Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Monday, March 13, 2006

Is George W. Bush just another Criminal-in-Chief?

2006 has not been George W. Bush’s year. Failures in the Gulf War, the Gulf Coast, and just about everywhere in-between have resurrected talk of him being the “worst president ever.” This concept made me ponder Andrew Jackson riding roughshod through the land...Indian scalps hanging from his saddle. Made me think of one of those giant white faces carved into Mount Rushmore: Teddy Roosevelt. TR said: “Democracy has justified itself by keeping for the white race the best portions of the earth’s surface.” It made me recall Woodrow Wilson and the lies he told to drag the U.S. into to a war far bloodier than Iraq. What about Wilson’s Espionage Act... the PATRIOT Act of that age?

Lefty icon FDR fought the war against racism with a segregated army, ignoring the Holocaust as long as possible and then, in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps, became the architect of American prison camps...interning over 100,000 Japanese-American without due process.

When comparing Dubya with Harry Truman, it begins and ends with two words: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

JFK waged a war of terror against Cuba and laid the foundation for the American invasion of South Vietnam. LBJ, well, he took the Tonkin and ran with it. Jimmy “Human Rights” Carter might best be judged by the people of East Timor, Central America, and Afghanistan.

Then we have William Jefferson Clinton...reviled by the right for no apparent reason. Bubba out-righted everyone during his eight-year reign and is perhaps the best example to use when judging Bush’s tenure.

During 1993 and 1994, when Clinton had the “advantage” of a Democratically-controlled Congress, he abandoned his pledge to consider offering asylum to Haitian refugees, reneged on his promise to “take a firm stand” against the armed forces’ ban on gays and lesbians, and backed away from his most high-profile campaign issue: health care. He also signed NAFTA, increased the Pentagon budget by $25 billion, fired Jocelyn Elders, dumped Lani Guinier, bombed Iraq and the Balkans, renewed the murderous sanctions on Iraq, ignored genocide in Rwanda, and passed a crime bill that gave us more cops, more prisons, and 58 more offenses punishable by death. Domestically, Clinton continued his assault on the working class by delivering a telecommunications bill that further narrowed the already laughable parameters of public debate. As a final slap in the face of the “liberal” wing of his party, Clinton signed the welfare repeal bill.

What about the environment? Some of Clinton’s accomplishments include: The passage of the salvage logging rider, the continuation of the use of methyl bromide, the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, the lowering of grazing fees on land, weakening the Safe Drinking Water Act, reversing the ban on the production and importation of PCBs, and allowing the export of Alaskan oil. All this (and more) led David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, to declare in 1996 that Bubba had “done more harm to the environment in three years than Presidents Bush and Reagan did in 12 years.”

Here’s just one more Clinton gem: the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law on April 24, 1996. This USA PATRIOT Act prequel contained provisions that Clinton himself admitted “make a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism.” This unconstitutional salvo severely restricted habeas corpus and expanded the number of federal capital crimes...and the PATRIOT Act is mostly an extension its legal foundations.

Who is the worst president ever? It’s a nip and tuck battle between criminals of all eras and the jury is still out.