Like I said a few days ago, I was very turned off by the way Trump viciously smeared President Bush on Saturday. During the debate, moderator John Dickerson asked Trump if he still stood by his 2008 remarks that Nancy Pelosi should’ve impeached President Bush. Trump didn’t give a direct answer, insisting that he is a businessman who gets along with everyone. He proceeded into a tirade, bashing the former President’s handling of national security and foreign policy. 

          “They [the Bush Administration] lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction — there were none. And they knew there were none,” Trump claimed, adding, “[to Jeb] the World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that. That’s not keeping us safe.” Then Marco Rubio correctly pointed out that 9/11 was largely the fault of Bill Clinton, who neglected to take out Osama bin Laden despite multiple opportunities to do so and his knowledge of the imminent threats posed by al Qaeda.

     “The Constitutional standard for impeachment is high crimes and misdemeanors. And when Donald Trump sided with Moveon.org and Michael Moore and the extreme fever swamp left wing, on calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush, that demonstrated where he was coming from,” Ted Cruz told reporters while campaigning in South Carolina this week. 

      While he never called for Bush’s impeachment, the Texas Senator has been critical of the decision to invade Iraq, as well as President Obama’s decision to overthrow Momar Gadhafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. “If you topple a stable ruler, throw a Middle Eastern country into chaos and hand it over to radical Islamic terrorists, that hurts America,” Cruz said back in December. 

      Not only was this in bad taste, Trump was also factually wrong. As the New York Times and others reported, chemical weapons were found in Iraq Chemical Weapons Were Found In Iraq NYT.

Throughout his career George W. Bush valued prudence, rather than obnoxiously blurting out the first polarizing, politically incorrect, headline grabbing statement he could think of.

      During an appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation Sunday morning, Trump mostly defended his controversial statements from the night before and halfway walked back a couple of them. “I’m not blaming him [George W. Bush]. The CIA said there was a lot of information that something like that was going to happen,” Trump said, again implying error on Bush’s part. He continued that the 43rd President “thought there were weapons of mass destruction, maybe, or maybe he didn’t.”

     I disagree with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and the “democracy projects” he undertook. I also have qualms with some of the restrictive rules of engagement he set in place during his War on Terror. I believe there should’ve been a little less door to door combat and a little more saturation bombing. His spending/debt increases and Nixonian big government domestic policies don’t have my support either. Yet to say Bush lied just to get us into the War in Iraq is slanderous and disrespectful to our brave men and women who shed their blood, sweat and tears in that sandy desert hell hole. Trump’s statements were very unbecoming of a future President. Give this audio a listen: Mark Levin’s Take On Trump Bashing GWB.  

President Bush speaks to a crowd at ground zero in New York, after the 9/11 attacks.

        George W. Bush is a man of class and integrity. He was a unifying leader who brought Americans together in times of turmoil and despair, especially after the 9/11 attacks. Throughout his career Bush valued prudence, rather than obnoxiously blurting out the first polarizing, politically incorrect, headline grabbing statement he could think of. Ask any of our courageous heroes who served in the Military under President Bush and I bet they’ll tell you what enormous respect they have for him. Bush had a great relationship with veterans and the military. He frequently made unannounced visits to wounded soldiers and their families at Walter Reed Hospital.
           According to Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, “When it comes to their most-senior commander, the vets decisively prefer [President] George W. Bush to [President] Obama. Only a third approve of the way Obama is handling his job, and 42 percent of them think he has been a good commander in chief despite his decisions to bring troops home from Iraq, wind down the war in Afghanistan and increase resources for veterans. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of them think Bush, who launched both wars, was a good commander in chief.” 

Barack Obama, latte in hand, ungratefully “salutes” a US Marine.

          Millions of Americans have forgotten what it’s like to have a Commander in Chief who genuinely respects our brave men and women in uniform. In an article for the Daily Signal Dana Perino, President Bush’s former Press Secretary, recounted how her boss handled an encounter with the angry mother of a dying soldier. Naturally, the parents were devastated. “She yelled at the president, wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed. Her husband tried to calm her and I noticed the president wasn’t in a hurry to leave—he tried offering comfort but then just stood and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish, to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.” Perino continued, “On Marine One to the White House, no one spoke. But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said,’That mama sure was mad at me.’ Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. ‘And I don’t blame her a bit.’ One tear slipped out the side of his eye and down his face. He didn’t wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.”

American Exceptionalism 

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