The Crime of the Century

I drank up Vincent Bugliosi's book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder like a thirsty person in the desert. Or, perhaps, like a drunken frat boy at a kegger. 

I have admired Mr. Bugliosi ever since Helter Skelter. He pulls no punches and has a passion for truth and justice. I believe him when he says that if it were a Democratic president who had perpetrated these crimes, he would be writing the exact same book. 

But the most important thing that I took away from this book was the reminder that the invasion of Iraq facilitated by lies is the most egregious crime that this pack of criminals has perpetrated upon the world, and not merely one of the many failures of the Bush Administration. In its magnitude it must not be compared to anything else, but stand alone in its atrocity, horror and shame. We can't lump it in with the other misdeeds such as wiretapping, tax cuts for the rich while stealing from the poor, protecting corporations while it attacks individuals, decimating a formerly robust middle class, gutting or usurping government agencies and laws that are supposed to be safeguarding the American people and putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse; although all of these are related and all of these are heinous in themselves, they pale beside the indisputable fact that our beloved country was lied into a war of choice. Not our choice, mind you; the choice of Bush and his 'advisors' the PNAC neo-conservative crowd, and the defense corporations and 'support' corporations who profit massively from it.

I still can't believe that we aren't screaming about this each and every day. It's like saying Hitler murdered six million Jews, and also had bad breath. No crime can be more vile than sending a nation to attack another nation without need; to kill hundreds and thousands of innocent people! The media will breathlessly report on the mysterious disappearance of one blonde white woman, and the nation roars its outrage as one. Yet let people act the same way over the Iraq 'war' and they are derided as left-wing lunatics who should just shut up and go along with the program. I still can't believe that the response from much of America, when confronted with the fact that we were lied into a bloody, greedy occupation, is, like that of our self-selected vice president (who really puts the 'vice' into vice president), "So?"

Everything this pack of psychopaths, murderers and thieves has touched since 2000 has been destroyed or perverted, to be sure. But, as far as I'm concerned, this groteque and monstrous 'war' is the Crime of the Century, and if we don't get it now, the world will hold us accountable later. Bugliosi points out that, unlike any other real 'war president' (Bush's own proud appellation), he is consistently cheerful, upbeat and - well, happy while hundreds of thousands who have died by his signature rot in their graves, and the millions of survivors and their family members who did not physically die on the battlefield have the hopes of a happy life destroyed forever. Bill Clinton was mocked for 'feeling our pain', and he certainly had his shortcomings, but I'd rather have someone 'feeling our pain' than feeling no pain. The grinning frat boy just goes on his merry way, leaving death and despair in his wake and thinking no more of it than he worries about the fate of the empty beer bottles that get thrown out (aren't they called 'dead soldiers'?) after a fraternity bacchanal. But it is the American people that will have to suffer the hangover, the shame and disgrace of the morning after.