Overbearing Bush Parents Led to Iraq Quagmire

The incredible safety net provided to George W. Bush as a child, young adult, and adult allowed him to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions until late in life. Can the same now be said about Bush's treatment of Iraq?

I've tried to figure out the logic behind George W. Bush's, "when they stand up, we'll stand down," concept of Iraq security and it recently dawned on me that it may be the result of bad parenting.

Overbearing parenting may be too strong a term, but I think it gets the point across. George W. Bush was a bit of a problem child growing up. He wasn't the greatest student, but his parents managed to get him into Yale as a legacy. He had a bit of a drinking problem, but his parents managed to keep finding him jobs and investors (Saudi investors) for his business ventures. He decided to get into politics, and once again needed the help of his parents to succeed.

While there's nothing wrong with familial support, it's quite possible that the never ending safety net George W. Bush has become accustomed to is now influencing his Iraqi policy. If Bush views the Iraqis as children under his care - as he probably should after killing their previous leader - he may be applying the same parenting skills he's experienced first hand.

1. The Iraqi government is dysfunctional? Let's give them more time.

2. The Iraqi military can't secure even one neighborhood. Let's keep sending them money while they figure it out.

3. Iraq can't protect it's borders. Let's give them a few more months.

Compare this to parents who have the maturity to realize their children eventually need to grow up and learn from their own mistakes. Most parents realize that children will NEVER grow up is their safety net - in this case a billion dollar a week safety net - will always be there for them.

Most parents realize that to really love their children, they need to let them fend for themselves, make some mistakes, but take ownership in their own problems.

•  The "great man" mode of history

  doesn't work for me here.  Very little of this is about Bush's personal failings, numerous though they are.  

  Powerful strategists determined that oil was vital to our future and it was essential to seize it.  They have long pursued a strategy of alternately arming and crippling Arab states to ensure that no one oil-rich country gained a strong military lead.  Total chaos would block production unacceptably, but controlled chaos is perfect for them.  Keeps local powers busy with infighting, keeps the oil in the ground, the prices nice and high, and permanent bases happily a-building.

  Bush is a pathetic figurehead.  All this would be happening with any other puppet in place as well.

  by lgmcp on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:03:29 PM PDT

  •  I guess that depends on who exactly is the .,,,

    "our" in our future.

    Powerful strategists determined that oil was vital to our future

    That oil is a vital resource is a given. What is not really stated or probably understood is who is going to get the oil. The war is being fought for control of the sale of the oil. Market forces will determine who purchases it, it makes little difference to Exxon/Mobil or BP whether this oil is sold to American consumers, China or India. What is being fought over in Iraq is which companies will control the sale of the oil and the resulting profits.

    by irate on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:13:51 PM PDT

    •  right, should have said "their" future

      ie. said strategists.  Neocons and thier pals on the "energy task force".

      by lgmcp on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:16:53 PM PDT

    •  but what baffles me

      is that they don't sell it to Americans as "our" oil for "our" future.  Instead they piffle on about imaginary WMDs and purple-finger panaceas.  

      Isn't the best lie the one that is CLOSEST to the truth?

      by lgmcp on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:18:35 PM PDT

  •  Maybe not. Bush is the perfect puppet

    because of his parental environment and dysfunctionall family. He also has a great need to be loved which is why he is such a good seducer at campaigning. I think Bernard-Henri Levy has him nailed psychologically in his book American Vertigo as he also nails Obama as the possible hope for the future in democratic politics.

    But Levy presents a powerful glimpse of Bush's not paultry talents in speaking to a hostile audience. It is worth a reading just for that part.

    Levy was hired to do a retrip of Tocqueville's original trip across America and compare it then and now. Very scary for an American to read although Levy is a generous man. And he takes the Schopenhauer philosophy when deconstructing history.

    And Adams in The Education of Henry Adams also gives an intimate and clear vision of history, the men who are making it, and their respective intelligence, integrity and ethics. Also scary.

    Not so much the great man or the forces of destiny, but the sheer chaos of people in charge who really do not know what they are doing.

    So it's like the boy in The History Boys a recent British movie, where he says, "History is just one bloody thing after another!"

    by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:27:59 PM PDT

•  Waas said that hwbush hated donald rummy.

  rummy screwed him during the reagen and nixon years. Waas further said that it shows bush's relationship with his dad that he would hire a man his dad loathed. Waas was on Democracy Now two days ago.

  by Owllwoman on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:05:23 PM PDT

  •  i heard that -- hilarious, but telling, too

    When Rummy applied for an ambassadorship under GHWB, Bush wrote on the letter "not this job or any other" and signed it. It seems while GHWB was head of CIA, Rummy was trying to undermine him and Bush knew it.

    by carolita on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:47:02 PM PDT

•  Funny you should post this when I have

  been thinking about it for the past 24 hours. You see this is his last "acting out"  demonstration. He is doing to the world what was done to him as an infant and child, in his last try to undertand his psyche. He has his "parents" Cheney and Condi" who really symbolize the dark side of his mother and father, their unconscious which the young George perceived.  All the rest are his siblings with whom he is not an equal.

  His capacity for self destruction that brings everyone else down with him has become unlimited. Remember how Hitler wanted to completely destroy Berlin because they didn't fight hard enough for him. And Paris was dynamited all over to completely destroy it. Only the head general there, who loved Paris, refused to obey those orders at the end.

  If Bush could he would probably wage a nuclear war, even tho he cannot pronounce it, to bring about Armageddon in the middle east, and fulfill Revelation predictions. He would then be fulfilling God's prophecy, and thus would never have to repent.

  But this is the work of the prophesied Anti-Christ which certainly Bush could be if you are a believer.  I think he has to be labeled that to make a dent in the denial of fundamentalist christians. He can do a whole lot worse which is why he must be impeached. And as he sees it coming he will step up the furor as Hitler did when he began to see he was losing. They increased the gassing, marched inmates to farther away camps as the Russians penetrated Germany along with the allies. They did not wind down but exploded with violence at the end.

  Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams in the part about the Grant Admistration and its corruption, also blames the outdated Constitution for permitting some of his nefarious deeds.

  I have begun to think the same. Our Constitution is outdated, was never designed for times such as these, and must be updated. For this administration to flaunt it as they have and get away with it, means that it is now a paper tiger.

  by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:17:32 PM PDT

  •  Updating the constitution

    Is a pretty scary thought, when you consider how disfunctional our gubment is already.  I'm afraid that it would only get worse.  Maybe much worse.  

    As an example, take a look at Iraq.  They just "redid" their constitution.  

    by pdknz on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:25:51 PM PDT

    •  Gore Vidal had an article on

      what might happen if we held another Constitutional Convention. The delegates would be under no compusion to do anything other than what they wanted to do. They could scrap it and make another one, a worse one. A totalitarian one.

      by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:31:37 PM PDT

    •  The problem with Iraq and its constitution

      is that it is a constitution that has been forcibly imposed on them along with time restraints to get it done. Like a homework assignment.

      For an understanding of America's constitution and how it was formulated I highly recommend Hannah Arendt's book Revolution in which she details it and says that this was the "true"meaning of revolution, not the blood in the streets type of definition that has come down to us from the French revolution.

      It was the revolution in men's minds as they came to the New World and felt they were akin to the Israelites leaving Egypt and wandering in the desert to find their promised land. But they knew there was not going to be a burning bush and a tablet given to them, so on the ships, they began to make up their own set of laws to live and govern by.

      They were faced with the paradox this anticipates: What happens to the laws, govt, and the people after all those who wrote the laws are no longer alive? What gives the paper of laws any reality then? All the ones who said so are dead? This is a cunumdrum of no small significance. Why should the laws continue to be obeyed when all those who drew them up are no longer alive? Why indeed?

      Each settlement then began to interact with other settlements on basic issues of law. The best and or most interested, most eleoquent from each settlement went to commune with others of his kind from other places. So you see how the local and state representatives are beginning to evolve. Then the best of those met at the territory level in the hierarchy that is now forming.

      Hence the Constitutional Convention was the logical outcome of all the years of citizen participation in forming laws and governments. The Constitution was not imposed by our founding fathers, rather it came from the ground up to them to somehow meld it all into one document. One that all the people had participated in, had drawn up, had sent their representatives to go over and over these laws, discuss them, throw some out, add new ones, bring all that back home to go over it again.

      This was what Jefferson called The Pursuit of Happiness and he says in his letters that never before or after in his life was he so happy to be involved in such an undertaking with all the men of his generation, all his peers, all in communication with each other. Just imagine to have the opportunity to form an entirely new country and government. Imagine!

      Now that's a real high! So this process was labeled the Pursuit of Happiness and was how it was defined at the time it was put into the Constitution. The term has been nullified, bastardized, corrupted, made into not even a parody of what it really meant.

      Now the Pursuit of Happiness means doing what we want, being free, getting what we want, etc. Which is how most people understand it.

      I believe kos and the blogosphere is bringing us back to the original meaning of The Pursuit of Happiness because isn't this what we are all doing here? Just what the original settlers did as they met in groups in their settlements and decided their futures for themselves as free men for the first time in history without rulers?

      by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 04:02:40 PM PDT

  •  The subject of revamping the Constitution has

    come up many times in the last 70s years. Generally the majority of political thinkers, from conservative to liberal, have in an academic fashion screamed "are you out of your bloody mind!?!"

    In general they've said that you'd have nothing like the Bill of Rights, and that the Executive powers would be explicitly more than in the current Constitution.

    To put it in current context, the new Constitution would look like the Bush Administration wrote it, anything having to do with a Bill of Rights would have "when convenient" tagged onto the end of each article. And public opinion would support that.

    by wondering if on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:42:45 PM PDT

    •  So we need to keep the idea

      on the back burner until we can make sure this won't happen by the quality of people who will be elected to go to the Constitutional Convention.

      I am beginning to see the wisdom of not letting certain people vote.

      by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 04:28:15 PM PDT

      •  been several surveys

        where the public was asked about the Bil of Rights - both as listing them, and presenting Article in a context free fashion - "do you think this is a good idea". A large majority of people didn't know what made the BoR up, and thought that much of it was a bad idea.

        Keeping them from voting sort of removes the term "democratic" from the phrase "democratic republic", and "Democratic Party" as well. There's been plenty of "The Psrty" cases in the last hundred years to suggest that is a bad idea.

        Education may be part of the answer. But there's no easy way to assure we wouldn't end up with something much worse than that old scrap of paper we've got now.

        by wondering if on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 05:14:54 PM PDT

•  Arthur Silber's many essays on Alice Miller

  http://72.14.253.104/...

  is to be read for a really deep undertanding of the abused child, as Bush certainly is.

  No one can really get a psychological understanding of childhood and parenting unless they read Alice Miller. She goes deeper than anyone else ever has.

  by abbeysbooks on Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 03:38:35 PM PDT