Jeb Bush’s Brainless Trust

Posts on this blog have not been kind to Jeb Bush - I'm trying to thank of a good nickname for him, any suggestions? - and with good reason.  From his disgusting role in the Terri Schiavo circus to his refusal to accept any responsibility on his family's part for the disasters in the Middle East and the great recession, one cannot feel even a shred of confidence that Jeb has learned anything over the last 15 years or more.  I'm sorry, but tapping an openly gay communications director and claiming that you are your own man just aren't enough to convince me that Jeb would not bring us a third term of Bush/Cheney regime - something that is terrifying to contemplate.  Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times that underscores Jeb Bush's obnoxious and frightening refusal to say what he would do to atone for the sins of his brother and truly move Americans other than the 1% towards a better future.  Here are column highlights:

I had been keeping an open mind on Jeb Bush.  I mean, sure, as Florida governor, he helped his brother snatch the 2000 election. And that led to two decade-long botched wars that cost tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. The nation will be dealing for a long time with struggling veterans and the loss of American prestige. Not to mention that W. let Wall Street gamble away the economy, which is only now finally creeping back.

In his foreign policy speech in Chicago on Wednesday, Jeb was dismissive toward those who want to know where he stands in relation to his father and brother. “In fact,” he said, mockingly, “this is a great, fascinating thing in the political world for some reason.”

For some reason? Like the Clintons, the Bushes drag the country through national traumas that spring from their convoluted family dynamic and then disingenuously wonder why we concern ourselves with their family dynamic. Without their last names, Hillary and Jeb would not be front-runners,. . . 

The last two presidents in his party were his father and brother, and his brother crashed the family station wagon into the globe, and Jeb is going to have to address that more thoroughly than saying “there were mistakes made in Iraq for sure.”

He says he doesn’t want to focus on “the past,” and who can blame him? But how can he talk about leading America into the future if he can’t honestly assess the past, or his family’s controversial imprint?

In his speech, he blamed President Obama for the void that hatched ISIS, which he also noted didn’t exist in 2003 at the dawn of “the liberation of Iraq.” Actually, his brother’s invasion of Iraq is what spawned Al Qaeda in Iraq, which drew from an insurgency of Sunni soldiers angry about being thrown out of work by the amateurish and vainglorious viceroy, Paul Bremer.

[F]or Bushworld, Jeb is the redeemer, the one who listens and talks in full sentences that make sense, the one who will restore the luster of the Bush name. But if you want to be your own person, you have to come up with your own people.

W. was a boy king, propped up by regents supplied by his father. . . . Jeb, too, wanted to bolster his negligible foreign policy cred, so the day of his speech, his aide released a list of 21 advisers, 19 of whom had worked in the administrations of his father and his brother. The list starts with the estimable James Baker. But then it shockingly veers into warmongers.

It’s mind-boggling, but there’s Paul Wolfowitz, the unapologetic designer of the doctrine of unilateralism and pre-emption, the naïve cheerleader for the Iraq invasion and the man who assured Congress that Iraqi oil would pay for the country’s reconstruction and that it was ridiculous to think we would need as many troops to control the country as Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, suggested.

If he wants to reclaim the Bush honor, Jeb should be holding accountable those who inflicted deep scars on America, not holding court with them.  Where’s the shame?  For some reason, Jeb doesn’t see it.

Jeb's brother nearly destroyed America.  Do we want another Bush presidency when Jeb refuses to even recognize the mistakes of the past and, worse yet, is surrounding himself with those who help bring about the disasters?

Will Rand Paul Challenge The Utter Delusion of Dick Cheney and the Neocons?

Even as polls show that something around 75% of Americans oppose the re-involvement of Us.S troops in Iraq, Dick Cheney continues his rants against Barack Obama and continues to claim that Iraq can be turned around.  One has to wonder how many trillions of dollars and how many more American lives must be wasted before the pompous and arrogant Cheney might ever admit that he was wrong in 2003 and he's wrong now.  Perhaps because he is watching polling results or because he is merely disgusted with Cheney and his goons, Rand Paul is challenging the standard GOP/neocon gospel on waging endless war.  Perhaps an even bigger heresy is Paul's statement that - unlike Cheney - he does not blame Barack Obama for the problems which are the outcome of Bush/Cheney's lies and delusions.  Here are excerpts from Time:

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is firing back at his party’s interventionist wing, saying those who supported the Iraq war “emboldened Iran,” while freeing President Barack Obama of blame for the current crisis in Iraq.

In a Meet the Press interview airing this [past] Sunday, the 2016 presidential hopeful and libertarian icon responded to an op-ed by former Vice President Dick Cheney criticizing Obama’s handling of the situation in Iraq.

“I think the same questions could be asked of those who supported the Iraq War,” Paul said. “You know, were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? That’s what the war was sold on. Was democracy easily achievable? Was the war won in 2005, when many of these people said it was won? They didn’t really, I think, understand the civil war that would break out.”

Paul added that he doesn’t blame Obama for the ongoing turmoil in Iraq, but he questions whether the President has a solution to the crisis, during which Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have seized vast territory and pushed the Iraqi military back to the outskirts of Baghdad.

“And what’s going on now—I don’t blame on President Obama,” Paul said. “Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East. I also blame those who were for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran. These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry.”

I continue to find Rand Paul scary on a number of issues, but is refreshing that at least on occasion one Republican can be in touch with objective reality and not insist on following the same failed policies that created the fiasco in Iraq and the larger Middle East.

The Obscene Hubris and Lack of Shame of Bush/Cheney and the GOP

Readers may think that I am beating a dead horse, but the continued shocking behavior and statements of the architects of the Iraq War disaster truly defy belief.  Where is the remorse, where is any admission of error, where is there a scintilla of feeling for the countless lives thrown away?  There is none whatsoever.  Moreover, these people are now blaming the disaster unfolding in Iraq on Barack Obama rather than their own idiocy, lies and hubris.  Equally shocking, is the fact that many of these "doyens" of the far right pretend to believe in "Judeo-Christian" values even as they prove to be the anti-thesis of what a decent Christian ought to be.  Andrew Sullivan lets loose with another volley that focuses on the shameless delusion of these people, including Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Here are excerpts:

The events in Iraq have unveiled the core reality of that country’s sectarian vortex, but they’ve also revealed something just as disturbing at home. Far from feeling any remorse, or expressing the slightest regret, or analyzing their own catastrophic misjudgments, the architects of the Iraq disaster are actually proud of the devastation they caused for no reason. To read Tony Blair is to witness a mind unsullied by fact or history or responsibility. There is not a scintilla of the self-awareness – let alone the shame – that one might expect from any responsible adult. 

If Blair needs help, what can we say of Paul Bremer – yes, Paul Bremer, the man who disbanded the Iraqi military – actually having the gall to go on CNN and blame Obama for his own responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths? We have Bill Kristol – with a straight face – actually going on cable news and arguing that not only does the US have to intervene, but that we have to fight both Iran and ISIS and Maliki simultaneously. He actually then has the gall to ask that we do not re-litigate his own record in fomenting this bloodbath! 

And now the country’s resident and proud war criminal, with his failed politician daughter, are in on the act. As you might expect, theirs is a poisonous little tract, asserting ludicrously that Iraq was a victory, denying any responsibility for introducing extreme Islamism into Iraq, parlaying their own cronies in the Middle East as representative of anything but their own bubble, and blaming everything, as usual, on the man who has steadfastly managed to de-leverage the US from the Bush-Cheney catastrophe.

This from the man who left office with a cratering economy, two lost wars, a bankrupted Treasury, and a record of torture and military incompetence unknown in modern American history.

What we’re seeing now is the inability of the neocon mind to adjust even a smidgen in the face of empirical reality, to absorb just a soupcon of history, to accept even a minimum of responsibility.

 I wish I could say it all as well as Andrew does.  On a personal note, I am bitter.  I nearly lost a son-in-law and my grandson nearly lost his father because of the nightmare that Bush/Cheney and the neocons unleashed on  an all too believing America.   Thankfully, my son-in-law survived, has had a good recovery all things considered and has resigned from the military.  He/we were the lucky ones. Many thousands were not so lucky and these horrible individuals who created the fiasco have suffered no consequences and have shown not even a modicum of shame or remorse.  I truly wish Cheney and Bush would be put on trial for war crimes and in Cheney's case in particular, I believe he deserves a fate like those of the leadership tried at Nuremberg.