GEORGE W. BUSH & JEB BUSH: “WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?”

…Former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush

It’s hard to believe that Americans would consider taking a third chance at another Bush.

Does anyone besides myself really think Governor Jeb Bush isn’t going to be that different from his big brother George?

Oh sure, he’s married to a Hispanic wife, his family, including all his kids and himself speak fluent Spanish, so from that Point-of-View, that will be one difference.  But for someone that took four times in one week to answer a question that he should have developed and answer for months ago, i.e: “Knowing what you know today, would you have gone to war in Iraq?”  Yep, by taking a week and four times to finally say “No”, looks like he’s headed to being just another Bush family member.

But if you still question that logic, Jeb has already said that, if elected, Dubya will be his main foreign advisor on Israel and parts of the middle east. 

In addition, only 2 of his team of chosen foreign policy advisors were not advisors of George W, or his father George H.W. Bush.  And that includes his choice of the Iraq war monger, Paul Wolfowitz. 

These are the same advisors that had no plan for what to do in Iraq, after they had removed the dictator, Saddam.  It’s the same team that took away the country’s security for the Iraqi people by decommissioning and firing the Iraqi army, all its leaders and the national police. (Many of these fired army and police officials ended up being officers in the now rogue and terrorist, ISIL army.)  And these same Dubya advisors did not protect the Iraqi Museum that held 2000-year-old artifacts from the holy lands.  Artifacts that we all watched in videos as the museum was being raided and looted.

Don’t forget that this same US president, at the time the US was invading Iraq, needed to have an advisor explain to him, the difference between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims living in Iraq, and to explain that they have hated each other since the year 600AD.

At least Jeb didn’t go after former VP, Dick Cheney or former Sec. of State, Condoleezza Rice as advisors.  But the one past Dubya advisor that would help Jeb, George W’’s first Secretary of State, Colin Powell, General Powell won’t have anything to do with the today’s Republican party. 

The Bush family has always been a close knit family, and no matter what, there’s no way that Jeb is going to go after his big brother president and his big mistakes.  Even if the war in Iraq is continually referred to as the “worst US foreign policy decision….ever”, George is still family.  This was the “worst” decision that cost the nation over 4000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, trillions of US tax payer dollars, plus the war made the Shiites of Iran, the real winner in the US invasion of Iraq.  That’s not to mention the big mess were are left with today in the middle east.

And that’s also not including that the ISIL terrorist army would not even exist today if the US had not invaded Iraq and continually blundered throughout all of its occupation.

So how would Jeb be expected to deal with all of this negative family history?  It a good question with very few answers.

Many of the Iraq war’s supporters and current Republican candidates will never concede that Obama was right when he said “even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences”.  That’s why some of the die-hards remain so unrepentant.

“I believed in it then,” former vice president Dick Cheney said of the Iraq war to Politico’s Mike Allen. “I look back on it now, it was absolutely the right thing to do.”  Bill Kristol, one of the war’s leading promoters, told CNN, adding: “I’m not apologizing for something that I think was not wrong. I think going to war to remove Saddam was the right thing to do and the necessary and just thing to do.” And Donald Rumsfeld, George W.’s first secretary of defense, said that it would have been “immoral not to go to Iraq”.  Yeah, right.

These individuals aren’t going to change, but where does that leave the younger brother of the president that made this worst-ever foreign policy decision?

It definitely explains why there are so many right-wing politicians going after the Republication nomination for 2016.  These GOP individuals, scrambling for winning numbers in the polls, some believe that Dubya’s reputation and bad decisions might just keep Jeb from being the Republican nominee, and they may be right.

My question is, since most Americans now think the war was ill-advised, why is Jeb continuing to remind us that most of his chosen advisors are the same ones that brought us a screwed-up war that most Americans now deeply regret?

But that’s also a touchy situation for all those others that are going for the GOP’s “Brass Ring”.  These super hawks will have to balance on a wire of where the American public is with their attitude of the mistaken war in Iraq.  A war brought on by brother Dubya from the same party, and where do these war-hawks, plan on taking the nation in going forward?  Do we now go after a war with Iran?

Americans are usually known for having very short memories.  It will be interesting to see how the nation feels about Jeb Bush, and the choice of his brother’s and father’s hawkish advisors.  It will also be interesting to see if Americans will hold an ill-advised war against the Republican party, especially with so many super-hawks going after the GOP nomination. 

The 2016 Republican election vehicle full of hawks looks more like a “Clown Tank” today than their usual “Clown Car”.

My hope is that the nation doesn’t still have those short-memory issues as they have had in the past.

Copyright G.Ater  2015