It’s Professor Dave, let’s talk about George Bush.
George Herbert Walker Bush came to the White House with an extensive resume.
He had been a Congressman, Ambassador, RNC Chairman, Special Envoy to China, Director
of the CIA, and Vice President.
Bush was born to a prominent East Coast Republican family.
His father was Wall Street banker Prescott Bush, who later became Senator from Connecticut.
George entered the Navy following the attack on Pearl Harbor and became the youngest aviator
in the Naval Air Corps.
He graduated from Yale and moved to Texas to seek his fortune in the oil business, becoming
a millionaire by the age of 40.
He then entered politics, running for the Senate in 1964 as a Goldwater supporter.
He lost that race but ran for the House in 1966 as a moderate, supporting both birth
control and Civil Rights while otherwise voting along conservative lines.
Bush ran again for the Senate in 1970 but lost to Lloyd Bentsen and was instead appointed
as ambassador to the UN by Richard Nixon.
In 1973, Nixon appointed Bush to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee,
and he became a staunch defender of the President during the divisive Watergate scandal.
Eventually, even Bush turned against Nixon and told him to resign for the sake of the
Party.
Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, appointed Bush Liaison to China, where he acted as a
sort of honorary ambassador.
Then, in 1976, Ford appointed him head of the CIA, where he helped to re-establish morale
after revelations of illegal CIA assassinations and domestic surveillance.
He ran for President in the 1980 GOP primaries but was trounced by Ronald Reagan, who chose
him as his running mate to appeal to the more mainstream GOP Eastern Establishment, even
though Bush had characterized Reagan’s “trickle down” economic theories as “voodoo economics.”
During the presidential campaign there were rumors that the Reagan campaign had made a
secret deal with Iran that was similar to what the Nixon team had done in 1968 to sabotage
the peace talks.
According to former President of Iran Banisadr, “the Reagan campaign struck a deal with
Tehran to delay the release of the hostages in 1980” until after the election.
Their reason was to prevent President Carter’s re-election in exchange for weapons to fight
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.
This would lead to lead to the biggest scandal of the Reagan Administration, the Iran-Contra
Affair, which revealed the U.S. government had been selling weapons to Iran and using
the proceeds to illegally fund Nicaraguan right-wing rebels.
Bush was linked to both the “October Surprise” in 1980 and the Iran-Contra scheme, but he
famously denied both, claiming, “I was out of the loop.”
Yet, former CIA head Bush and later CIA chief William Casey were never able to document
their whereabouts during the alleged time they were supposedly in Spain dealing with
the Iranians.
This revealed a duplicitous Reagan foreign policy that equaled the Nixon White House
in its cynical and secretive meddling to undercut a Democratic Administration’s diplomatic
efforts with a hostile foreign power.
When Bush ran for president in 1988, he faced a severe image problem, “the wimp factor.”
Yet, beneath his waspy New England patrician facade, he was as brutal a campaigner as they
came, employing the slash and burn tactics of GOP strategist Lee Atwater to destroy the
front-running Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis.
The infamous “Willie Horton” ads, which played upon White America’s fears of violent,
murderous blacks, were highly effective, and despite his choice of young, inept running
mate Dan Quayle, Bush cruised to an easy win.
When Chinese students were slaughtered in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 while
protesting Communist Party corruption, Bush remained passive, unwilling to sour the relationship
with China.
As if to dispel his wimpy image, in December of ‘89, Bush invaded Panama to overthrow
strongman Manuel Noriega, an American puppet who had received huge funds from the US government
and met with Bush when he was head of the CIA.
This was done when it was discovered that Noriega had been involved in the drug trade.
Plans to oust him were developed during the Reagan Administration, so when Noriega began
flirting with Communist countries like Cuba and Nicaragua, and then passed a resolution
declaring that a state of war existed between the United States and Panama, Bush invaded.
Yet even greater foreign policy developments were occurring in Europe.
USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy of social liberalization had resulted
in the collapse of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
Thousands in Soviet satellite states revolted or fled to the West throughout 1989.
Bush wisely chose not to gloat over the collapse of the Soviet system, yet failed to take any
dramatic action to ease the transition into a post-Cold War world.
What was sorely needed at this critical juncture in world history was a Marshall Plan to aid
the Soviet Union in making the difficult transition to a free market economy, or at the very least,
a mixed economy like that of Scandinavia.
Next was the 1991 Gulf War.
At first it seemed straightforward: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded neighboring
Kuwait in a clear case of aggression, at least that’s how the Bush Administration initially
spun it.
But as it turned out, the actual story was much more complicated.
The official August 2nd, 1990 transcript reveals that US Ambassador April Glaspie gave Hussein
carte blanche to invade, saying: “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such
as your dispute with Kuwait.
Secretary of State James Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given
to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”
But when Hussein seized Kuwait, claiming that Kuwait was Iraqi territory and that it owed
Iraq money, Bush acted outraged, declaring, “This aggression will not stand!”
The prevailing interpretation is that Glaspie’s tacit agreement with Hussein was to turn a
blind eye to his seizure of Kuwaiti oil fields in the north, which had long been claimed
by Iraq, but when he seized the entire country, Bush felt that Hussein had violated their
understanding.
Furthermore, the Iraqi troops massing on the northern Arabian border terrorized the Saudis,
who had long had relations with the Bush family, and they demanded that the U.S. protect them.
The American public bought Bush’s analogies comparing Hussein to Hitler and he was able
to assemble a coalition of 34 countries to oppose the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
“Operation Desert Shield” was the name given to the protection of Saudi Arabia and
the liberation of Kuwait was dubbed “Operation Desert Storm.”
Air strikes and naval shelling began on January 17th, 1991, followed by a ground invasion
on February 24th that liberated Kuwait and advanced into Iraqi territory.
The Gulf War was the first live televised conflict; the 24 hour news channel CNN, broadcast
it non-stop.
The televised slaughter of fleeing Iraqi troops on the so-called “Highway of Death” caused
the coalition forces to declare a ceasefire 100 hours after the ground campaign started.
But hawks were outraged that Hussein was allowed to stay in power and keep much of his military.
Bush had called for the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam but when there were uprisings in the
predominantly Shia south and in the north by the Kurds immediately following the war,
Bush did nothing.
Hussein brutally suppressed the rebels with the military Bush had allowed him to keep.
But even more disastrous was Bush’s reneging on a promise to remove all troops from Saudi
soil after the war’s end.
Since the war, the US has maintained military bases in Saudi Arabia.
This outraged Muslims in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Islamic World since Saudi Arabia
is home to both Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest sites.
In 1996, Osama bin Laden invoked what he perceived as Mohammed’s ban on the permanent presence
of infidels in Arabia, to issue a fatwa calling for US troops to leave Saudi Arabia, saying
that Americans were too near to Mecca, and that this was a provocation to the entire
Islamic world.
Domestically, Bush continued the Reagan-era policies, appointing a strict conservative
Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, though this confirmation turned into a media circus
when Thomas was accused of sexual harassment.
Bush then outraged his conservative base when he agreed to a tax hike, breaking his GOP
acceptance speech vow, “Read my lips, no new taxes!”
His tax hike was a sticking point in the 1992 election, which he lost to young Arkansas
Governor Bill Clinton, who promised to fix the stagnant American economy.
Let’s find out if he was able to do that, shall we?