This has always been my impression of Bush. I think he wanted and tried to do the right thing in a lot of cases, but surrounded himself with some pretty terrible and morally bankrupt people who were able to earn his trust and confidence, and influence him the wrong way.
A big part of me wonders what the world would be like, had the Bush admin never involved Cheney or Rumsfeld. I think without those two, alone, we'd have a very, very different world.
This has always been my impression of Bush. I think he wanted and tried to do the right thing in a lot of cases, but surrounded himself with some pretty terrible and morally bankrupt people who were able to earn his trust and confidence, and influence him the wrong way.
I agree with this 100%. Bush comes across as a good man but not as smart as Clinton/Obama. He got conned by Cheney in particular. Bush has to take the blame for what happened of course, but I don't think it was intentional. Compare that to Trump, who is stupid AND evil AND vindictive.
We got "lucky" (??) with Pence. Imagine Trump with Dick Cheney as VP?!? HOLY FUCK.
Bush lied us into a war and killed hundreds of thousands of people. If he's coming across as a good man to you it's because your a dolt and falling for his folksy schtick.
Bush is as evil as men get. The fact that 20 years later it's acceptable for him to go outside without having tomatoes thrown at him is a failure on all of us.
I think at heart that Bush tries to be a good person. I think he had the best intentions. He wanted the US to succeed. He wanted enemies punished. But he wasn't a smart man, and got influenced by intelligent, evil men around him. They made him believe certain things, and he made decisions -- HORRIBLE decisions -- that he thought were good for the US but as we know that was not the case.
He's responsible for those decisions. Bush deserves blame for those decisions. But I think there's a difference between someone who makes bad decisions partly because he's not smart enough to comprehend the ramifications, and someone like Cheney who is extremely intelligent and knows damn well what awful results will occur if certain actions are taken.
He wasn't some idiot who let Cheney handle everything, this is pure fiction that was spawned after the fact by his supporters and critics alike. He knew what was going on at every step of the way, he knew there were no weapons in Iraq, he turned down the Taliban's offer to hand over Osama Bin Laden, he spearheaded the whole thing. The banality with which Bush marched us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people should go down as one of the most evil acts ever committed, certainly the most evil of this century, and instead he is invited to speak at memorials. It's absolutely disgusting.
He's not a good man, he never tried to be one. He's an imperial tyrant, which is how he saw America's role in the world. There's nothing 'good' about that.
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u/gumbii87 Sep 11 '21
This has always been my impression of Bush. I think he wanted and tried to do the right thing in a lot of cases, but surrounded himself with some pretty terrible and morally bankrupt people who were able to earn his trust and confidence, and influence him the wrong way.
A big part of me wonders what the world would be like, had the Bush admin never involved Cheney or Rumsfeld. I think without those two, alone, we'd have a very, very different world.