Imagining George in Orange

by C. L. Cook

Imagine with me a moment George W. Bush and his collaborators dressed in the iconic orange jump suits made familiar to the world through images from Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airbase, and Guantanamo Bay.

 

Manacled and being led away to spend the rest of his natural life safely confined where he can do no more harm, imagine justice finally and fairly being served.

 

It may be a less possible scenario than even the darkest cynic would think. 

 

Cast your mind back to a time when alleged criminals were tried before their peers and either released, or punished; a time before Might was the lone arbiter of right and righteousness, before a word dropped from the lips of one man could, without the graces of the law of the land, propel an individual to an anonymous and eternal damnation. Imagine a time when the words "America" and "Justice" could credibly occupy the same sentence.

How far back did your mind have to wander? Did it shore up in the year preceding George's ascension?

Though it's fashionable today to lay upon the head of the current administration the sum total blame for all the American crimes perpetrated against the people of Iraq, it bears remembering: George W. Bush is merely the latest, albeit most extreme, manifestation of a necessarily criminal enterprise; the leader of a system that demands the mass and constant slaughter of innocents, and the subjugation of entire nations of people both within and without its recognized borders. Not the architect, but inheritor of an organized crime family, Bush is just the latest captain of a crew of pirates who have been marauding the globe for centuries.     

So, if your fancy of that halcyon time gone by when Justice reigned turned only to the day before George W. Bush was assisted to the presidency by the United States Supreme Court, you've forgotten the unpunished crimes against the peace, people, and environment commited by Bill Clinton, aided and abetted by green giant, Al Gore.

 

Remember Democrat and Condi Rice predecessor, Madeline Albright's famous admission to 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl that the estimated 500,000 children killed through the agency of the sanctions levied against Iraq by Bill and his coalition of killing allies was "worth it," if it meant unseating Saddam or, in more current parlance, creating "regime change" there.

 

Bill and Al and Maddy walked from the world stage - in a manner of speaking - not only without paying for that great and admitted crime, but too escaped justice for the destruction of Yugoslavia, and the irradiating of a great swath of south eastern Europe with Depleted Uranium.


Jimmy Carter, the Nobel Prize laureate, and 40th president of the United States of America. Jimmy's watch included: the creation, via Zbigniew Brzezinski, of the mess we see playing out today in Afghanistan; the betrayals of Cambodia, and East Timor; support until the bitter end of the hated Shah of Iran and his ruthless SAVAK secret police, (so reviled the people revolted and put in place the first great modern "Islamist" state); maintaining the status quo in Latin America (with the exception of signing a deal to cede the Panama Canal Zone that led to George H. W. Bush's later ramble through the barrio with death and fire) keeping the despots warm for the Reagan/Bush horror to come.



Eisenhower, who hated the Germans enough to allow prisoners of war die, neglected in the open, unclothed, unfed. More than a million are said to have perished that way in just a few weeks.

All of these men left office immune from prosecution through a shared understanding of the nature of the job they assume, and the methods mandatory for the nation's continued prosperity, (or at least the prosperity of those few citizens that count) and their unpaid for crimes each proving the starting point for the mendacity and wickedness allowed their successors. Whether Democrat or Republican means little.

No, George won't be wearing orange any time soon. His is an acquired impunity, a bad seed planted and nourished for centuries, flowering still.