George W. has been badly misjudged by many people. He has been accused of acting against his campaign promise in 2000 that he would not be a “nation builder”. Many consider his efforts to create democratic, capitalist governments in Afghanistan and Iraq as “nation building”.
Not so. George W. is a man of principle. He is not a nation builder; he is a “nation destroyer”. He singlehandedly took a country that had one of the lowest standards of living in the world and reduced it to the absolute lowest in the world. And that was only a start.
Recognizing that his mission in Afghanistan was fairly easy, he next moved on to Iraq, where he took the most sophisticated, advanced and secular country in the Middle East and destroyed its infrastructure, governmental system, cultural heritage, health and education services, indeed the entire country from top to bottom.
There are now more than 4,000,000 refugees, 1,000,000 dead and hundreds of thousands maimed in that country. What was once a secular country where neighbors and even families were a mixture of Shia, Sunni, Kurd, Christian and other groups, is now divided into fiefdoms where ethnic and religious groups vie with one another for power and even existence. Nation building? No way. Not from George W. Bush. Not from the man who promised America that he would never build nations.
But George W. wasn’t satisfied with even Iraq. He wanted more. And, by God, he did it. In a breathtaking leap of imagination and courage, he managed to destroy (not build) his own country, gutting its educational and health systems, destroying the financial system (including the worldwide standard the petrodollar), helping banks and other financial institutions throw millions out of their homes, and then, in a stunning burst of inspiration, destroying those very banks and financial institutions as well. Granted, much of what Bush accomplished had been started by Ronald Reagan, but Reagan never had the imagination to take it as far as George W. has.
By destroying the United States, George got a two-fer. He also brought down the most powerful empire the world had ever seen, something no other country, even the Soviet Union, had been able to do. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have been nearly destroyed, the U.S. is reviled throughout the world, the image of America as the symbol of everything good and moral is gone forever, its once-powerful economy is shattered and the dollar will soon be worthless, not even worth the bits it is imprinted on.
Did George W. stop there? Not this president. Along the way he managed to speed up the possible destruction of the entire planet by fighting international efforts to slow down and reverse global warming and pollution. No planet builder, he.
Is he resting on his laurels? Not yet. He has his heart set on targeting yet another country in which he will not build a nation. That next country is Iran, yet another sophisticated country that he believes deserves to not experience nation building. Bush has just less than a year in which not to build a nation in Iran. Only time will tell if he can succeed.
As promised, no nation building has taken place on George W. Bush’s watch. George W. Bush is a man who stuck to his values and campaign promises. To those who voted for him in 2000 and 2004, we can only say: “Well done. You got what you voted for.”
