When
George Bush Smiles People Die
By Robert Weitzel
17 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“[Bush’s]
face seems to be involved in a somewhat painful, quasi-involuntary struggle
to prevent itself from erupting into a broad, self-satisfied smile .
. . a what-me-worry?”
- The New Yorker's Joe Klein
In a recent Associated Press
photograph, President Bush flashes his “what-me-worry?”
smile at the camera while shaking the hand of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu
Risha. Abu Risha is not smiling, by the way. He is deadly earnest .
. . or worried . . . or scared.
For the ex-Texas Ranger front man and glad hander, it was just another
photo-op—one of the thousands he’s posed for and walked
away from and forgotten about since 2001. For the sheik, it was a death
warrant—a specialty of the ex-Texas Ranger and governor. But because
of pressing business elsewhere in Iraq the Reaper was a short while
in arriving.
Abu Risha, a Sunni Arab tribal leader and one of the Bush/Cheney administration’s
highest profile allies, was killed by a roadside car bomb planted 150
feet from his home ten days after Bush smiled for the camera and shook
his hand.
Commenting on the sheik’s assassination, Bush pledged to continue
supporting anti-insurgent efforts in the Anbar province, an area he
called “a good example of how our strategy is working” in
Iraq. Abu Risha’s home is in Anbar. Enough said.
On May 1, 2003 the Commander in Chief, in the co-pilot seat of Navy
One, landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Before standing
beneath a banner which read “Mission Accomplished” to announce
the end of major combat operations in Iraq, the ex-Texas Ranger glad
hander spent his time shaking the hands and slapping the backs of young
men and women who were engaged in the deadly business of war.
In an official White House photograph, the president is seen smiling
in the midst of orange-clad members of the carrier’s crew. For
Bush, his flight-suit charade on the Abraham Lincoln was just another
photo-op. For U.S. military personnel and the Iraqi people it was a
death warrant.
By the end of “major combat operations,” 139 Americans and
thousands of Iraqis had been killed. In the years since Bush flew away
from the “Mission Accomplished” photo-op, an additional
3,637 Americans have died along with possibly hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis—too many of them Iraqi children . . . all of them someone’s
child.
By any unblinkered account, George W. Bush’s natural endowments
are best described as mediocre, considering the pack he runs with. He
failed at, or was bailed out of, every scheme he tried his hand at save
two . . . renting his Texas-sized smile and his “ah shucks”
charisma to a major league baseball team and a political party. In both
cases, he’s sat in a box seat behind home plate while the game
has been played for his pleasure—and apparent amusement—and
for that of his bosses and invited guests.
Here’s the major rub. Being the president of the United States,
currently the most influential nation on Earth, a nation with the might
and resources to be either bully or benefactor, is not a sport, neither
is it a party—political or frat house or whatever. It is a responsibility
so grave that it’s hard to imagine a smile gracing the face of
any sitting president who truly understands the gravity of their position.
I’ve yet to see a picture of Abraham Lincoln with a “what-me-worry?”
smile. He understood. George W. Bush never will.
Predictably though, Bush will walk away from his job of putting a happy
frat boy face on neocon ideology and corporate conservatism and he will
walk away—if not run—from the Iraq War and the blood on
his hands as if they were no more than the dry oil wells he abandoned
in Texas. He will begin a new career renting his smile and his ghostwritten
“ah-shucks” speeches to any fundamentalist mega-church or
right wing organization willing to meet his price.
Keep in mind that Bush will have had eight years at taxpayer expense
and sacrifice and sorrow to perfect his shtick. He will be a pricy jester
according Texas writer Robert Draper who asked him about life after
leaving office, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish
the ol’ coffers. I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s
more than 50-75 thousand dollars a speech . . .” And he will not
doubt smile his Texas-sized grin as he swaggers his way to the bank.
Keep in mind also the tens of thousands of wounded U.S. Iraqi War veterans
who are not so much concerned with beginning a second career as they
are with surviving one day to the next with whatever they have left
of their bodies and minds. Be assured that their smiles, if there are
many, will not be of the “what-me-worry?” variety made famous
by their glad handing chicken-hawk Commander in Chief.
There may yet be a way to wipe the Texas-sized “what-me-worry?”
smile off the mug of the Glad-hander in Chief. That would be impeachment.
That would be justice. That would be something for the rest of us to
smile about.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear
in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, and Freethought Today. He can be
contacted at: [email protected]
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