Progressive Vision Failure: The Real Scandal of Bush’s Knesset Speech

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
Sunday, 18 May 2008
There has been much throwing about of brains in the "progressosphere" about George W. Bush's shocking and unseemly injection of – gasp! – partisanship into his address to the Israeli Knesset the other day. Evidently this was the first time in American history that a president has ever indulged in such un-statesmanlike behavior while gadding about in foreign parts. And what exactly did Bush do, what was this act of unprecedented moral and political depravity? Brace yourself: he made a remark that could be construed as an implied criticism of Barack Obama.Now, it so happens that there was indeed a very grave and sinister scandal in Bush's appearance before the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. But it had nothing to do with his witless ejaculation of that clapped-out right-wing trope of yore: the "Neville Chamberlain gambit," in which anyone who fails to evince sufficient eagerness to immediately obliterate Washington's designated enemy of the day is accused of "appeasement," paving the way for the next Hitler, etc. No; the real scandal lies elsewhere. But the fact that it was universally ignored, in favor of starchy outrage over the non-issue of Bush's remark, tells us a great deal about the clueless – and gutless – nature of so much of what passes for political dissent in America today.(Continued after the jump.)I.We will get to the genuine outrage shortly, but first let's cut through some of the starch. The reaction of Will Bunch, who writes the Attywood blog for the Philadelphia Daily News, is a good example of the overwrought reaction that greeted Bush's typically bug-eyed reading of the words that someone put on the autocue for him. This is the offending passage, which Bunch took from this CNN story:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."That's it. A tired, ludicrous, irrelevant and meaningless analogy, from the most unpopular president in American history – a despised, pathetic wretch whose words sway no one beyond a fanatic minority of zealots – and a cynical, profit-seeking elite -- already committed to his murderous vision. The speech will have no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the presidential race. It tells us nothing that we don't already know about the Bush gang's lust for war with Iran, a nation the gang has long painted in the colors of Nazi Germany. But because this pointless regurgitation contained a dig at the likely Democratic nominee, Bunch calls it an act of "political treason." In fact, in a truly remarkable – and to me genuinely shocking – outburst, he says that Bush's tweaking of Obama in the speech was actually worse than the Watergate scandal, the Iran-Contra scandal, and all of the Bush Regime's own depredations in the past seven years, including the "flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a 'pre-emptive' war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum." All of this -- crime, deceit, mass murder in a war of aggression -- pales in comparison to Bush's Knesset speech, which Bunch calls "a new low that I never imagined was even possible."I don't want to pick on Bunch. He seems like a nice guy, and he has worked hard over the years in detailing some of the outrages of the Bush Regime. But I must confess that I simply cannot comprehend the mindset that would lead to such a statement. Bush goading Obama in an overseas appearance is a "new low"? Worse than torture? Worse than unrestricted spying on the American people? Worse than the subversion of the electoral process in Watergate (not to mention the 2000 and 2004 campaigns)? Worse than running guns to the Iranian mullahs to help fund a terrorist insurgency in Nicaragua? Worse than aggressive war launched on false pretenses? Worse than a million people dead and more than four million driven from their homes? What kind of moral algebra could lead to such a conclusion? How could anything that Bush says at this point be worse than what he has already done?Part of it stems, I think, from the deeply ingrained and deeply self-righteous "American exceptionalism" that characterizes most "progressive" viewpoints. What we have here, first, is the temporary insanity that afflicts almost all partisans during an election year, in which the slightest perturbation on the American political scene far outweighs any other event in moral importance. Second, there is the upsurge of patriotic bunkum that arises during presidential campaigns, where partisanship so often wraps itself in the robes of a violated idealism. Witness the quivering sanctimony of Bunch's indignation (and try not to let the humming chorus of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" – from, say, the soundtrack of "Doctor Strangelove" – drown out the prose as you read):
As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that's why we're having an election here at home, to sort these issues out -- hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals….[Here Bunch accurately describes the hypocrisy of Bush's remarks in respect to other American dealings with Libya and, indeed, Iran. Then the bunkum kicks into overdrive.]But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate. When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.We are Americans.O, e pluribus unum! Let the mighty eagle soar! Yeah, we may mix it up a little bit, but at the end of the day we are all one, we are all….family. One can only assume that Bunch has not been reading his own admirable pieces for the past several years. Or anything else for that matter. Throughout this entire decade, the public "debate" has been packed to the rafters with fierce excommunications of Bush regime critics as "un-American," not "real Americans," not "one of us," "traitors," "enemies" and so on and so forth. (My own in-box has groaned with such messages for years. Indeed, if I had a dollar for every time I've been told by a fellow American that I am not their fellow American, I could probably run for president myself. At least for a week or two. I imagine that Bunch, writing for a much larger public platform, has gotten even more of this kind of hysterical shunning.) Yet still the bunkum goes on:
And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove- and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that [you] have lost all perspective -- and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason. >>>>cont
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