This new Bush book does nothing to justify or apologize for anything.  It is merely an attempt to change, or at best, soften history and attempt to pull a legacy out of quicksand.  Even if his ghost writer used perfect grammar and spelling, the book could only rate one or two stars because it has little substance and little that historians either do not already know or would not find out for themselves.

From the interviews and snippets from public appearances since leaving office, it is clear that both Bush and Cheney laugh too easily and share a too-smug satisfaction with themselves, unaccountable for having brought death and misery to so many for so unjust reasons, which are not at all related to the defense of the nation, returning the Department of Defense to a War Department, an effective overlord of fear and aggression.  That is undeniable from the standpoint of those unfortunate enough to have been and who are under the muzzles of the guns of American soldiers and unconstitutional private armies as they pass in streets and break-down doors in the dead of night, and as they have, do NOT forget, also murdered.  If that is not terror, even if one cannot place one’s self and family in other shoes, than what is?  Can anyone be so obdurate not to see how Bush has grown the enemy at the same time he has decimated the image and war-power capacity and legitimacy of America?

 

The fact Bush says he has no regrets that he (and many others already gone, their blood on his hands) will not live to see the judgement of history on his conduct in office is a conscious rebuke of the global, widespread scorn with which his two terms are viewed, and his subconscious acceptance that the future judgement will be at least as condemning, that the history of his stretch in the office of president, and on many, many, many vacations, is eternally marked by the unjustifiable graves of more than 100,000 men, women, and children, including more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers, their fingers pointing to the decision on his deadly, nightmare legacy.  It is this enormous weight that drives him now, willingly or not, so adamantly to the side of the military members, that it may be forgotten he callously used their service and lives as a tool of industrial expansionism in Iraq.

Is America really paralleling the Roman destiny of decline?  Bush’s book maps the outlines between the lines, and with the Bush “W” administration, never in the history of America has the military been so widely deployed around the “empire of commercial and industrial influence,” the government so detached from the people and corrupted by wealth and greed, never has the populace seen a government so twisted in its purpose and execution placed into authority over them, to act in their name, disgracing them, and in the Bush-loaded, Republican-extremist Supreme Court, drowning out their voices with such scathing abuses.  That is the dire legacy of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and those who steered their crippled design of socio-political travesty into power.  It is a legacy to which many forces contributed and joined to create, but which only Bush could have prevented, had he the knowledge, ethic, and the courage that marks the heart of a patriot—the legacy that might have been would, then, have evolved, not the fiction Bush or Cheney would see ghost-written as memoirs of unfounded justifications and dubious truths, particularly on Bush’s feelings, regrets, and beliefs, for which there is no basis to judge the value, except the contradictory facts and consequences of his arrogant, usurping string of actions, and the harm done to the nation at the expense of the Constitution and those uncountable, irreplaceable, relinquished lives.

This book and it’s reviews, in whatever venues they exist, have become Bush’s third war—the war of the stars, where the one- and five-star reviews slug it out without much regard to the book on either side, the extremists of both sides, who have the time, frantically clicking “no’s” to rate the reviews of the other, not realizing the first rating is often the only one counted, even after reload.  Those looking for a more objective book review should start by ignoring all of those which are posted without the courage and assertion of a real name, and then just stick to the two- thru four-star comments, giving most weight to the three-star, which will probably turn out to be evenly split between those believing Bush is either a hero or a war criminal, and that the book reveals some truths among some obvious lies, deceptions and redirects, but still, giving it only two stars, those for putting heat on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on opposing the Iraq occupation.

But, a shiny jacket on a new book is not a change of skin... or anything lying beneath.

From this bad president comes a bad book, and neither it, nor any among the lunatic fringe who support its tired premises, openly, or with a secluded eye looking to 2012, will change the facts, bring back the dead or alter the history that will bury Bush’s legacy with them.  Bush has already said he is resigned to live and die accepting the judgement without regrets, though, one with no regrets, and wealth enough, hardly has the need or drive to supervise the writing of a memoir that isn’t a pure labor of love, so how could any book that attempts to paint a kind perspective on the eight years of war and terror and torture and kidnapping and domestic law-breaking and constitutional stomping by the chief perpetrator of the crimes be anything but an exercise in... vanity?

Regardless that he seemingly just says he has no regrets, providing another preview into the lack of credulity bound into the spine of the book, and the man, for not having the courage to finally accept accountability that the awful reality of the truth that buried the dead, and remains, still, for the living, is to be found in his failures:  personal, political, strategic, and economic, then maybe those who so quickly rush to defend the wreckage wrought by his wrong-headed, wrangling ways should begin to live with it instead of, like him, trying too hard?

 

Hope prevails that Bush’s book and its introductory accompaniments will, outside of a courtroom, at last mark his final goodbye and passage out of provoked memory.