A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency Paperback – April 8, 2008

Sometimes just coming to the end of the book is as important as reading it, kind of like reflecting on a vacation just completed. That is one of the gifts that Glenn Greenwald has as a writer and author, and gives to his readers.His subtitle is "How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency." This is exactly what he explains in six chapters. It is frightening because it is predictable just as a parent may be able to predict the behavior of her child, or a husband predicts his spouse's.The first facts we are given is the steady decline in Bush's popularity. Since 2002, those who strongly disapproved of him have increased and those who have strongly approved, decreased rendering the 43rd president the most unpopular president in our history. He proceeds to tell us why and how.Bush sees himself as a Manichean warrior. A belief started by a Persian prophet in the 3rd century, it is a view that there are two forces in the world--good and evil. The forces of good may use whatever is necessary as long as it serves the good and works against evil. (Anyone who can recall anything George Bush has said in the past seven years will recognize the theme in his speeches.) This also precludes him from making errors or being wrong. The only people who are mistaken or wrong are those who think he has and is. And since he can use any tool at his disposal to fight evil, such as rendition, torture, or detention, it is not evil.By defining himself in terms of good vs. evil may explain his lethargic approach to domestic issues and needs. There are no dragons to slay even if it is a hurricane that swallows an American city. George Bush was prepared to defend Americans against terrorism, but not against an attack from weather, or through our ports, or through our infrastructure, particularly if it means raising taxes.For those who believe that George Bush is fighting the forces of evil, the people who challenge his actions are "terrorist lovers" who believe in "terrorist rights," and do not support our troops. For them, the charge of terrorism is as good as proof of terrorism because the Man has declared it so.Here's the irony and the contradiction: By feeling that any strategy or weapon is at his disposal he has come to be seen by the world as the same evil he decries. By denying the rights of our citizens and those even of our allies, he has come to be hated as much as others have hated terrorism.The second irony is that in detaining our citizens as enemy combatants, authorizing kidnappings and renditions to provide us with security, our security and our constitutional rights are being destroyed in the process. Detaining American citizens without charges, counsel, or communication with the outside world would have been considered unthinkable only a few short years ago.Millions of people have been born since our invasion of a sovereign nation and have seen the tortures and degridation at abu-Ghraib. They only see the United States as evil. All that George Bush has tried to do has had the opposite effect.And now, George Bush is concerned about his legacy, how people will see him. He has compared himself to Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, and FDR but falls woefully short in each comparison. Like most wartime presidents, he will be remembered as one, and one who has lost, and one who has disabled his own military, left a mountain of debt, with no singular domestic or foreign achievement.Greenwald's arguments are backed up with a mountain of evidence. His writing is interesting, provocative, and persuasive. His message is very profound.When you read this book, and I hope you do, maybe you will do the same thing I did at the end. You will exhale deeply and just think, and think some more about what our president has done, and what kind of legacy he leaves behind.02 29 08: 325 days and a wake-up until the Forces of Evil leave office.Also Recommended:More About Bush:Waldman, Paul, "Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You."Dean, John, "Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George Bush."Frank, Justin A. M.D., "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President."Greenwald, Glenn "How Would a Patriot Act: Defending America's Values from a President Run Amok."More About his Constitutional Violations:Center for Constitutional Rights, "Articles of Impeachment Against George Bush."Byrd, Robert C., "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency."Miles, Steven, M.D., "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror"

Salon reporter and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald's thesis is straightforward: George W. Bush approached every issue he faced as one on which the forces of good had to overcome the forces of evil. Everything, and as far as Greenwald is concerned that means literally EVERYTHING, was in black and white with no shades of gray whatsoever. Consequently, the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath defined his presidency were viewed as the result of evil being perpetrated by those who were evil on the good people and the good nation of the United States. The sense of American innocence present in this perspective was palpable. The myth of the innocent nation so much a part of Bush's character, allowed him to come to believe that whatever he did to respond to this perceived evil was just and righteous.No doubt this sense was fostered by Bush's strikingly non-nuanced Christian beliefs, and this too led him to accept as true that he was locked in a desperate struggle with evil. He viewed the world this way, seeing it in virtually all periods of American history but it is especially present in the great struggles of the twentieth century. He accepted that in World Wars I and II America was fighting for the survival of all that was good against forces of evil. But it also was especially prevalent in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and certainly in the aftermath of 9/11 in the global war on terrorism.In essence "A Tragic Legacy" is a character study of George W. Bush. It is one that points to what Greenwald believes were fundamental flaws in his personality; but it is more than that since it also exemplifies the mindset of his administration and policies pursued during the first decade of the twenty-first century. This led to a demonization of people and cultures that held ideas different from Bush, and tragic wars in Iraq and, although less so, in Afghanistan.Greenwald makes a convincing case, but as someone who values academic arguments for me there was a bit too much of journalistic license in the discussion. For one thing I appreciate the scholarly apparatus, and I found the lack of any sort of documentation whatsoever troubling. Greenwald offered basic statements about where large quote came from, but no specifics. For example, on p. 105 he quotes from a Dr. Rafael Medoff's 2003 article but doesn't bother to tell you the name of the article or where it appeared, to say nothing of page number, etc. That is common throughout the book. I want more specificity and the ability to follow-up on, even to fact check, what is being said. It's not that I don't think Greenwald is incorrectly quoting these sources; I always want to verify everything.Perhaps that is not a problem for other readers, but it is for me. I take the analysis in this book seriously, and I want the substance to back it up. It is the difference between five stars and four stars from me.

The tragedy of Bush entering 2008 was about to get worse with the Financial crisis and his lack of management of the budget deficit (that he created). Some friends love to blame Clinton but I am sorry .. 8 years after Clinton the mis-management of financial instruments is clearly on Bush in addition to the wasted Iraq II war coming on the heels of Iraq I perpetrted whenhis father knowing that Kuwait was drilling for oil under Iraq chose to do nothing leading to the first war.Good book.. good to see the failings of men and how we can all be impacted by the righteous bullying. Reading this book after Trump, it is amazing how little has changed. The US has enough money to blow it on other needless conflicts rather than using diplomacy to negotiate commercial and military deals to enhance cooperation in the middle east (not to mention china and russia). The world has changed and climate change requires that oil, coal, natural gas, Intellectual Property are part of commercial deals accompanied by management of justice, prisoners, visas, travelers and a myriad of real world and global needs. The focus on Iraq and Iran and not the Wahabi-shielding Saudis (and others) confounds logic.. especially after the Washington Post reporter was executed by Saudis without any justice.Thought provoking book and I will read another of his "with liberty and justice for some"

Mr. Greenwald has introduced to the political lexicon a new word - "Manichean". I notice that even the main line press have taken it up. As far as I know, this is actually not correct usage; the Manichean heresy believed that the forces of Light and Dark, Good and Evil were in balance in the universe and the world, as opposed to the Christian belief that God was all-powerful and that his triumph is assured at a time and place of his choosing. Its most famous manifestation was found in the Cathars of the Languedoc in mediaeval southern France, annihilated in a Crusade of unparalleled ferocity. I'm sure that, as a Christian believer, Mr. Bush is not really Manichean.What Mr.Greenwald really means is that Mr. Bush sees things in stark black and white, with himself as white. There are no subtle shades of grey. If you're not with him, you're against him. This is the view of the fanatic, be s/he religious or political. These are terrifying creatures, completely blind to reason and logic, determined only to force their view on others. In this, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are well-matched.However, it is frankly terrifying that such a person can be President of the USA, the world's only superpower and possessor of its mightiest arsenal. It's like letting children with a box of matches loose in a fireworks factory. But then, the USA is a religious country, the official religion being the USA itself, a belief in its essential goodness and rightness and its destiny to spread this to other less enlightened places, whether they like it or not. Mr. Bush, a not very bright scion of East Coast privilege who got religion, has, in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity, used this official religion to take the USA down a perilous road to aggressive war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and to threaten to go to war with another. Saddam Hussein was indeed a most unpleasant individual, but then so are many of the US's current allies. And by removing Saddam, the Arab world's counterweight to non-Arab, nearly 100% Shi'ite Iran, Bush strengthened Iran enormously and enriched it at the same time with high oil prices. Not bad going.Mr. Greenwald makes his case in vast, indeed overwhelming, detail and he lays it on thick and fast. He makes it again and again - and again and again and again. Sometimes one feels like crying, "Enough! No more!" as example succeeds example, each more outrageous than the last. While this is all very well for committed Bush bashers, some of us would prefer a more measured discourse, such as, where does the US go from here? But of course Mr. Greenwald appears to be at heart a polemicist, a Democratic version of the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the Republican side, but being somewhat of an improvement over their 100% fact-free vituperative ravings.Can facts, measured debate and mature reasoning win in the USA against soundbites and rabble-rousing? I'd like to think so. As things currently stand, the USA represents the greatest danger to world peace on the planet. We can only hope that the US electorate comes to its senses in November and votes out the catastrophe called the Republican Party, and that the Party spends a long time in the wilderness recovering from its self-inflicted wounds and learning how to be sensible again. The tragedy of the Bush years is that the Republican Party has turned from a responsible party into a collection of assorted loonies. I wish it a speedy recovery, so that it can again become the party of that greatest of US Presidents, Abraham Lincoln.

Great read