Burning Bush.

(Everyone else, from Fareed Zakaria to Bono, gets to pass some sort of verdict on the last 8 years of President Bush, extolling his vices and cursing his virtues. I realise, therefore, that to write ANOTHER 'Bush legacy' post is an idea that's as contrived as the High School Musical franchise. However, I never met a bandwagon I didn't like and I figure whats good enough for Bono is good enough for Nelder. So here it is, a 'Bush legacy' post. Originality is for sissies.)

I often LOL at the adjectives that have been attached to famous leaders throughout history. Sometimes, the adjectives are pretty dull, and don't really reflect that leader's accomplishments, or place in history. Alexander of Macedon, the great Greek king who smashed the Persians and tripled the size of Greece, had to make do with being called Alexander 'the Great', which sounds like he won first prize in a poetry contest. Alexander the Totally Bad-ass would have been far more sufficient. At the other end, we have Vlad III, the blood-thirsty tyrant of 15th century Romania and later the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. He became remembered as Vlad the Impaler, a name so infinitely cool that if you didn't know better you'd think he was a villian in a Tarantino film. Even some fictional characters have inherited this NAME + DESCRIPTION tradition, sometimes for better....and sometimes for worse.

Where am I going with this? Well, besides from showing off my knowledge of Romanian history, I want to pose a question. In 100 years time, when A Word on Failure is being updated by my great grandchild (Alexandra Hugochavez Nelder-Putin), I wonder what adjective will be attributed to the US of A's outgoing Presidunce, George Walker Bush?

Hopefully, history still remembers him as Bush the Failure. A man whose policies have led to the complete and total decimation of American prestige and respect on the global, left the United States embroiled in two wars that have been so badly mishandled that thousands of American, Iraqi and Afghani lives and trillions of dollars have been wasted, and whose reckless handling of the economy left the US and the rest of the world hurtling towards a recessionary fuckfest deserves no less.

There have been recent attempts to exonerate him for his short-comings, portray him as a man whose presidency and vision for America was sidelined by the 9/11 attacks, and that the worst excesses of the Bush Administration (the PATRIOT ACT, the Guantanamoification of prisoners of war, the attempts to snatch more power for the executive branch of government) were all necessary evils in the pursuit of national security. These attempts are not only weak, they are an affront to the memory of those killed both in the World Trade Center attacks, and in the subsequent 'War on Terror'. One of the Bush Administration officials (Rumsfeld?) once declared they were fighting an enemy that didn't play by the rules ,and so to obey the normal rules of conventional warfare (like the Geneva convention) would be like America fighting with one hand tied behind its back. But the fact it played by rules was one of the things that made America, and American democracy great, and by showing an almost carefree attitude to trampling over the rule of law, the seperation of powers and a plethora of civil liberties Bush degraded and corrupted the American ideal beyond recognition. Not only that, but the ham-fisted way that the Bush administration handled the peace in both post-Saddam Iraq and post-Taleban Afghanistan, was a show of supreme arrogance, and it can only be hoped that the thousands of extra lives lost haunt Bush to his grave.

But while Bush does not deserve to be exonerated for his incompetence, neither should he be villified. Among the far-flung corners of the left, Bush will be remembered as the war-mongering criminal who invaded Iraq to get his grubby hands on some sweet Middle Eastern crude oil. Or as the rich white prick who didnt give a flying fuck as hundreds of thousands of black people drowned in the floodwaters of New Orleans. But this is wrong. Bush does not deserve to be remembered as evil. He does deserve, however to be remembered as incredibly stupid. And maybe, a little too trusting.

I have defended the Bush Doctrine (the right to a pre-emptive strike against a nation before it attacks you) in a previous post. But Bush showed an almost eager-to-please willingness to trust the intelligence, uncritically accepting the vital evidence he used to make the case for war, rather than demanding to know the sources. In Hurricane Katrina, his administration's effectiveness was shredded for two reasons - the gutting of the civil defence budget on idealogical 'private-sector' grounds, and Bush's blind faith in his officials to do the job without him needing to be the overbearing 'Big Brother'-type boss. The economic crisis was a result of Bush's failure to really grapple with the issue, instead outlining some vague idealogical agenda for the economy (regulation bad, innovation good) and placing it the trust of free-market idealogues, with no balancing influence.

But if you really break his character down, the two most defining attributes of Bush are this. One, Having trust in the ability of the people he appointed to do a job and two, having strong philosophical groundings. And when you think about it, those aren't exactly bad characteristics to have. It just turned out that the former alcoholic with a tendency to get his words hopelessly muddled who looked hopelessly out of his depth when he debated Al Gore in 2000 WAS in fact hopelessly out of his depth. But not evil, just hopeless.

So, how should history remember Bush? Bush the Useless, definitely - maybe even as Bush the Worst.

But maybe also.....as George the Well-Intentioned.

Alex