By the time most of you read this I’m sure there will be plenty of news articles with details, but just a couple minutes after midnight the networks pre-empted their programming to report the passing of our 41st President at the age of 94. I understand the statement announcing such was released by his son, the 43rd President.
Please share widely!
“Hillary and I mourn the passing of President George H.W. Bush and give thanks for his great long life of service, love and friendship… I am profoundly grateful for every minute I spent with him and will always hold our friendship as one of my life’s greatest gifts.” former President Bill Clinton
President Clinton also released the letter that President Bush left for him on January 20, 1993 and cites it as evidence of his class, keeping in mind that Clinton had just defeated Bush in a hard-fought race.
Speaker nominee Nancy Pelosi : “In the Congress, my colleagues and I knew President Bush as a gentleman of the highest integrity and deepest patriotism.”
Yes, nothing but class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y
I strongly disagree with the down-rate on this comment.
I’m trying to stay out of this thread, out of common courtesy and respect for the dead.
In my view, the public statements honoring Mr. Bush have about as much actual sincerity as the “thoughts and prayers” offered by public officials after every massacre.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the deceased committed serious crimes that should have been prosecuted and weren’t and allowed terrible things to be done and said in his name I agree that this is the not the time to enumerate all the evil done by or in the name of George W. Bush.
It is also not the time to lionize him.
Um, you do realize we’re talking about George HW Bush, right? I feel very strongly about not bringing up the negative before the body is even in the ground, hence the downrate of this and another comment on this thread. It’s just a matter of principle for me. Bush gave decades of service to his country.
I’m well aware that we’re talking about George the First.
Since I agree with you about negativity, perhaps it’s best to defer the rest of this exchange to a later time.
I was confused because you referred to George W. Bush in the penultimate line of the above comment.
Ah, I see now. That’s just a typo, sorry. I meant “George H. Bush” (41).
Don’t worry, George W Bush will get the same treatment. He already is from liberals even though he should be in the Hague. Hell, Kissinger will probably be praised for decades of “service.”
As they should be on the occasion of their respective passings, and I will be one of those liberals doing so.
I fundamentally disagree with you.
We do not see the mass media filled with accolades after the death of Whitey Bulger. I put Henry Kissinger right alongside Mr. Bulger in history’s pantheon of villains.
I understand that both 41 and 43 are ex-Presidents, and are entitled to a period of respect in the immediate aftermath of their death. We rightly did the same with John McCain and Ted Kennedy (although my recollection is that the usual right-wing extremists like Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Breitbart were not shy about continuing their attacks on Mr. Kennedy).
I prefer silence, frankly. Yes, the flags should be at half-staff for month. Yes, both 41 and 43 should lie in state in the rotunda. Yes, each should have a full military funeral. We have a long history filled with many examples of how to properly bury a former President.
What we do not need to do is fill the media with irrelevant anecdotes about trivia that, taken together, whitewash the crimes committed by each man.
Whitey Bulger was a mobster. Murder is pretty much what he was known for. Surely I don’t have to explain the difference. Though I’m not one to dance on the grave of anybody.
I compared Henry Kissinger to Mr. Bulger. If you don’t think Mr. Kissinger is a murderer, then you need to learn more about Mr. Kissinger.
Well, Kissinger was no mobster either, but also not a President. I assume that within days of his passing most of the stories about him will be positive too. Kissinger was NSA and SoS and while his policies might not be your cup of tea I would still say he is not known for murdering people, certainly not personally.
Your naivete is breathtaking.
Mr. Kissinger was personally responsible for prolonging the Vietnam war. His betrayal of the Paris peace talks assured the election of Richard Nixon instead of Hubert Humphrey. Mr. Kissinger was personally responsible for proposing and persuading Mr. Nixon to order the illegal and secret American bombing campaigns that went on for years, killing many more innocents.
We are not talking about tea and crumpets. Mr. Kissinger IS known for murdering people, despite your refusal to admit that reality. Henry Kissinger is just as evil, perhaps more so, than Mr. Bulger.
I invite you to read this 2016 New York Times review of Mr. Kissinger’s role in our murderous bombing campaigns of Southeast Asia.
Mr. Kissinger personally caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions (depending on how the deaths are counted), of innocents.
We will never root out evil in our government if we don’t name it and attack it when it is so clearly evident.
I am well aware of Dr. Kissinger’s role in shaping our policies, and yes war policy usually results in death. I’m not sure how we got on to this tangent. The policies should have been attacked at the time they were being implemented. He should be honored for his service the week he dies. I feel no cognitive dissonance in holding those two views simultaneously.
I think we’ve moved to a time where almost everyone is lionized and we never deal appropriately with the true legacies of these men. If not now, there is never the right time to do it. It’s become much worse recently with liberals praising every single conservative who isn’t Trump. These men are never held accountable for their actions in life, including inflicting massive violence around the world, and now we’re being told we can’t be honest about them when they die? I’d love to be able to ignore it all, but if this site is going to be yet another for effusive praise of people like this, I’ll add some honesty.
Another note on the Willie Horton ad. It was made for Bush by Floyd Brown. After the campaign, Brown started a conservative advocacy group. One of the early victories for that group was getting Bush’s SCOTUS pick Clarence Thomas confirmed. The name of that group? Citizens United.
They are appreciated at the time of their death for their service, as they should be, but that doesn’t mean their legacies will not be more objectively examined when the time is right. I have to say, some of you are not helping in terms of the reputation liberals have for not being patriotic, nor are you matching what I was taught for being just a decent human being.
It sounds as though you join those who feel that the “right” time for such examination is whenever said examinations will be utterly and completely ignored.
Sort of like the “right” time to release the recent devastating report on the climate was Black Friday.
Actually, the real right time was in the more immediate aftermath of the events in question.
@ the real right time.
You’re a historian, you know this isn’t correct.
In the immediate aftermath, we are “too close to the events” and require “the perspective of time”. A little later, we are “re-litigating the past” and it’s “time to move on”. When the actors die, then we must “respect the dead”.
My experience is that we are very good at inventing excuses for choosing to not see, not hear, and not admit the evil that is so often done by our leaders — always claiming to be doing so “on our behalf”.
I agree that the right time to prosecute the criminals who traded arms to Iran in exchange for hostages was immediately upon discovery of those crimes. The right time to prosecute those who funded the illegal contra war by using CIA aircraft to smuggle drugs from Central and South America to American cities so that the profits could be used to buy weapons that were smuggled back to the contras in the same aircraft was immediately upon discovery.
It was George H. Bush who ended that necessary and appropriate process by issuing blanket pardons to all involved. As I recall, he recycled Mr. Ford’s lame excuse that he wanted to “heal America”.
These acts were corrupt and immoral when they were done. Many of us said so at the time, including yours truly. They remain corrupt and immoral today.
The fact that Oliver North is now the President of the NRA says more about George H. W. Bush than all of the epitaphs combined.
Actually, I think it says more about the NRA, an organization that Bush publicly broke from when they started calling federal agents jackbooted thugs. While I realize some say that we can’t be too close to the events I was giving my personal opinion as to how these should be handled.
Oliver North was convicted of multiple crimes. He should have been convicted of more.
He was pardoned by George H. Bush as part of Mr. Bush’s successful cover-up of what actually happened in the Iran-Contra debacle.
Oh … and regarding “not being patriotic” — I happily plead “guilty as charged” to that complaint.
In my sixty-six years on this planet, I’ve had more than my fill of patriotism and patriots. We were “unpatriotic”, according to Spiro Agnew, when we marched against the war. We were “unpatriotric” when we filled the streets after learning of LBJ’s secret bombing.
Oliver North was a “patriot”. So was William Calley.
Human decency includes a measure of respect for the victims of men and women who do evil alongside those men and women at their death.
When I see some evidence that those who attack me for being insufficiently patriotic actually DO something to, for example, enforce the rule of law or fulfill their constitutional duty to uphold the constitution and protect the foundations of the republic, then perhaps I’ll be more receptive to engaging them about their complaints.
At the moment, when a Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, or anybody else of that ilk calls me “unpatriotic”, I wear that complaint as a badge of honor.
My concern isn’t with rightwingers calling us unpatriotic at the drop of the hat, but rather that plenty of reasonable people, sometimes including me will nod their head in agreement at the most egregious examples.
First, I see “patriotism” as very much a two-edged sword. I think there are many similarities between self-described and self-appointed “patriots” and similarly self-described and self-appointed “prophets” who sincerely believe they are doing the work of God as they perpetrate their evil.
Genuine patriotism is, in my view, something that is most often and best left unspoken. Something like praying in quiet, rather than on the street-corner.
I therefore pay approximately as much attention to those who call me “unpatriotic” as those who call me “godless”.
Next, I see no nexus between “patriotism” and how anybody chooses to handle the passing of a President by natural causes. It was not “unpatriotic” to be unmoved by the many uplifting words spoken on behalf of Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, or Strom Thurmond on their passing. It was not unpatriotic to remind America that LBJ did great wrong to the world as well as great right.
I think our society today does entirely too much flag-waving, bible-thumping, and public praying and entirely too little genuine commitment, political courage, and moral integrity.
When Jimmy Carter passes, I will genuinely mourn him as a great man who was treated badly by a country he gave everything to. I admire how he lived his life after that betrayal.
George H. Bush did not play in Jimmy Carter’s league.
H.W. spoke at my college graduation (BU, 1989 – I had a “Bush Knew” sign on my mortarboard). It was a long, Cold Warrior love letter about our commitment to military defense in western Europe. This was just as the Eastern Bloc was crumbling. During the speech we kept asking, “Doesn’t he watch the news?” After a while we wondered if the kicker to the speech was going to be that we’d all been drafted.
Before anyone gets too sentimental, here’s a link( https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/01/george-h-w-bush-the-cia-and-a-case-of-state-sponsored-terrorism/)
I would have appreciated if people had not trashed my tribute diary with negative stuff. There is a time and place for criticism and a time and place for if you can’t say something nice about someone…
Indeed.
Still, the effusive commendations are hard to take for those of us who remember and care about the evil he did or allowed to be done in his name.
More negativity–https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/12/9/1817334/-I-see-George-H-W-Bush-through-my-Panamanian-eyes-and-the-deaths-he-caused-were-unforgivable
If you insist on dwelling on the negative, write your own diary – preferably after the 30-day mourning period is over.