‘Two Bush presidents and two wars on Iraq’ are more than enough

The Iraq war has become a fashionable issue in the run-up to the US presidential race, with the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and the entire range of Republican challengers trying to distance themselves for their support for the disastrous campaign waged by George W. Bush.

The candidature of his brother Jeb Bush instantly raised the spectre of the Iraq war which seems to haunt very few of the US public but terrifies the candidates and is seized upon by the media.

However, the latter focus on why the war was waged and, occasionally, the war cost of $2 trillion and the loss of more than 4,000 US lives rather than on the consequences of the war for Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, and the current conflicts in Iraq and Syria that stem from the post-war presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its transformation into Jabhat Al Nusra and Daesh.

Liberals argue that the US conquered Iraq because the Bush administration “wanted a war” and created a casus belli based on “fraud”, wrote Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

Conservatives claim that the war was launched on a misreading of honest intelligence during the built-up to the war. The latter argument is, of course, as false as the intelligence massaged by the Bush administration to make the case for war.

So far, there are just two Democrats, Clinton and Bernie Sanders, a leftish senator from Vermont who stood as an independent but voted with the Democrats

Clinton backed the Iraq war and has admitted it was a “mistake”, but Sanders did not support the war.

There are half a dozen declared contenders for the Republican party’s nomination: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina, retired doctor Ben Carson and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Additionally, there is an equal number of will-run figures, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

They are reportedly postponing their formal declarations of candidacy until June so they can raise unlimited funds, rather than face restrictions that declared candidates encounter.

It is estimated that the first year of running for the presidency costs $50 million; the next year, the year of decision, could cost much, much more. Seven billion dollars was spent in 2012 by parties, candidates and other organisations on the campaign, a figure larger than the GDP of 32 of the smallest countries.

Although undeclared, Jeb Bush appears to be the front Republican runner, but he has stumbled badly over the Iraq war, saying initially that he would have supported his brother’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq and then arguing that this was a mistake which, thinking again, he would not have supported.

No one seems to be asking Bush about the 2000 election, which was won by George W. thanks to the votes from Florida, when Jeb was governor, and where a large number of votes mainly for the Democrat slate led by Al Gore, were ruled out in an extremely fishy manner.

Michael Parenti, in his blog on “Stolen Elections”, describes what happened. Some 36,000 voters were not allowed to cast ballots because their names had not been entered on the rolls by Florida’s secretary of state Kathleen Harris, who was actively campaigning for George W. Bush.  Other voters were denied the right to vote because they were falsely declared “convicted felons”.

In some Democratic districts, polls closed early and in others, state police, on orders from Jeb Bush, searched the cars of potential voters, holding them up for hours.

Some districts required two photo identity cards rather than one, which was the law. Ballot boxes from Democratic areas were never collected, got lost or went uncounted.

During the recount of the ballots, Republican hardliners entered the Dade County Canvassing Board, abused an official and created such a hostile climate that the board abandoned its recount and accepted the pro-Bush figure.

The final decision was taken by the Supreme Court, packed with conservative judges who ruled that the Florida recount should not be taken into account, depriving thousands of their votes and their right to vote.

Parenti says that similar abuses took place elsewhere and in the 2004 election when Bush ran against John Kerry.

Undoubtedly, Jeb Bush should be ruled out as a candidate for the presidency because of what happened in Florida when he was governor.

A US president should be a man who obeys the laws of the land rather than a schemer who perverts the electoral process to get his brother or, indeed, anyone, elected.

If there had been no George W. Bush presidency, there would have been no war against Iraq, no Al Qaeda in Iraq, no Jabhat Al Nusra and no Daesh.

This region would have been spared slaughter, destruction and devastation. Iraq would have remained a secular country and a bulwark against Iran’s efforts to export its revolution and extend its influence beyond its borders.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states would not be so concerned about the expansion of Iranian influence, and Syria might have remained as it was before mid-March 2011.

Having had two Bush presidents and two Bush wars on Iraq, the people of this region do not need a third Bush in the White House, a Bush who helped his brother steal at least one election and set a precedent for the likely theft of a second.