Andrée Seu Peterson on the "Time" cover 
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Bush: Obama “deserves my silence”
In his first public speech since leaving office, former President Bush said, “I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that [President Obama] be helped in office.” Instead of taking potshots at the new commander-in-chief, Bush said that Obama has enough critics and “deserves my silence.”
The former president also revealed at the Calgary, Alberta, event his plans to write a book about the “12 toughest decisions” he had to make while in office: “I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States.”
back to top42 Comments to “Bush: Obama “deserves my silence””
I certainly never agreed with everything he did, but those are the words of a gentleman.
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A touch of class.
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I agree Cameron. His record was genuinely flawed (as they all are if they’re in office long enough), but how refreshing. I was so disappointed when Carter became such a public critic of the administration during what was a very sensitive time.
And Bush’s book illuminating things from his perspective could clear up some of our frustrations with him.
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I applaud him. That is a classy thing to do.
Bush was amazingly good in the weeks immediately after 9/11, in particular the Sept. 20 speech in Congress, the one with the “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies” line. For all I disagreed with much that he did in the years after, I give him great credit for keeping the country together through that difficult time.
So while his position here doesn’t exactly surprise me, I am glad he’s stated it this way.
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That was a very gracious post, SteveG. I agree he was at his best after 9/11 and I thought his first term was a good one. The second term, not so good, but it will be interesting to see how it all sorts out in history.
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I guess no one told Cheney.
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The nation deserves an apology before his silence, but we we won’t get either. Bush will spend the rest of his life trying to rewrite history and won’t shut up until he gets a bunch of criminal lawyers who tell him he must.
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Well done, my brother. May God continue to work in his life causing him to become more like Him and people watching will be drawn to the Instrument of the growth.
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Yes, the whole country loved Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.
But then he decided to blow his good will, and wreck America, by invading a country that was no threat whatsoever to us, and had nothing to do with 9/11, and had no WMD despite the White House lies, all to please the Israel Firsters.
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I love my country more than I love politics. This from a man who had soldiers in Iraq rather than on the border of the country he claims to love so much.
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It must be a weird conspiracy laced mind that would call the Iraq war a favor to Israel. Israel hasn’t benefited from the war and never stood to benefit. You look at Bush, the Texas oil man, and claim it’s his affection for Israel that prompted this war? You look at Cheney, the Haliburton company man, and try to tell us stories about the elders of Zion? Get a grip.
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And Bush’s book illuminating things from his perspective could clear up some of our frustrations with him.
He promises it will be the “authoritarian history” of his administration. There will be no frustrations.
MUMSEE, you can’t call God an instrument, even if you capitalize it. All the authorities say it’s heresy to do so. Aside from that, it’s un-American to apotheosize our presidents.
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Whatever the motivations, MYNOCK, that war’s been a crippler. It’s too bad our current president won’t do anything to stop it, either.
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Scroop Moth (12): I’m just saying from my perspective one of Bush’s major flaws was his communication skills. I’ll be interested to (finally) hear more from him about what was going on internally that prompted him to make some of the decisions he did.
Whether I’ll be persuaded on some of the issues in the end or not, remains to be seen.
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One problem is that candidate Obama also had mostly silence from President Bush, even while Obama was criticizing Bush’s evey move and motive while Bush was still in office. In general, I thought candidate Obama made some very irresponsible and defeatest statements about our mission and methods in Iraq while on the campaign trail and Bush’s relative silence in response to Obama was not so wise in those cases. I am NOT saying Obama had no right to offer such aggressive criticism and dissent, but i wish President Bush had used his freedom of speech a bit more clearly and boldly.
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Joel Mark, perhaps he shut up because even he had taken his approval rating to heart. Any criticisms by him would have simply shored up Obama’s support.
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Scroop #12 — Since it’s obvious you know not what Mumsee meant—may I suggest you to take a pass.
Iraq: Better pre GWB? or better now? Only time will tell. And it’s also for the Iraqis to decide how they will use their opportunity to live with liberty—don’t you think?
I think it’s wise for George Bush to remain silent re: BHO until he’s also out of office. There is nothing to be gained from anything he might offer on current issues regardless of what he says—an understanding Clinton never managed to get past his ego.
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Re: #15
One problem is that candidate Obama also had mostly silence from President Bush, even while Obama was criticizing Bush’s evey move and motive while Bush was still in office.
What a crock. Bush was the sitting President who’s term in office was about to expire. He wasn’t running for office again. Obama was. It should also be noted that John McCain, the Republican nominee for President also made his disagreements with President Bush known on the campaign trail.
In general, I thought candidate Obama made some very irresponsible and defeatest statements about our mission and methods in Iraq while on the campaign trail and Bush’s relative silence in response to Obama was not so wise in those cases.
Have you noticed how every time someone disagrees with President Bush or his party on the war, the conservatives/Republicans sling out the words “irresponsible” and “defeatist”? And then they wonder why the American people turned their party out of office.
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RR, I never saw any evdicence that President Bush cared much about the approval rating polls. I criticized him for too much silence, but I can also commend him for his integrity in ignoring nonsensical opinion polls.
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Anlir, I care more about truth than about who or what party gets turned in or out of a particular office. Truth or consequences can be a tough choice and whenever possible, I try to choose the former. And the truth reamins that candidate Obama did speak irresponsibly about our nation’s mission and methods in our war against Islamic jihad and the forces of chaos and murder in Iraq. The fact that many of the American people were impressed with Obama’s words does not change the fact that those words were profoundly irresponsible (even it they “worked” for him).
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I think it is essential that [President Obama] be helped in office.
It depends on what the meaning of ‘helped’ is. If it means standing in honor of his office when he enters a room, absolutely. If it means helping him enact his liberal, socialist policies, forget it.
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I care more about truth than about who or what party gets turned in or out of a particular office.
Have you ever noticed how the conservative Christians are always setting themselves up as the arbitrators of “the truth”, and that it always seems to go hand-in-hand with the Republican Party Platform? What a coincidence!
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Rond: Iraq: Better pre GWB? or better now? Only time will tell. And it’s also for the Iraqis to decide how they will use their opportunity to live with liberty—don’t you think?
That’s the wrong question. Of course Iraq is better now than before.
But what about us? Is Osama bin Laden captured? Is al Qaeda still operating? This was the crux of the debate over the Iraq war.
Contrary to all the slanderous conservative rhetoric about how we “supported Saddam,” what we really wanted was an aggressive push against the enemy that posed — and still poses — a real threat, and save the paper tiger that Saddam was for later.
And now the same misdirection is on display here. Is Iraq better off for our intervention? Of course. But is America? That’s a very different question, and, I think, has a rather different answer.
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“That’s the wrong question.”
Actually, it’s the only question unless pure revenge for 9/11 was the only motive. I don’t remember that being the case. It is however, the position detractors now claim while ignoring the congressional vote, and reasons given for casting those votes, at the time.
“But is America? That’s a very different question, . . .”
An so the lesson going forward is: we shouldn’t engage in such activities unless it directly benefits us or we will lose/expend nothing in the process. How magnanimous.
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I foresee Bush not at all out there on the hustings trying to salvage his legacy as some former Presidents have tried to do.
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And the truth reamins that candidate Obama did speak irresponsibly about our nation’s mission and methods in our war against Islamic jihad and the forces of chaos and murder in Iraq.
There’s nothing wrong with making judgments unless you are addicted to being judgmental (like me and JOEL MARK — though he’ll deny it). But one shouldn’t confuse opinions with assertions of fact. These can be true or false, but judgments can only be persuasive or binding — or not.
Joel’s opinion was contested in the election and didn’t prevail, either with the voters or with experts like Brent Scowcraft and Colin Powell. Therefore, Joel’s judgment never became binding or rose to the level of “truth.” It remains a dissenting opinion, no more or no less.
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I long ago concluded Bush was a good Governor but the WH might have been beyond his prior training. (Yes, the post Civil War Governor’s job in Texas was stripped of most strong executive powers)
He remains a man with true class. A rarity in DC.
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SAwGUNNER — Former presidents don’t go out on the hustings, they appear before audiences that pay hundreds of thou. For Bush, that means provincial oil capitals in parts of the world that won’t arrest him. Bush is making a self-perpetuating propaganda machine to disseminate his re-write of history.
Ironically, his website reportedly says nothing about Iraq or Afghanistan, as he’ll have a hard time figuring out the “authoritarian” thing to say.
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SteveG: Asking if the U.S is better off, and then asking about OBL’s capture side by side is disingenuous. While it is important to catch him, the answer to that question is not synonymous with the answer to the question “are we better off?” We are better off, with or without a captured Bin Laden. The man is on the run, and cornered into pure obsolescence. The constant liberal habit of playing up his overall importance presently is simply pretentious at best, and harmful at worst. Even Obama doesn’t exactly seem to have Bin Laden on his top priority right now. Even your local AIG is more pressing than him.
Al Qaeda is still operating, but at what capacity? The capability they have of inflicting any significant damage on U.S. soil has been greatly subdued, thanks to Bush. The work is not done, but it wasn’t supposed to be by now. Not saying it’s perfect (of course that wouldn’t stop you guys from claiming I did), but the cause for whining is not legit.
As for paper tiger Saddam, OBL was a paper tiger on 9/10/01. Not to say we should just bomb some random despot around the globe, but the whole “Saddam was no issue” excuse is a stupid one. That guy was trouble, and he was the next logical threat at the time (to put it incredibly mildly). On 9/11 we saw what happens when you wait. It made sense not to repeat that mistake.
BTW, with all the garbage tactics that came from the left, from the Iraq war to this day, it takes a pathetically short attention span to accuse the right of “slanderous rhetoric.” Seriously dude, youtube something every once in a while.
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This thread is overlooking the fascinating fact that Dick Cheney is being very outspoken on Sunday talk shows and what not.
As a politician, Cheney knows that the best thing he can do for the approvals rating of him and Bush is to disappear. Cheney is so unpopular that all he can do is remind people why they hated him. He can’t even raise Obama’s unfavorability numbers.
So why is a smartie like Cheney shooting his boss in the face by putting his own face before the public? Hypothesis, revenge. Cheney was said to be furious about not getting a pardon for Scooter Libby.
What we have here is eternal enmity between the snake and the outcast Adam.
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Sawgunner. I had a problem with Bush’s characteristic silence a lot when he was President. Provided that the code of “silence” is applied correctly (and divested of when useless), he could be unto something here. But no matter what, this is a guy who has simply perfected the art of being the bigger man. Not a bad achievement for a guy who was pretty much the opposite of that in his youth.
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Ronald Reagan did not voluntarily put himself under a gag-order with regard to things that needed to be said after he was out of office:
* “Our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980’s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there.” Ronald Reagan, Feb. 03, 1994 – from a speech at the Republican National Congress annual gala
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GWB was ALWAYS this way. Too bad others haven’t seen it until now. Of course, they can’t resist bringing up Cheney. Bush is his own person.
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Even though Obama has blamed President Bush for everything evil under the sun for at least the last 5 years including global warming for that matter, President Bush has class that runs in his entire family. The only one Barbara Bush hates is Ross Perot – but she is not the only one, since Ross allowed a socialist sexual predator to become president when Bush 41 lost his reelection bid to teh Cubak smoking but nit inhaling Clinton. Hopefully the messiah won’t turn out to be worse than the average lefty sexual predator. I’ll be praying that the real Messiah saves him from that hell
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The Iraq War is an unjust war–unConstitutional and unBiblical. Whether Iraq or the U.S. is better off is of secondary concern; in fact, since we disregarded God’s law by going in, we have to add that transgression to the long list of national sins of which we must repent. Christians, remember the embryonic stem cell discussions. The ends don’t justify the means.
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Dick Cheney is under no implied presidential code of conduct on how he speaks out against the president that replaced him or any president. Carter like most lefties has no class and lefties still think, quite stupidly as usual, that Cheney was president.
Luckily Llamas are not bound by presidential custom like Cheney either.
Yesterday the media reported that Chris Dodd was the one who put the language into the stimulus bill guaranteeing any retention bonus paid by companies who took TARP money, if the contract was legal and valid before February 11th, 2008. This made sense since only the lefties knew that AIG bonuses were to be paid for the past three months and Chris Dodd was the largest recipient of AIG bribe money.
Dodd said he wasn’t the one – it was President Obama through Geithner who inserted the language at the last minute according to Dodd. Obama was 2nd largest receiver of AIG bribe money by the way.
I don’t know who is lying, since all lefties lie like dogs, but Dodd would have to either be lying again, or pretty scared, or pretty dumb, or have a deal with Obama to take the political hit for Dodd with his huge popularity, in order for Dodd to throw Obama under the bus like that. Dodd’s approval rating with those that elected him is so low it can’t be polled and thank God, he will be defeated by any challenger when this criminal comes up for election.
If Obama really was the one to put the language to save these AIG executive bonuses in the stimulus bill as a Quid Pro Quo for their campaign bribes, then he looks pretty stupid railing against them like he did on National TC+V but with this president anything is possible adn he is never to underestimated or trusted.
Perhaps Rush is right and his claims that the whole AIG bonus scandal was orchestrated by Obama and the left leadership to get Americans to hate businesses and business managers even more than they already do, so that these socialists and Marxists can more easily continue to nationalize American Businesses by bankrupting them and having the government steal the valuable pieces on the cheap. Why esle would the lefties keepo thses bonuses secret fir 3 months and do nothing about them? Even lefties =cannot be that clueless and stupid.
Who would have guessed these American socialists and Marxists would be talking orders from Hugo Chavez and Putin
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Rond: An so the lesson going forward is: we shouldn’t engage in such activities unless it directly benefits us or we will lose/expend nothing in the process. How magnanimous.
When your house is on fire, you don’t take time to paint the walls on your way out.
Taking out Saddam was a good thing for us to do, but doing it WHILE OSAMA BIN LADEN REMAINED FREE AND A THREAT was bad timing. We could have done it earlier or we could have done it later, but doing it right at that moment was a mistake.
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For Bush, that means provincial oil capitals in parts of the world that won’t arrest him. Bush is making a self-perpetuating propaganda machine to disseminate his re-write of history.
As Jeffery Simpson wrote in the globe and mail
A political outcast in most of his own country, except for religious and secular Republican bastions, found in Calgary arguably the only place outside the United States where he could get a welcome.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wcosimp18/BNStory/specialComment/home
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HRW – yes, Bush is a political outcast. Unfortunately, American culture is unwilling to treat him as a criminal suspect as law demands. We’re no different than Serbs protecting their tribal chieftains.
Gen. Powell’s former assistant, Col. Larry Wilkerson, is revealing that in year after year of national security documents, there are no reports of significant information obtained from the Guantanamo interrogations whose value isn’t a subject of dispute in the documents themselves. Worse, only a handful of prisoners were believed to be guilty of association with al Qaeda. American officials knew the other 700-plus were innocent, but considered their detention to be important to saving face and perpetuating public support for the war on “terror.”
A war on America itself by enemy combatants who seized unconstitutional powers to violate human rights. Obama must say he will keep Guantanamo open for three special prisoners — Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush. Our own Spandau.
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“Bush is a political outcast.”
Translation: He has class, conviction and dignity.
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Class — Walker, Prescott, Bush. Check.
Conviction — Still talking the same crazy talk. Check.
Dignity — Authoritarian president, authoritarian author. Check.
Ding! I’m on JOEL MARK’s bottom line.
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41 – LOL
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