The Dangers of Nostalgia: Why We Should Not Romanticize The Bush Era
By: Rachel R i d d el l
P HOTO C R E D I T: E R I C D R AP E R / T H E W H I T E H O U S E V I A G ET TY IM AG ES
As the United States enters a new political chapter with the inauguration of 46th President Joe Biden, the actions of past administrations have begun to fall out of the memory of the general public. This is stark in the case of George W. Bush, whose reputation has seen attempts of rehabilitation in the media from both the left and right of the political spectrum. From being friends with Ellen Degeneres to his love for painting, the 43 rd President is often depicted as a harmless elderly man. While this image may be especially resonating as the world is reflecting on President Donald Trump’s tyrannical governance, these optics should not distract citizens from the chaos of Bush’s administration, and the implications of it that still linger today. This is especially evident in his reckless military interventions and erratic handling of Hurricane Katrina. The most horrific event of the Bush administration was arguably the reckless and brash decision of invading Iraq. Bush exploited the fears and impending Islamophobia of Americans –– as a consequence of the September 11 attacks THE OBSERVER
–– to enter a war with Iraq, despite 9/11 having no correlation to the country-atlarge. Scholars have theorized a multitude of reasons as to why the Bush administration invaded Iraq, and many of these motives go far beyond mere retaliation for 9/11. One of the notorious causes for the war, intellectuals have suggested, was for the United States to maintain its monopoly over oil. Raymond Hinnebusch for the journal Critical Middle Eastern Studies writes that “the US, far from paying the costs of the politicization of oil, has managed to use Middle East crises to reinforce its hegemony while offloading their main costs onto others.” The Iraq War was a vehicle in which the United States exercised their dominance over oil, while subsequently terrorizing the lands that they entered. The irony of the United States’ armed conflict in Iraq supposedly defending the violence on their homeland could not be more blatant when considering the death toll. While the number of Iraqi civilian deaths is still difficult to gage, there has been statistical research in recent years to PAGE 22
