Just as it did back in September, social media lost its collective mind earlier this month at the sight of Republican former President George W. Bush slipping a piece of candy to Democratic former First Lady Michelle Obama, adding a moment of levity to a state funeral—otherwise about as solemn of an occasion as it gets. The gesture was widely hailed as a heartwarming example of bipartisan friendship in an age marked by deep political division, and liberals and conservatives alike have used it as evidence that the civility they so desperately long for may not be dead just yet.
However, while liberals can wax poetic all they want about the "adorable" friendship between Mrs. Obama and former President Bush, the fact remains: George W. Bush is a war criminal, and there's nothing adorable about it.
Over the course of his eight years as president of the United States, Bush oversaw some of the most disastrous foreign policies in American history (even the American Conservative ranked him among America's five worst foreign-policy presidents), and the human cost of his military adventurism is almost unthinkable. The 1 million figure frequently cited as the civilian death toll of the Iraq War is just the tip of the iceberg—the same war left some 4.5 million Iraqis displaced from their homes, 5 million children orphaned, and between 1 and 2 million women widowed. Malnutrition among children nearly doubled in the wake of the U.S. invasion, and the long-term cost to the United States is estimated to be as high as $6 trillion.
All of this for a war built on a throne of lies spoon-fed to the public by the Bush Administration, and which accomplished nothing except for unimaginable devastation and the enrichment of big oil executives, many of whom served in key roles in the administration. An independent war-crimes tribunal found Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide, and Richard Clarke—Bush's top counterterrorism official—has admitted that his administration committed war crimes in Iraq (I've only gotten into the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, but Bush's war crimes have a further reach as well).
And yet, a look at recent headlines about former President Bush indicates none of this. Despite no dearth of evidence that Dubya is better suited for the Hague than for the Hamptons, the recent rehabilitation of his public image has left out the darker side of America's 43rd president.
Why this revisionism? The daily outrages of the Trump Administration have done wonders for Bush's reputation, and social media's response to his "unlikely friendship" with Michelle Obama is indicative of the extent to which Democrats are willing to rewrite history in the interest of feel-good liberalism. In so doing, however, the pundit class and liberal elite have shown their hand, and have revealed once and for all the moral bankruptcy of neoliberal respectability politics. Of course, we should be disgusted by Donald Trump. Condemning atrocities, however, is not a zero-sum game.
Just because we consign one war-criminal president to the ash-heap of history doesn't mean we have to rehabilitate another one. Indeed, that's the last thing we should do. Donald Trump may be liberals' archenemy du jour—and for good reason—but that doesn't change the fact that George Bush is hands-down one of the worst presidents our country has ever had. Liberals have nothing to gain from engaging in Dubya hagiography, and they stand only to lose the moral high ground—legitimate or otherwise—they have fought so hard to secure.
Especially towards the end of his presidency, George W. Bush was fond of claiming that eventually, history will vindicate him. As Democrats, the least we can do is avoid giving him that satisfaction. I'm looking at you, Michelle Obama.
