Hail to the Chief

On Bush’s Jr’s fitful watch Latin America edged nervously out of Uncle Sam’s shadow. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia boldly assert their independence and thumb their noses at Uncle Sam. Twenty years earlier, and even when Bush Sr sat in the Oval Office, the “strong leadership” craved by Americans of all political stripes would have seen Chavez and Morales briskly toppled, their estimable reforms swiftly aborted and the kleptocrats handed back the keys to the presidential office by the CIA and their local right-wing allies.

Barely a month went by in Bush Jr’s second term but that some liberal or left pundit would predict a US attack on Iran. Lurid scenarios were drawn of the US and its local ally, Israel, unleashing the bombing sorties to Iran’s nuclear complex. It turns out that the Israeli high command made numerous requests for clearance for its planes to overfly Iraq on their way to Iran, but were adamantly nixed by George Jr.

Jr’s greatest single trumph in reducing America’s standing was his insistence that the assembly elections in Iraq go forward as planned, in December of 2005. Bush Sr., it will be recalled, shrank from finishing off Saddam Hussein in 1991 because it would most likely have meant the Shia would take power, to the great benefit of Iran. When the invasion of 2003 did topple Saddam, seasoned counselors advised Bush Jr to suspend the elections the Ayatollah Sistani had insisted upon, for exactly the same reason.

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