BUSH CONFESSIONS ABSOLVE HIM
By Peter Fredson
December 16, 2005
For several days I have purposely dialed into Bush Fundamentalists blogs. I wanted to check how his recent speeches went over with them. It seems that a few had become disappointed with his poor performance and unsatisfactory explanations of the war he started in Iraq. But after his speeches a few decided that confession was really good for the soul.
In fact, we might regard the U.S. as a large confessional, with GWB as a supplicant. When GWB said he "took responsibility" for the deaths of 30,000 Iraqis some fundamentalists thought he was then absolved of all complicity. All it takes is for Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham to accept the Bush confession and he is off the hook.
All is forgiven. The Prodigal Son is embraced and Life can resume as normal. Thus some fundamentalists forgave Bush for anti-constitutional and illegal activities and took him back into their comfortable fold.
They regard that a few instances resembling truth will reassemble the President into a nice person. No one seemed to think that for a President to lie in the first place was unconscionable, dastardly, and a subject demanding regime change.
No one seemed to think that "accepting responsibility" meant "taking the blame." Accepting responsibility is pronounced better than that.
All blame is erased, all faults corrected. A fresh start can be attempted with never a look backward at out-of-date criminal activity.
All torture and abuse, all surreptitious overflights, all secret jails, all indefinite detentions, all fake journalists, all deceptions, lies and misinformation magically corrected.
So under Bush 30,000 (perhaps more accurately 60,000 Iraqis got killed), but he says "It was worth it." He says he would do it again. This "confession", considered as a form of truth, is acceptable to fundamentalists. Case closed. Now he can hang up huge signs proclaiming VICTORY.
Now he can forget all the enormously gross violations of Iraq sovereignty and pretend that the Iraqis owe him thanks for destroying their country and making it a hellish place in which to exist with US troops pointing guns at their heads constantly, barking orders, tossing grenades, demolishing their homes and industries. Now all of the mercenaries, contractors and advisors he has quartered upon them may never be judged by any court.
Now we can forget that the Bush neocons planned to invade Iraq before Bush even was appointed President by a vote of his pocket Republican Supreme Court. Now we never have to assign blame anymore, because Bush has "accepted responsibility."
Yes, Confession is a truly purging process, cathartic like an enema, and the angels can fly down and put an olive wreath or halo on the shining head of GWB. Whoever that may be.