WASHINGTON D.C.—“Decision Points” is a great book. Former President George Walker Bush will never go down as one of our greatest leaders in history; however, he does in part begin to redeem himself with his soon to be bestselling memoir. The brilliantly written, often brutally honest story was not one that I expected to read so soon after the end of his presidency, but it was welcomed. Despite being a former politician, he comes across as a more likeable human being than his Vice President Dick Cheney, who until recently has not stopped talking about the current Administration since leaving office. For a man who refused to give interviews during his own tenure as vice president, he has become a political animal since the election of 2008, and not always a smart or accurate teller of truth.
The former president explains how his vice president was angry with him, when he chose not to pardon Scooter Libby, the now disgraced White House official, who was caught up in the scandal that enveloped Washington after Valerie Plame was outed by officials within the Bush Administration as a CIA operative. It’s since been proved that she did important intelligence work within Iran. President Bush did commute Libby’s sentence, but chose not to clear his name permanently and totally in the record of the criminal justice system. The president felt that any part of outing Ms. Plame was a breach of the public’s trust and therefore he could never feel right by approving or dismissing it as less than a serious matter.
President Bush is defiant in his decision to approve water-boarding of terror suspects and still to this day believes it was the right thing to do at the time. As he points out in his book, on September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered by people who had no allegiance to any nation or belief other than innocent civilians are now fair game to attack on American soil. His strong and determined choice within days of 9/11 to fight the terrorists and to show American supremacy is one major reason why we have not been attacked on our soil since that dark day almost a decade ago. Many of his detractors fail to give him any credit for what good choices he did make, even though his choice to invade Iraq and to ignore Afghanistan remains a failure that almost no president or general seems capable of fixing at this point, and that perhaps was a failure of his presidency.
The former president admits candidly that rapper Kanye West, who days after Hurricane Katrina accused the president of not liking black people, delivered a low blow; one he did not believe he deserved. It is appalling that an entertainer would make such an offensive remark about a man, who has spent his entire life fighting for social justice of African Americans would be accused of such ill will.
In addition to hiring the first two ever African American Secretaries of State, who are General Colin Powell and Dr. Condaleeza Rice, Mr. Bush also in 2006 became the first Republican President in modern time to go before the NAACP and speak on racial equality, a body that is not often friendly toward Republicans. He was well known for encouraging young minorities to finish high school and attend college when he was Governor of Texas. Also, before he became Governor, Mr. Bush also was co-owner of the Texas Rangers, which was filled with minority players. And most importantly, who can forget that President Bush was the president who gave the most U.S. dollars to fight HIV and AIDS across the African continent in our nation’s history. How amazing all of these accomplishments were forgotten by West, who just a few years later would be called a racist himself.
Perhaps many could argue that the Tea Party supporters, who carried racist signs across our great nation during the past two years, or Thomas Sowell, whose outright hateful words about African Americans encourage stereotypes, could be accused of bigotry. However, there is absolutely nothing in George W. Bush’s history, whether recent or long past, that supports such an outrageous attack on his character.
What I enjoyed most about “Decision Points” is that the president did not make excuses for bad decisions; he proved that he was a simple human being, who was often misunderstood, but still to this day harbors no ill will of his political adversaries. He has removed himself from politics and unlike several of his predecessors, he has made himself a true statesman within our nation.
Please remember our troops who fight in Afghanistan and Iraq on a daily basis to protect our homeland and our rights and freedoms.
Photograph is Courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library
