At Home and Abroad, Bush Has Wrought Devastation

[unhappycamper]

At Home and Abroad, Bush Has Wrought Devastation
By Yossi Sarid
September 12, 2005

When the successful son of Barbara the First Lady is a first among unequals, one sometimes succumbs to feelings of panic, and wants to stop the world and get off. George Bush is without doubt the most terrifying president America has ever had. Now one can sit in the submerged streets of New Orleans and cry a river of tears over the fate of a human race that has him as its leader. After five years in office, it is possible to judge the legacy he is passing on - to the everlasting ignominy of the denizens of this world.

What is so frightening about him and his leadership? Although "where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint," when there is a messianic vision composed of faith-based pie-in-the-sky, the earth seems to be jolted off its axis and begins to spin out of control. As we know, Bush is "born again," and wherever people who have found the old-time religion take their stand, intelligent people run away, as if from fire. Instead of running the world and its inhabitants, as one may expect of the leader of the free world, Bush acts as someone who is reinventing the world on a mission from God.

As a first step in fixing the world, the president several years ago refused to sign the Kyoto treaty. If the costs of fixing it are too high, then the world can go to hell. The big avaricious corporations, the main polluters, applauded him. What do Bush and the leviathans care if the ozone layer is disintegrating, the greenhouse effect is intensifying, the oceans are warming up, the desert is expanding not only in Africa and Asia but also in Europe, and the number of hungry is growing by the hundreds of millions? The world can revert to a state of chaos - so long as the messenger does not violate his covenant with Divine Providence and the supervisors down below. It may very well be that the warming of the oceans contributed to Katrina, but who is going to tell a shepherd what is good for his flock while it is drowning in a flood?

While "the fixer" has been on the job, there has been a breakdown of the world order, which is intended to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. summit that convened three months ago with the aim of continuing to reduce the nuclear threat was unable - for the first time ever - to reach any conclusions whatsoever; the summit broke up amid feelings of consternation and oblivion. Over 100 participating countries perceived the American hypocrisy - who is allowed to have forbidden weapons, and who is not - and a double-standard policy that is heading toward breakdown. Iran and North Korea were not the only revelers at the gala finale of the failed summit.

MORE
http://www.watchingamerica.com/haaretz000001.html