How George W. Bush Destroyed the Temple of Baal
First he bombed mercilessly, cruelly
grinning throughout. Costumed in a flight suit, he proclaimed a “Mission
Accomplished” after he had, with what they call “bipartisan support”
(as though this lends some sort of legitimacy), destroyed the modern
country of Iraq.
George W. Bush destroyed Iraq’s
infrastructure, its institutions, its ruling party and its army. Then he
destroyed its social fabric, which had permitted widespread
Sunni-Shiite intermarriage and religiously integrated neighborhoods.
Bush destroyed the law and order which
had permitted girls to walk to school, heads uncovered, in modern
western dress. He destroyed the freedom of physicians and other
professionals to go about their work and caused masses of them to exit
their country. He destroyed neighborhoods whose residents were forced to
flee for their lives. He destroyed the Christian community, which
dropped from 1.5 million in 2001 to perhaps 200,000 a decade later. He
destroyed the prevalent ideology of secularism and ushered in an era of
bitterly contested sectarian rule. He destroyed the right to broadcast
rock ‘n roll music, or sell liquor and DVDs.
He destroyed the stability of Anbar
province by sowing the chaos that allowed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to
establish—for the first time—an al-Qaeda branch in Iraq.
He destroyed the stability of Syria when
“Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” (now ISIL) retreated into that neighboring
country during the “surge” of 2007. By creating power vacuums and
generating new chapters and spin-offs of al-Qaeda, he destroyed Yazidi
communities and their freedom from genocide and slavery. By hatching the
forerunner of ISIL, he destroyed the prospects for a peaceful “Arab
Spring” in Syria three years after his presidency ended.
