Neo-Contentions V
NEO-CONTENTIONS V
The Political and Polemic Correctness of…
HATING GEORGE W. BUSH
PREFACE: DW Readers may wish to review the July 25 article entitled “Why I Hate Bush” by DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier. In this exchange, that article is taken to task by conservative, Michael Holdcraft, Colonel, USAF, retired.
Michael Holdcraft has sent DW the following cover letter as a preface to his criticism of the previous DW article written by Len Carrier. Contrary to Mr. Holdcraft’s opinion, DW is pleased to print both his letter and his rebuttal. The object of Mr. Holdcraft’s criticism, Len’s “Why I Hate George W. Bush,” has also been reprinted below. Len Carrier believes that all of Holdcraft’s objections are spurious, and he has refuted them in an article which follows Holdcraft’s. In the meantime, since Mr. Holdcraft has elected to include his email address at the end of his criticism, Len reasons that this constitutes an invitation to DW readers to reply to Mr. Holdcraft on their own.
Col. Michael Holdcraft says…
Mr. Carrier has personally asked me numerous times to submit my comments on his article to your web site. He says your site is fair-minded and would print it. I told him there is no way you would print my comments because I question his motivations in writing the article, political motivations in my opinion. I don’t question Len’s hate for the President, but do question his reasons. He has only one reason to hate the President and that reason is he is a “Republican’. It is my firm belief that if Mr. Bush were a Democrat, Len would be solidly behind and supporting every decision he has made. My reply also challenges Len to prove any of the statements he has made by producing facts to back them up. He hasn’t yet done that because he can’t. You won’t print my comments because they directly question almost all of Len’s accusations in his article. I believe his article as well as most of the articles I see on your web site are all politically motivated, and therefore you cannot print my comments because they directly challenge all the left wing propaganda you have published to date.
Sincerely,
Michael D. Holdcraft, Colonel, USAF, Retired
HOLDCRAFT FURTHER HOLDS FORTH:
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Why is Mr. Carrier wrong! In Mr. Carrier’s first paragraph of his article “Why I Hate George W. Bush” (included below), he states that our President is, “a cowardly, macho-talking bully. He is a child of privilege, never having had to work a day in his life. He is a former alcohol drinking, cocaine using, woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy who was allowed to get away with every affront he gave to civil decency.” The last time I checked being born into a rich or in well-off family was not a crime, but maybe a privileged only enjoyed by a few of us. Does Mr. Carrier also dislike Ted Kennedy, who was also born into a wealthy family and never worked at a real job in his life? I suspect not. Does he have the same contempt for all rich people that he shows for our current President? Mr. Carrier states the President never worked a day in his life; but any real look at the President’s life shows he definitely did work in the oil business, so Mr. Carrier’s statement is not factual, but based it seems on his own personal biases against certain rich people? He calls Mr. Bush a coward and bully, but where is the proof of that statement? None was included in his article? Was Teddy Roosevelt likewise a coward and bully too? Both President’s had similar foreign policies. Mr. Carrier calls Mr. Bush a “woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy”. I think he must have Mr. Bush mixed up with a very recent former President on at least one of those charges? It is documented that Mr. Bush was in the National Guard and that is not “draft dodging” unless Mr. Carrier is willing to say that every American who was in the National Guard during Vietnam was also a “Draft dodger”. I don’t think he will to do that? And what is Mr. Carrier’s definition of civil decency? He gives none in this article, so the reader must use his or her own definition and I cannot think of one time where Mr. Bush has ever shown any lack of civility or decency toward anyone by my definition? Can Mr. Carrier please be more specific in these charges? So, now after calling the President every bad name he can think of to tell us why “he doesn’t hate Mr. Bush”, Mr. Carrier asks us to continue to read on into his “unbiased” article on why he does hate Mr. Bush??? Mr. Carrier states Mr. Bush had no good reason for invading Iraq. I and every American can count the numerous UN Resolutions from 1991 until 2002 that gave the United States every reason to go back into Iraq. Iraq never complied with the cease-fire conditions laid down by UN Resolution 687 immediately after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Iraq was in constant and flagrant violation of that resolution and the cease-fire for 11 years and all the numerous other resolutions laid down by the UN between 1991 and 2002. Saddam’s government constantly blocked and delayed UN inspections and would not allow access to key sites and documents concerning Iraq’s WMD and other weapons and delivery systems for all of those eleven years. Weapons and systems that we all know existed prior to Desert Storm. Why else would our Intelligence establishment have assumed Iraq still had WMD? It was a reasonable assumption given the actions of the Iraqi government during the eleven years between Desert Storm and the current conflict. Mr. Carrier says he hates the President for the military deaths in Iraq and the civilians killed there, while ignoring the fact that the great, great majority of those civilians deaths and all our military deaths were caused by terrorists and Hussein henchmen fighting us and the democratically elected Iraqi government. He also conveniently ignores the reign of terror Saddam Hussein had over his people for decades and the thousands unjustly murdered by Hussein’s government during that period of time. Mr. Carrier’s condemnations seem more politically motivated than based on established fact. Mr. Carrier condemns the President for tax cuts to the wealthy, while ignoring numerous tax cuts to the middle class. I personally believe almost all tax cuts are good for our economy. But Mr. Carrier seems personally jealous that he didn’t get more of them himself? He condemns the President for the damage done by the most devastating hurricane to ever hit the continental United States. I personally know from my family, who live in Louisiana and Mississippi and suffered through that storm, that it was a small miracle anyone got to New Orleans within 4 days after Katrina. FEMA had many problems, problems they would have had under any President, Democrat or Republican. None of those problems were caused by our President. Mr. Carrier, in all his knowledge and wisdom, goes on to condemn the White House for the release of a CIA employees name, not a covert CIA operative, as he inaccurately states. Mr. Carrier seems to enjoy finding guilt before actually producing any proof of guilt. We now know the person/s he blamed did not release that information to the press. Does he still hate Mr. Bush for this? I certainly hope we don’t have an earthquake on the west coast any time soon, for if we do, I’m sure Mr. Carrier will find a way to blame it on Mr. Bush too. Why don’t I agree with Mr. Carrier arguments? Because they are based on “half-truths, factually inaccurate statements, and supposition yet to be proved.” If I were accusing Mr. Carrier of similar crimes with a similar level of proof, he would be crying foul or slander. Oh, that’s right, Mr. Carrier has stated he believes the rules should be different for politicians. He can say anything he wants about them, no proof needed. Mr. Carrier wants you to believe he is being “a Patriotic American” by his actions and writings, when in truth he is going against every American tradition of fairness and objectivity by his assumption of “guilty until proven innocent.” His actions undermine confidence in our government and it’s leaders and I don’t think that is “patriotic” at all. If he must accuse our President of wrongdoing, then let him produce his proof along with his accusations, then maybe I can treat his writings as something other than a “left wing political hatchet job.” Michael Holdcraft Colonel, USAF, Retired
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Why I Hate George W. Bush
By: Len Carrier *
It’s been a long time coming. I used to say that hate was a useless emotion, and that we ought to concentrate on the act and not the actor. But I can resist no more. We have a president who is a cowardly, macho-talking bully. He is a child of privilege, never having had to work a day in his life. He is a former alcohol drinking, cocaine using, woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy who was allowed to get away with every affront he gave to civil decency. But that’s not why I hate him.
I hate him because he has lowered the status of our country in the eyes of the world by his shocking behavior in office. I hate him because he invaded Iraq for no good reason and thereby caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 U.S. military and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. I hate him for giving tax cuts to the wealthy, while ignoring the poor. I hate him for saying he was an environmentalist while promoting bills that pollute our rivers and coastal shores. I hate him for squandering the surplus that Clinton left us and putting our children and grandchildren in debt. I hate him for more than 1 million lost jobs since he took office. I hate him for putting an inept crony in charge of FEMA and letting New Orleans sink into the mud. I hate him for saying he’d fire the person who leaked the information about a covert CIA operative, and then back-tracked when he found out it was Dick Cheney. I hate him for sitting on his thumbs while Israel bombs innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. I hate him for vetoing stem-cell research to pacify the crazies on his religious right. I hate him because he has spied on Americans without warrant. I hate him because he has allowed torture of prisoners in defiance of the Geneva Conventions. So, go ahead, call me a Bush hater. I’ve got good reason.
DUSTY ADDS…
And while you’re at it (calling Len a “Bush Hater”, like me) don’t you dare call us ipso-facto “Un-American”, or “Un-Patriotic” or say we’re “aiding our terrorist enemies” or “undermining our brave soldiers” for cutting down this fascist cretin of a president. G.W. Bush is an “American” as Adolph Hitler was a German. We’ll both survive our respective fascist regimes. And if you don’t agree with Len Carrier and me on our having good reason to hate this president, just pick and research one of the reasons Len lists—Bush’s lies. It’s an easy experiment to perform to get a quick historic “feel” for the world’s perception and consensus on Bush in the truth category. Here’s what do: Go to your computer and pull up Google for a search engine. Type in just two words: “Bush lies” . There will follow references to over 50 million articles in which those words are juxtaposed at least once. A perhaps more alarming thing is evident when you Google in “Hitler lies” and you only get 8.2 million, and we’ve had over 50 years to accumulate data on his, the biggest lies ever told….that is B.B. (before Bush).
*(Dr. Leonard Carrier received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Miami in ’56 and ’58, respectively, and his Ph.D from Stanford in 1967. He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of South Florida (Tampa) before spending the rest of his teaching and research career (29 years until 2000) at the University of Miami. )
Dr. Carrier’s Response to Holdcraft:
Michael Holdcraft has taken me to task for my DW submission, “Why I Hate George W. Bush.” His response is typical right-wing boilerplate, which consists mainly of twisting another’s words into a different shape so that they can be more easily managed. For instance, I asserted that Mr. Bush was “…a child of privilege, never having had to work a day in this life.” Holdcraft twists this into saying that I consider Bush’s lassitude a crime, and that it’s only certain rich people—but not Ted Kennedy—whom I deem guilty of this offense. He also goes on to say that Mr. Bush worked “in the oil business,” so what I said must be false. But this is all nonsense. Being born rich is not a crime, but it does give us some insight into why he proposes tax cuts for the wealthy, since they are his kind of people. As for Bush’s working in the oil business, he did no real work, and the company he controlled was a failure. It was through his father and other wealthy connections that he managed to get windfall profits by selling his ownership in another failed venture—the Texas Rangers baseball team. Give me millionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates any day. They actually worked for their money and didn’t have it handed to them in behind-the-scenes deals.
Holdcraft also asks for evidence that Mr. Bush is a coward and a bully, as well as being a “woman abusing, draft-dodging, mama’s boy.” Being a draft-dodging coward is fairly easy to support. Bush got into his Texas Air National Guard unit because of his father’s connections. It’s on the record that he leap-frogged over others who were also waiting for such an appointment, and that allowed him to avoid the draft. The fact that he went AWOL from his unit before serving his commitment, plus his father’s comment that Bush found flying F102s “threatening” is evidence that he experienced SLOG (sudden loss of guts)—a pilot’s term for cowardice. That’s also on the record. If Holdcraft doesn’t believe it, he can read Hugh Scott’s book, George Dub-ya Bush: The Phony Fighter Pilot. As for abusing and bullying women, it’s also on the record that a woman in Texas who knew Bush since high school said that he verbally abused her and was in the habit of using derogatory language when talking to women in bars. It’s also a fact, taken from a biography of the Bushes, that George didn’t get along with his father, and that his mother had to take him in hand. Bush himself does not deny that he abused alcohol, even while serving in the National Guard, and he refuses to deny that he also used cocaine. So I’m hard put to know what Holdcraft’s definition of “civil decency” could be if he thinks that Bush’s transgressions are not an affront to it.
As I said in my article, these aren’t–or weren’t–my reasons for hating Bush. There are lots of people who match my description who aren’t worth hating. I say they weren’t my reasons for hating him, because it’s unclear now whether Bush is suffering from some mental impediment. This possibility was explored by Dusty Schoch in a
DW piece that appeared after my article did, and I did a DW follow-up on it, as well. If Bush really is the victim of a physical disability, perhaps brought on by previous alcohol abuse and an inherited susceptibility to Graves’ Disease, then he is no longer a fit candidate for hatred, and he should instead be pitied. For purposes of responding to Holdcraft, however, I’m going to assume that Bush is fully rational and knows what he is doing. Acting under this assumption, here is my refutation of Holdcraft’s attempt to show that our president is not a fit object of abhorrence.
I said that Bush had no good reason for invading Iraq. Holdcraft claims that Saddam’s flouting of UN Resolution 687, plus his hindering UN weapons inspection teams for 11 years after Gulf War I was reason enough to invade. To see how nonsensical this is we have only to point out other countries that have failed to obey UN resolutions. One such country is Israel. If ignoring UN resolutions were reason enough to invade a sovereign country, then an invasion of Israel would have been justified. But we would all agree that such an invasion would be completely unjustified. Holdcraft also conveniently forgets that Iraq had been allowing UN inspection teams free access to sites just before the invasion. The only reason they were not allowed to do finish their job was that Bush announced that he was invading. Holdcraft also forgets that Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to leave Iraq with a large part of his fortune. Saddam refused, but this shows that it was “regime change” that Bush had in mind, not weapons of mass destruction. What Bush wanted was a docile government in Iraq—mainly to ensure access to Iraqi oil. If Holdcraft still believes in the WMD scare, then he must also believe in goblins and gremlins. Hence, Bush had no good reason for invading Iraq—unless Holdcraft thinks that it’s a good enough reason to invade a country just because we don’t like its leader. If that were the case, then most of the world would have good reason to invade us!
Another reason I listed for hating Bush was his being the cause of the deaths and injuries inflicted on our military, and also on Iraqi civilians. Holdcraft counters by saying that the great majority of deaths were caused by terrorists. This is sheer rubbish. It was recently reported by Lancet magazine that our war against Iraq has resulted in the deaths of as many as 790,000 Iraqis—either by violent actions of coalition forces, or because of the uranium depletion in our bombs and the contamination of their water supply. As bad as Saddam was, he never got results like that. Holdcraft is also wrong to say that “terrorists” caused all our military deaths. Here he’s buying Bush’s line that anyone who fights back against our forces is a terrorist. But guerrilla militias, not terrorists, caused most of our military deaths. Terrorists are those who target noncombatants for the purpose of instilling fear in a population and thus reducing its will to fight. This more accurately describes our “shock and awe” campaign of bombing civilian population centers, and not insurgent reactions against our occupation forces. Holdcraft is simply ignorant of the meaning of the word, ‘terrorist’. Despite Holdcraft’s rhetoric, Saddam was not engaging in a “reign of terror” when we invaded his country. What our invasion did, however, was to set forces free that led to a sectarian fight that Thomas Hobbes would have described as a “war of all against all.” It was Bush’s bravado that began this killing. He didn’t have to pull the trigger that unleashed these horrors. But he did pull it, and he is deserving of hatred for it. That hatred is also spilling over onto all Americans—with all those surviving Iraqi civilians now having good reason to hate us all.
Holdcraft also thinks that reducing taxes on the wealthy is a good thing, claiming that the middle class got its tax cut, too. This is absurd. The largest tax reduction went to the people who didn’t need it—those with the upper 2% of income. The middle class got peanuts, and the poor got their programs cut. The war in Iraq is draining our resources to the tune of billions of dollars a month, and we’re borrowing from China and Japan to pay the bills. And Holdcraft thinks this is a good thing? Lyndon Johnson promised to give us guns and butter during the Vietnam War. He delivered neither. Bush is going down that same road, oblivious to the fact that he is bankrupting our nation for the good of his “base”—the corporations that profit from tax cuts and war. The U.S. Air Force has just asked for $50 billion extra for next year’s budget. Where is this money coming from? One of the axioms of economics is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Bush and Holdcraft apparently think they can just crash the cafeteria line.
Holdcraft also thinks that the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was not Bush’s fault. But Bush appointed the directors of FEMA and of Homeland Security. They showed themselves to be inept, especially FEMA head Michael Brown, who was being congratulated by Bush for doing a good job just at the time that he was doing a miserable job. The person who makes the appointments to key disaster organizations should ensure that the people chosen are qualified. Bush picked unqualified cronies to do the job, and so it’s his fault that the Katrina disaster turned out to be far worse than it could have been. Also, if the Corps of Engineers had been given the funds they requested to reinforce the levies, the 9th ward might not have been inundated.
Holdcraft also defends Bush on the question of leaking the name of a covert CIA agent to the press. Bush’s promise to fire the leaker was soon forgotten when it was revealed that Karl Rove might have been one of those who blabbed to the press. Holdcraft claims that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, only a CIA employee. He should check his facts. The release of Ms. Plame’s identity threatened the lives of her overseas contacts, plus it removed her from undertaking any further undercover assignments. Holdcraft doesn’t mention that releasing her name was an act of petty spite to get revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who exposed Bush’s lie about Iraq’s obtaining uranium from Niger. The fact that a Grand Jury has indicted a White House aide—Dick Cheney’s right-hand man, I. Lewis Libby, for obstruction of justice, shows how serious a blow this was to our intelligence gathering efforts.
Holdcraft thinks I engage in half-truths bordering on slander. He should read the newspapers more often. Everything I’ve said has been said over and over again by journalists and analysts. All I’ve done is put the pieces together. What I’ve been doing is engaging in dissent, something that it is incumbent on every American to do when he believes that his government is in the wrong. Holdcraft claims that one must stifle such dissent because it “…undermines confidence in our government and its leaders.” Yes, that’s exactly what it is meant to do. Holdcraft is confused when he says that for a citizen to accuse a president, “proof” of a crime must be produced. He should read the Constitution. It is up to Congress to draw up Articles of Impeachment if it thinks that that a president is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” If a president is impeached, then it is up to the Senate to try innocence or guilt. They are the ones who need “proof.” As a citizen, one has a constitutional right and obligation to speak out. It is only when citizens are able to speak freely that governments are held accountable. Holdcraft would rather muzzle free speech in the name of authority. He should be living where they have a monarch instead of a president, but perhaps he thinks he is already living there.
Leonard Carrier
November 1, 2006
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