Inauguration day and the final exit of George W. Bush. With Bush himself sitting beside him, Obama repudiated all that Bush stands for, W's lips compressing to thin hard lines as charge after deadly charge was firmly but elegantly leveled against him. The sacrifice of fundamental principle for illusory security. Ignoring the plight of the many while in thrall to the influence of the few. The substitution of bullying for diplomacy. When Obama said that the question was not whether government is too big or too small but whether it works at all, billions of viewers silently answered that it hasn't under Bush but will now. At which point Bush's lips disappeared entirely.
Now that the man himself has followed suit and vanished to his phony "ranch", Americans are like Gazans after the latest cease fire; numbed, relieved, distraught, trying to assess the damage. The comparison is especially apt because the Gazan rubble field is one more parting gift of the Bush administration. After absorbing deadly but largely inconsequential rocket fire from Gaza for months, the Israelis adopted the true Bush doctrine: respond to a threat with mindless violence.
In one of his ruminative moments, Donald Rumsfeld wondered whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing in Afghanistan and Iraq. That he asked the question at all suggests he knew the answer perfectly well. Of course we are. With every village we blow up along the Afghan-Pakistan border, after years of Al-Jazeera footage of troops knocking down Iraqi doors and abusing Iraqi citizens, we've enlisted more recruits for al-Qaeda than a hundred Bin Ladins could ever have. Like Cadmus with his dragon's teeth, Bush has sown an army of new Islamist foot soldiers.
And so have the Israelis. Israeli tanks and artillery and fighter bombers against home-made rockets and AK-47s. Thirteen Israelis killed, thirteen hundred and counting dead among the Gazans. Many hundreds more wounded. Thousands of property owners with flattened properties. Everyone one of them with families and extended families and friends, many of whom will thirst for revenge and become radicalized and violent. Call it the Bush multiplier effect.
Funny thing is, the Bible they all purport to revere has a lesson about this. When the Israelites were oppressed by the Philistines in that same dusty part of the world, it was the Philistines who deployed Goliath, the Israelites David. Don't they remember who won, and how? But that's the Bush doctrine for you. Forget history, forget decency, forget good sense or any kind of sense at all. Lash out, hard, fast, and furious. And leave the consequences for someone else to deal with.