SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD I

On Friday, November 30, 2018 George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, died and has been graciously and effusively eulogized since. Some of those attempts at hagiography have been genuine and valid but they ignore the gross weight of the negatives justly heaped upon Bush 41 for the great evil that he did.

First, George H. W. Bush carried on a tradition of questionable heroism in war. His father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. He claimed in a letter to his parents that he had batted away from General John J. Pershing an artillery shell and thereby saving the life of the A.E.F. commander. Prescott's proud parents made the letter and his alleged act of heroism public. However, once out in public Prescott's great heroic act came under scrutiny which quickly determined that his baseball skill, let alone that of Babe Ruth, could not have altered the course of an artillery shell. Prescott's claim of heroism was utterly false and physically impossible. Faced with public derision, Prescott was forced to admit that his purported saving of General Pershing was a complete fiction. Whether Prescott ever intended it to become public or not isn't and cannot be known. There is no doubt that Prescott's son, George H. W. Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. On one of his last missions, George H. W.'s plane was hit by Japanese fire. He was able to bail out but his two crewmen died in the crash of the plane. George H. W. was quickly rescued by a submarine that happened to be conveniently on the ocean surface nearby. During the 1988 presidential campaign some serious questions arose as to whether George H. W. had bailed out of his torpedo plane early leaving his crewmen to their death and, much like his father's heroism, his serendipitous salvation by that submarine wasn't as serendipitous as it's said to be. The question that has never been answered was did George H. W., piloting a damaged plane, see the submarine and parachute out leaving his crew to die. We don't know but it would carry on a less than savory family tradition.

Prescott Bush became a protege of W. Averell Harriman and Harriman's investment banking firm in the 1920s and took up residence in the Connecticut commuter suburbs of New York City. In the explicitly Liberal 1930s and 40s Prescott became an officer of the the Connecticut chapter of the United Negro College Fund and of the American Birth Control League in Catholic dominated Connecticut where all forms of birth control were illegal. In a period in which such things were not anomalous, Prescott was also the finance chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. The long connection to support for birth control and abortion became a millstone around George H. W.'s neck when he sought the presidency in 1980.

During World War II Prescott set another family tradition of making loyalty secondary to business. Prescott was a director, along with his mentor Harriman, of the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that held significant assets for German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwereke AG controlled about 75% of Germany's iron ore reserves and made much of the steel that went into Hitler's planes, tanks and other armaments. Thyssen was a Nazi supporter from 1923 onward. He was one of the signers of the letter to German president Paul von Hindenberg that convinced von Hindenberg to appoint Adolph Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933.  He was in complete agreement with the Nazi expulsion of Jews from jobs and industry but demurred in the mid-1930s when Hitler turned on the Roman Catholic Church. Shortly after Germany began World War II by invading Poland, Thyssen, believing that war was not appropriate at the time, fled to Switzerland. He was subsequently condemned by the Nazi Party and government. However, Thyssen continued to profit from his steel industry. Rumors were flying that Union Banking Corp. was holding gold for high ranking Nazis including Thyssen and in October, 1942 the U. S. Government seized the assets of Union Banking under the Trading with the Enemy Act, retaining those assets for the duration of the war. Though there is no reason to believe that Prescott Bush was a Nazi sympathizer, it is impossible to believe that he was unaware of Thyssen's Nazi sympathies, anti-Semitism and involvement in the German armaments industry. Thus, Prescott Bush established his son, George H. W.'s belief that loyalty to country is one thing that's all well and good but loyalty to money is forever.

In 1950 Prescott made his first run for senator from Connecticut against Sen. William Burnett Benton as a Liberal Republican, something that was then not the imaginary, fantastical beast it is today. He lost by 1,000 votes. Prescott planned a run again in 1952. As part of that planning W. Averell Harriman advised Prescott that he could not be elected if he did not take a vigorous anti-communist stance in line with Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and California Senator Richard Nixon. Prescott won election as senator from Connecticut in 1952 riding the wave of Dwight David Eisenhower's presidential campaign and anti-communist fearmongering. Thus Prescott set another tradition that George H. W. followed in 1980 and 1988 of jettisoning all personal beliefs and ethics in favor of claiming power.

Following his military service George H. W. moved to Texas where his family wealth and prominence gave him entree into the oil industry and even greater wealth and influence.

Prescott Bush retired from the senate in 1962. His second son, George H. W., ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 1964 when Barry Goldwater led the Republican's to near universal defeat. George H. W. ran again in 1966 and won the election to represent Texas' 7th District where he served for 2 terms. During George H. W.'s 2 terms in the House of Representatives the Vietnam War was at it height as was opposition to it in America. Coincidentally, his son George W., hereinafter referred to as "Shrub" (the late Milly Ivins' delightful nickname for "Dubya" graduated from an undistinguished 4 years at Yale University and needed both a military "career" and to stay alive. George H. W. got Dubya a position in the Texas Air National Guard far from even the faint prospect of actual combat. Dubya managed to be accepted for pilot training despite low scores on the pilot aptitude tests, irregular attendance at pilot training and frequent drunkenness. In 1971 Dubya miraculously got transferred to the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard but really so that he could work on the senatorial campaign of Winton Blount. Shrub's pilot career ended when he refused to appear for a required physical leaving him with a military career less distinguished though less public than his grandfather's.

Once George H. W. lost his seat in Congress, his father's friend, and our first overtly criminal president, Richard Milhous Nixon appointed him U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet level position. In January, 1973 as the Watergate Break-In began to develop into the Watergate Scandal, George H. W. became chairman of the Republican National Committee. He held that post until September, 1974 when newly anointed President Gerald R. Ford shipped him off to be chief of the new liaison office in China, effectively making Poppy Bush our ambassador to Beijing. That job lasted about 16 months until Ford brought Poppy back to Washington, actually Langley, Virginia, to head the CIA. Ford acted in the shadow of the investigations of the Church Committee (Senate) and Pike Committee (House) into CIA operations many of which flagrantly violated U. S. and International Law and treaties. Poppy came in to the CIA as someone ostensibly untainted by the questionable operations and bizarre policies of the Intelligence Community.

Once Jimmy Carter became president on January 20, 1977, Poppy retired to investment banking in Houston, Texas, joined the Trilateral Commission and prepared himself for a run at the presidency in 1980. That year the ultra-right wing of the Republiscum Party made it's comeback from the Goldwater debacle of 1964 with Ronald Reagan as their front man. Reagan, who was probably showing signs of Alzheimer's Disease, needed a reliable vice-president. Poppy put himself forward as not only that reliable man but as the representative of entrenched oligarchical power within the Republiscum Party. Carter's inept handling of first the Shah of Iran and then the subsequent Iranian Hostage Crisis doomed his bid for reelection and Poppy became the 43rd Vice-President of the United States.

When Reagan was clearly losing mental capacity during the 1984 campaign, Poppy Bush became an increasingly important part of the Administration. Though he claimed to have "gone to the bathroom" during the time that Reagan authorized the illegal actions that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair there is plenty of reason to believe that Poppy was deeply involved in the illegal acts in Iran and Nicaragua with Col. Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter. Poppy Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra is the most likely reason that his son, Shrub, immediately on taking office, changed the availability of presidential papers to scholars from 25 to 50 years following the end of an Administration. The Reagan Administration papers would have become available after January 20, 2014 while his father's papers would have been open to scholars after January 20, 2018. Now the Reagan papers are locked up until 2039 and the Bush 41 papers won't become available for critical review until 2043. Justice delayed is justice denied and history delayed is truth denied. We won't know all of the crimes of the Shrub-Cheney Administration until 2058 far too late for the American people to know and understand how they have been misled and ill-served by Ronald Reagan, Poppy Bush, his feckless son.

So belatedly I am here to speak ill of the dead who deserve to be spoken ill of. I am sure that there are good things to be said of George Herbert Walker Bush but as a public man, I cannot think of any and can think of more than I've listed above that are ill.

As far as that goes, for more speaking ill of the dead I eagerly await the obituaries for the following:
Richard (Dick) Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Oliver North
John Poindexter
William Barr
Donald J. Trump
Michael Pence

None of those obituaries can come too soon.