America’s 43rd president, George W. Bush, spoke out today to denounce Edward Snowden in the name of national security.
The former president has no credibility on national defense or the nation’s self-interest; he opposes both on principle.
George W. Bush, an amicable person whom I met and interviewed in Los Angeles when he was running for president, holds the same fundamental ethics – self-sacrifice, the opposite of self-interest – as his father’s disastrous presidency and, as I’ve written, he is the logical predecessor to the current destroyer in the White House; Bush made Obama possible (which is why I endorsed John Kerry for president in 2004).
From the moment he took the oath of office, George W. Bush opposed in action every founding American ideal and every principle of secular republican government. In foreign policy alone, to leave aside his wicked welfare statist policies, which led to ObamaCare, Bush backed down when Communist China seized one of our spy planes and crew, proposed the creation of a Palestinian state and he failed to stop or avenge the worst attack in American history despite enormous evidence that an attack was imminent.
Once the religious fundamentalist enemy destroyed America’s financial, military and most meaningful symbols, he appeased and negotiated with state sponsors of Islamic terrorism (North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran), groveled before the United Nations for months, turning the other cheek and ordering our Marines to stand down in Iraq at Fallujah, refusing to bomb mosques in Najaf, dropping food packages not bombs in Afghanistan, chronically putting the lives of others before the lives of our own soldiers, and, in each instance, acting explicitly for the sake of others, not in America’s self-interest.
That President Bush strongly defended the second Bush administration’s policy to spy on Americans and came out 100 percent in favor of the Obama administration should come as no surprise: his entire administration, intentionally or not, was single-tracked in taking the United States of America down. He is a disgrace to the nation. That he now stands with Barack Obama to lay a wreath where Islamic terrorists mass murdered Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tanzania in 1998 is the perfect concretization of the two presidents most morally responsible for America’s downfall. Bush and his protege Obama appearing there amounts to a ceremonial dance over the graves of dead Americans, the eleven murdered there, the hundreds that preceded them under Carter, Bush’s father and Clinton and the thousands – all unavenged – who have been mass murdered since.
But you don’t have to take my word for it that George W. Bush embodies selflessness in national security. Here are the words, spoken in defiance of Bush’s moral philosophy in 2004, of those Bush sacrificed:
“It seems as if [U.S. commanders] place more value on obeying the letter of the law and sacrificing our lives than following the spirit of the law and getting the job done.”
— Lance Corporal Devin Kelly, 20, Fairbanks, Alaska
“We feel [the U.S. government] cares more about Iraqi civilians than they do American soldiers.”
— Corporal Brandon Autin, 21, New Iberia, Louisiana
“Every day you read the articles in the States where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s getting better and better. But when you’re here, you know it’s worse every day.”
— Lance Corporal Jonathan Snyder, 22, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
“[The enemy] don’t give us any leeway, they don’t give us any quarter. They catch people and cut their heads off. They know our limits, but they have no limits. We can’t compete with that.”
— Lance Corporal Jeremy Kyrk, 21, Chicago, Illinois
“We’re basically proving out that the government is wrong [that Iraq is making progress toward civilization],” he said. “We’re catching them in a lie.”
— Lance Corporal Alexander Jones, 20, Ball Ground, Georgia
“When we get called out, we’ll sit there staging there for an hour. By the time we’re ready to move, they’re up and gone. A few weeks ago, the Iskandariyah police station was under attack. We staged for damn near an hour before we went out. It’s stupid. You have to wait to get approval.”
— Private First Class Kyle Maio, 19, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
“[Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, Autin responded:] We don’t give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?”
— Corporal Brandon Autin, 21, New Iberia, Louisiana
These are the men of the great United States Marines Corps – among the best soldiers on earth – the branch of American military ordered by President Bush to stand down at Fallujah, Najaf and anywhere a mosque stood between America and defeating the enemy. Their lives were at stake in Iraq and their words are a stinging reproach to rationalistic and religious Americans who silently yet actively accepted the end of America that George W. Bush accelerated in earnest.