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George W Bush’s finest piece of war
By:   []
Date: None

George W. Bush is back. He is back, this time not to bomb countries and cause the death of thousands. This time the man is back as an artist who advocates for the rights of immigrants, and the US media is on heat.

Bush, the former US president, recently penned an Op-Ed for The Washington Post, and received a round of applause on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ when the eponymous host complimented him on his painting of American politician Madeleine Albright. He appears on TV to speak about his new book of oil paintings of America’s immigrants, ‘Out of Many, One’, he is not wearing handcuffs, and all rehabilitated. It is all normal.

What is also normal is how the starvation and deprivation of medication that caused the early death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children because of the severe US sanctions on the country in the 1990s, have fallen into oblivion. To Albright, speaking in a 1996 TV interview, the political price was “worth it”, though she would later express regret for her wording.

Bush’s grinning face seems to be traveling at a smooth pace from one TV show to the next. Kimmel admired his guest’s reflexes when he dodged Muntadhar al-Zaidi’s shoe throw, and the two had a laugh about it. Of course, it slipped Kimmel’s mind to ask his guest about his time ordering cluster bombs be dropped on my family’s house in Baghdad to “liberate it”. It also slipped the host’s mind to ask why in the first place a man would want to throw a shoe at the former president.

For their part, the cheering crowd gave the impression that the next rich guy to oversee the annihilation of inferior beings overseas could as well re-emerge from the gutter and be celebrated as a cool, funny grandpa.

Bush’s blood-stained past tells us the man is dangerous. If Richard Nixon – in the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson – “could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time”, you might lose a finger or two if you extend your hand to shake Bush’s.

And with the way things are going, there’s a big chance he will get away with it – again.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/george-w-bushs-finest-piece-of-war/