{"id":671535,"date":"2022-05-25T18:55:09","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T18:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=129878"},"modified":"2022-05-25T18:55:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T18:55:09","slug":"russia-ukraine-war-george-bushs-admission-of-his-crimes-in-iraq-was-no-gaffe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/05\/25\/russia-ukraine-war-george-bushs-admission-of-his-crimes-in-iraq-was-no-gaffe\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia-Ukraine war: George Bush\u2019s admission of his crimes in Iraq was no \u201cgaffe\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It was apparently a \u201cgaffe\u201d of the kind we had forgotten since George W Bush stepped down from the US<\/a> presidency in early 2009. During a speech in Dallas last week, he momentarily confused Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s current war of aggression<\/a> against Ukraine<\/a> and his own war of aggression against Iraq<\/a> in 2003.<\/p>\n

Bush observed that a lack of checks and balances in Russia had allowed \u201cone man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq\u2026 I mean, Ukraine. Iraq too. Anyway\u2026 I\u2019m 75<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounded like another \u201cBushism\u201d\u00a0\u2013 a verbal slip-up \u2013 for which the 43rd president was famous<\/a>. Just like the time he boasted that people \u201cmisunderestimated\u201d him, or when he warned that America\u2019s enemies \u201cnever stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people \u2013 and neither do we\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maybe that explains why his audience laughed. Or maybe not, given how uncomfortable the laughter sounded.<\/p>\n

Bush certainly wanted his mistake to be seen as yet another slip-up, which is why he hurriedly blamed it on his age. The senility defence doubtless sounds a lot more plausible at a time when the incumbent president, Joe Biden, regularly loses track of what he is saying<\/a> and even where he is.<\/p>\n

The western media, in so far as it has bothered to report Bush\u2019s speech, has laughed along nervously too. It has milked the incident largely for comic effect: \u201cLook, we can laugh at ourselves \u2013 unlike that narcissist Russian monster, Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BBC accorded Bush\u2019s comment status as a down-page brief news item<\/a>.\u00a0Those that gave it more attention preferred to term it a \u201cgaffe\u201d or an amusing \u201cFreudian slip<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Putin apologists\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the focus on the humour of the moment is actually part of the media\u2019s continuing war on our understanding of recent history. It is intended to deflect us, the audience, from thinking about the real significance of Bush\u2019s \u201cgaffe\u201d.<\/p>\n

The only reason the media is now so belatedly connecting \u2013 if very indirectly \u2013 \u201ca wholly unjustified and brutal invasion\u201d of Ukraine and what happened in Iraq is because of Bush\u2019s mistake.<\/p>\n

Had it not happened, the establishment media would have continued to ignore any such comparison. And those trying to raise it would continue to be dismissed as conspiracy theorists or as apologists for Putin.<\/p>\n

The implication of what Bush said \u2013 even for those mockingly characterising it in Freudian terms \u2013 is that he and his co-conspirator, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are war criminals and that they should be on trial at the Hague for invading and occupying Iraq.<\/p>\n

Everything the current US administration is saying against Putin, and every punishment meted out on Russia and ordinary Russians, can be turned around and directed at the United States and Britain.<\/p>\n

Should the US not be under severe economic sanctions<\/a> from the \u201ccivilised world\u201d for what it did to Iraq? Should its sportspeople not be banned from international events<\/a>? Should its billionaires not be hunted down and stripped of their assets<\/a>? And should the works of its long-dead writers, artists and composers not be shunned by polite society<\/a>?<\/p>\n

And yet, the western establishment media are proposing none of the above. They are not calling for Blair and Bush to be tried for war crimes. Meanwhile, they echo western leaders in labelling what Russia is doing in Ukraine as genocide <\/a>and labelling Putin as\u00a0an evil madman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The western media are as uncomfortable taking Bush\u2019s speech at face value as his audience was. And for good reason.<\/p>\n

That is because the media are equally implicated in US and UK crimes in Iraq. They never seriously questioned the ludicrous \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d justification for the invasion. They never debated whether the \u201cShock and Awe\u201d bombing campaign of Baghdad was genocidal.<\/p>\n

And, of course, they never described either Bush or Blair as madmen and megalomaniacs and never accused them of waging a war of imperialism \u2013 or one for oil \u2013 in invading Iraq. In fact, both continue to be treated by the media as respected elder statesmen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s presidency, leading journalists waxed nostalgic<\/a> for the days of Bush, apparently unconcerned that he had used his own presidency to launch a war of aggression \u2013 the \u201csupreme international crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

And Blair continues to be sought out by the British and US media for his opinions on domestic and world affairs. He is even listened to deferentially when he opines on Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pre-emption excuse<\/strong><\/p>\n

But this is not simply about a failure to acknowledge the recent historical record. Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq is deeply tied to Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. And for that reason, if no other, the western media ought to have been driving home from the outset the parallels between the two \u2013 as Bush has now done in error.<\/p>\n

That would have provided the geopolitical context for understanding \u2013 without necessarily justifying \u2013 Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and the West\u2019s role in provoking it. Which is precisely why the media have worked so hard to ignore those parallels.<\/p>\n

In invading Iraq, Bush and Blair created a precedent that powerful states could redefine their attack on another state as \u201cpre-emptive\u201d \u2013 as defensive rather than aggressive \u2013 and thereby justify the military invasion in violation of the laws of war.<\/p>\n

Bush and Blair falsely claimed both that Iraq threatened the West with weapons of mass destruction and that its secular leader, Saddam Hussein, had cultivated ties with the extreme Islamists of al-Qaeda<\/a> that carried out the 9\/11 attacks on the US. These pretexts ranged from the entirely unsubstantiated to the downright preposterous.<\/p>\n

Putin has argued \u2013 more plausibly \u2013 that Russia had to take pre-emptive action against covert efforts by a US-led Nato to expand its military sphere of influence right up to Russia\u2019s borders. Russia feared that, left unchecked, the US and Nato were preparing to absorb Ukraine by stealth.<\/p>\n

But how does that qualify Russia\u2019s invasion as defensive? The Kremlin\u2019s fears were chiefly twofold.<\/p>\n

First, it could have paved the way for Nato stationing missiles minutes away from Moscow, eroding any principle of mutual deterrence.<\/p>\n

And second, Nato\u2019s incorporation of Ukraine would have drawn the western military alliance directly into Ukraine\u2019s civil war in the eastern Donbass region. That is where Ukrainian forces, including neo-Nazi elements like the Azov Brigade, have been pitted in a bloody fight<\/a> against ethnic Russian communities.<\/p>\n

In this view, absent a Russian invasion, Nato could have become an active participant in propping up Ukrainian ultra-nationalists killing ethnic Russians \u2013 as the West is now effectively doing through its arming of Ukraine to the tune of more than $40bn.<\/p>\n

Even if one discounts Russia\u2019s concerns, Moscow clearly has a greater strategic interest invested in what its neighbour Ukraine is doing on their shared border than Washington ever had in Iraq, many thousands of miles away.<\/p>\n

Proxy wars<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even more relevant, given the West\u2019s failure to acknowledge, let alone address, Bush and Blair\u2019s crimes committed in Iraq, is Russia\u2019s suspicion that US foreign policy is unchanged two decades on. On what basis would Moscow believe that Washington is any less aggressive or power-hungry than it was when it launched its invasion of Iraq?<\/p>\n

The western media continue to refer to the US attack on Iraq, and the subsequent bloody years of occupation, as variously a \u201cmistake<\/a>\u201d, a \u201cmisadventure<\/a>\u201d and a \u201cblunder<\/a>\u201d. But surely it does not look that way to Moscow, all the more so given that Washington followed its invasion of Iraq with a series of proxy wars against other Middle Eastern and North African states such as Libya, Syria and Yemen.<\/p>\n

To Russia, the attack on Iraq looks more like a stepping stone in a continuum of wars the US has waged over decades for \u201cfull-spectrum dominance<\/a>\u201d and to eradicate competitors for control of the planet\u2019s resources.<\/p>\n

With that as the context, Moscow might have reasonably imagined that the US and its Nato allies were eager for yet another proxy war, this time using Ukraine as the battlefield. Recent comments from Biden administration officials, such as Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, noting that Washington\u2019s tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv is intended to \u201cweaken Russia<\/a>\u201d, can only accentuate such fears.<\/p>\n

Back in March, Leon Panetta, a former US secretary of defence and the CIA director under Barack Obama, who is in a position to speak more freely than serving officials, observed that Washington was waging \u201ca proxy war with Russia<\/a>, whether we say so or not\u201d.<\/p>\n

He predicted where US policy would head next, noting that the aim would be \u201cto provide as much military aid as necessary\u201d. Diplomacy has been a glaringly low priority for Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Barely concealed from public view is a desire in the US and its allies for another regime change operation<\/a> \u2013 this time in Russia \u2013 rather than end the war and the suffering of Ukrainians.<\/p>\n

Butcher versus blunderer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, the New York Times<\/em> very belatedly turned down the war rhetoric a notch and called on the Biden administration to advance negotiations. Even so, its assessment<\/a> of where the blame lay for Ukraine\u2019s destruction was unambiguous: \u201cMr Putin will go down in history as a butcher.\u201d<\/p>\n

But have Bush or Blair gone down in history as butchers? They most certainly haven\u2019t. And the reason is that the western media have been complicit in rehabilitating their images, presenting them as statesmen who \u201cblundered\u201d \u2013 with the implication that good people blunder when they fail to take account of how entrenched the evil of everyone else in the world is.<\/p>\n

A butcher versus a pair of blunderers.<\/p>\n

This false distinction means western leaders and western publics continue to evade responsibility for western crimes in Iraq and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

That was why in late February \u2013 in reference to Ukraine \u2013 a TV journalist could suggest to Condoleezza Rice<\/a>, who was one of the architects of the illegal war of aggression on Iraq as Bush\u2019s national security adviser: \u201cWhen you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.\u201d The journalist apparently did not consider for a moment that it was not just Putin who was a war criminal but the very woman she was sitting opposite.<\/p>\n

It was also why Rice could nod solemnly and agree with a straight face that Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was \u201cagainst every principle of international law and international order \u2013 and that\u2019s why throwing the book at them [Russia] now in terms of economic sanctions and punishments is a part of it\u201d.<\/p>\n

But a West that has refused to come to terms with its role in committing the \u201csupreme international crime\u201d of invading Iraq, and has been supporting systematic crimes against the sovereignty of other states such as Yemen, Libya and Syria, cannot sit in judgment on Russia. And further, it should not be trying to take the high ground by meddling in the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

If we took the implications of Bush\u2019s comment seriously, rather than treating it as a \u201cgaffe\u201d and viewing the Iraq invasion as a \u201cblunder\u201d, we might be in a position to speak with moral authority instead of flaunting \u2013 once again \u2013 our hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

\u2022 First published in Middle East Eye<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>The post Russia-Ukraine war: George Bush\u2019s admission of his crimes in Iraq was no \u201cgaffe\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was apparently a \u201cgaffe\u201d of the kind we had forgotten since George W Bush stepped down from the US presidency in early 2009. During a speech in Dallas last week, he momentarily confused Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s current war of aggression against Ukraine and his own war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. Bush [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Russia-Ukraine war: George Bush\u2019s admission of his crimes in Iraq was no \u201cgaffe\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1235,48,135,579,192,53,712,2648,24,31161,6629,49351,376,1233,714],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":671536,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671535\/revisions\/671536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}