Dear Commons Community,
In her column today, Maureen Dowd examines the legacies or should I say the war demons of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.
On LBJ:
“Luci Baines Johnson and other members of L.B.J.’s shrinking circle are pushing to broaden the lens on the president’s legacy so that it is not merely viewed “through the prism of a failed war.”
They are using the 50th anniversary of Johnson’s more impressive domestic policies — including the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act and Medicare — to yank the focus away from “the agony of Vietnam” and “his cross,” as his daughter calls it.
“Nobody wanted that war less than Lyndon Johnson,” the 66-year-old Luci said, adding that he tried mightily to get out.
Maybe ratcheting up the war with more than 500,000 troops and sending so many young Americans to their deaths halfway around the world based on chest-thumping advice and a naïve theory of democratic dominoes was a deterrent to getting out.”
Dowd then cuts to one of her favorite topics, George W. Bush and Iraq:
“Asked by a reporter about Iraq recently, W.’s eyes flashed and he replied, “I am not happy.”
He shouldn’t be. Afghanistan, which he abandoned to pursue a phony “retaliatory” war in Iraq, is crumbling despite all the money, muscle and blood we have poured into it, with our runaway fruitcake puppet Hamid Karzai fiddling while the Taliban burns, vowing to run America out just as they did the Russians and waging vicious attacks on women.
In corrupt and violent Iraq, women are getting detained illegally and tortured. The country is awash in a blood-dimmed tide, with nearly 9,000 killed last year and almost 1,000 killed last month, as Al Qaeda and another jihadist group fight for supremacy. In Falluja, the city where nearly 100 American soldiers died in the fiercest fighting of the war, the black insurgent flag now flies over buildings.
With the help of his own personal librarian, Laura, W. has been trying to reframe his legacy to take the focus off his botched wars, just like L.B.J.’s family. His presidential library highlights his work on AIDS in Africa, belatedly tapering the roles of his sulfurous regents, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.”
Both wars were disasters. The wastage of lives and resources on all sides is an appalling testament to what we are capable of inflicting on humanity.
Drawing again today on the New Testament: Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God!
Tony
