatest failure was his lack of intellectual curiosity and laziness.
Important, well-written piece, even if it is only remedial education. And timely, now that Trump reportedly is finally imploding with a 12% drop in the polls. Jeb Bush may seem out of contention, but I think royal blood counts for more nowadays than poll numbers (or in W’s case, prior drug use and business lack-of-acumen). I have a feeling that the voters who just wanted to some have some rich guy make all their decisions for them are going to flock to the royalist banner.
Well,polls should be taken with the grain of salt,as if they lie to US publicly with outrageous BS,they will certainly lie about polls which one has no way of verifying.
Actually the latest poll still had Trump on top.For whatever that’s worth.I do know he isn’t the Zionists boy,at least not yet.
the only credit George Bush deserves is standing in front of the “International Crimes Tribunal” as they pass sentencing
George W. Bush is nothing more than a genial dunce, manipulated by those more intellectually and politically astute – much like the reign of King Ronnie. His ‘positions’ were not his own, but were written for him, and carved to fit the tenor and need of the times. I’m surprised that Glenn does not acknowledge this.
Don’t know that it speaks to Bush personally, but one of the proudest memories I have as an American was at the national memorial service after 9/11 in the National Cathedral in DC, when a procession of clergy entered the sanctuary. The first to rise and speak to the congregation (and the world!) was an imam…
Awlaki?;He did advise and work with the govt about terrorism,until he saw their hollow hearts.
Hasan is not really praising W — he is simply comparing Bush to current Republicans and finds himself longing for Bush, which of course surprises him. Hasan: “I never thought I’d say it, but now I long for the Republican Party of George W. Bush.”
Hasan never says Bush didn’t persecute Muslims in the U.S. — he is simply comparing Republican rhetoric then and now. And courting votes and actually doing what’s good for people are two different things, so reading Hasan as “suggesting” that anti-Muslim policies were confined to foreign soil is incorrect.
Eh, I don’t think anyone could read Hasan’s op ed as “Bush was kind to Muslims.” I would expect that most readers interpret is as “Even Bush looks good when compared to Trump and Co.”
Spot on.
Words are nice, but actions really matter. The Bush Justice Department’s over-zealous prosecution of Muslims post 9/11 was – and today continues to be – exceedingly counter-productive from a national security standpoint. In Portland, Oregon, the Muslim community has learned that it never, but never, should trust the FBI (recall the case of Mohamed Mohamud, a youth “stung” by the FBI after his own father contacted the FBI to ask for help with his son). Obviously harmless individuals, such as a gentleman over 60 and in poor health, have been targeted and put on the No-Fly List when they refused to attend an FBI interview without an attorney. Another former Portland resident was tortured by proxy in the UAE after refusing to become an informant. All of these excesses have soured any possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship between American Muslims and the Justice Department/FBI. And that’s not even mentioning cases like Dr. Ali Al-Tamimi, Sami Al-Arian, CAIR, Holy Land Foundation, etc.
In short, G.W. Bush blew it. Any radicalization of immigrant and American-born Muslims in recent years can, I believe, be traced back to his overzealousness.
The Brandon Mayfield incident was particularly nauseating.
Indeed it was. Brandon and I are co-counsel in the torture-by-proxy case mentioned above, which is now pending in Federal District Court of Oregon.
@ Thomas Nelson, ZigZag, Oregon
Mr. Nelson:
I’m admitted to practice in state courts and the Federal District Court of Oregon. I’ve done nothing but litigation over the 5-6 years I’ve been actively practicing in Oregon. If you and Brandon need any assistance with research, discovery review or whatever (even non-lawyer grunt work if necessary), I’d be happy to help free of charge.
If not for whatever reason(s), best of luck to you and Brandon in any event. He’s a good guy and it sounds like important litigation.
@ Thomas Nelson, ZigZag, Oregon
And I’ve done a fair bit of appellate work too (Oregon Court of Appeals and one case pending before 9th Circuit) if that’s of any value to you guys.
Kind of looking to get out of the active practice of law because I’m not having much luck (and/or don’t have the financial resources) finding the types of cases I’m passionate about. And not really interested in being an attorney if I can’t be financially viable handling strictly the matters I’m passionate about, which doesn’t appear to be the case at this point in my career.
Not that you or Brandon would or should care about any of that, but it means I’ve got free time if you guys need any help.
I was one of the first attorneys to help overturn non-judicial foreclosure cases in this state so it’s not like I’m lacking in viable legal skills when properly motivated.
You seem like the person the ICC desperately needs…justice needs to be served there in the reality.
All of your examples are things the FBI/DOJ/NSA did. Obviously the buck stops at the president and if he really wanted to he could have done more to change their behavior but its far easier have control of what comes out of your mouth than to micromanage agencies that operate with a fair amount of independence.
I wouldn’t deny that “rhetoric” matters. It does. It matters in the sense that what human beings write and say to each other is how we convey ideas and values and “culture”. It’s also how some groups propagandize others and how we “rationalize” all sorts of pernicious forms of self-delusion.
I’d argue that what human beings do to animate their ideas and values is 98% more important than what we speak or write. Or maybe put another way, it is easier to evaluate what people really believe and value in their lives by evaluating what actions they take or don’t take rather than what they speak or write.
Nevertheless, I’d concede that communicating ideas and values is the necessary but not sufficient precursor to making our ideas and values real. Again, stated differently, while “talk is cheap” and “actions speak louder than words”, but for the words employed to communicate our ideas and values and “culture” to one another (and to contest or even understand those ideas and values in the corporeal world) our actions would lack context and meaning. Absent that context and meaning human beings’ actions would be devoid of concepts like “justice” or “morality” or “legality” or “love” or “faith” . . . . We’d be little more than these relatively simple creatures that careen around in their brief lives reacting to physical stimuli we perceive to be either harmful or helpful to our immediate survival and trying to demonstrate to each other non-verbally how to embrace or avoid certain situations or objects.
I mean it really is a bit mind blowing in some ways to contemplate the importance of human beings capacity for verbal, written and non-verbal communication. It is arguably our most important if not indispensable human “invention” and/or evolutionary adaptation depending on how you choose to understand and describe that capacity. A capacity (i.e. individual/group capacity for communication of ideas or impetus for action) by the way that is not strictly confined to human beings. From ants to whales to plants the myriad species on this planet “communicate” at one level of abstraction or another. The fact that human beings don’t truly understand or comprehend the importance of that simple idea and/or believe our particular forms of communication structures or capacity somehow makes us “superior” to all other living things on the planet is a very short-sighted way of understanding the world we all briefly inhabit.
When push comes to shove the earth will likely shrug us off like it has a lot of other species that existed on this planet more successfully and for orders of magnitude longer. I’m not sure what that all means in the grand scheme of things, but the idea should give people pause if not a small dose of humility about how we conduct ourselves on this shared earth.
“”this crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while to really get going” G W Bush
George Bush is very close with the Saudis, and has even jokingly referred to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan as “Bandar Bush.” He smuggled all the Saudis out of this country right after 9/11, and none of us plebes will probably ever see the classified “28 pages” from the Joint Congressional 9/11 Inquiry report analyzing Saudi Arabia’s role in the attack. The White House refuses to make it public. Our congresspeople are allowed to read it, but not allowed to discuss its contents. I think, if memory serves, only about 30 % of our senators have even bothered to read the 28 pages. Depressing!
So, of course, you couldn’t really call Bush an “islamophobe.” He’s very close to some hard-core Sunni Salafists.
Let’s call it what it is… anti-semitic.
Your name is anti-semitic too.
What is “anti-semitic?” The article? GW Bush?
Arabs are Semites.
Yes,the real Semites.
Great piece. Very well written.