Former President Bush involved with donation to group with terrorist connections (satire)
Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen 2004
posted on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice and Progressive Trail, March 8, 2004.
by Robert Jensen
OK, perhaps the headline
stretches the truth a bit. But being a good American, I’m simply following the
lead of my president.
Here’s what actually
happened: On Saturday I gave a talk on the news coverage of current President
Bush and the Iraq War at a conference on presidential rhetoric at Texas A&M
University in College Station. One of the conference co-sponsors was the Bush
Presidential Library Foundation, and the honorarium I received came from “The
Associates of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.”
So, it was sort of like
former President George H.W. Bush paid me for my talk, kind of.
When I returned to
Austin, I signed the check over as a donation to the Third Coast Activist
Resource Center (www.thirdcoastactivist.org),
a local group I work with. At Third Coast we consider ourselves part of the
growing movement to dismantle the U.S. empire, focusing on efforts to resist
war, militarism, racism, and corporate domination. Many consider such groups to
be, if not terrorists, perhaps fronts for terrorists, or at least sympathetic to
terrorists.
That’s what Attorney
General John Ashcroft seems to think. In December 2001 testimony to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, he addressed people who criticized the U.S. government’s
response to 9/11: “Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and
diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to
America’s friends.”
So, Third Coast is sort
of like a terrorist group, kind of.
Therefore, George H.W.
Bush was involved with a donation to a group with terrorist connections. Sort
of, kind of.
Now, some may want to
criticize me for contorting the facts to fit a political agenda. That is, some
might want to accuse me of lying. But I don’t think it is fair to criticize me
for simply adopting the standards of our highest officials in Washington. The
headline doesn’t distort the truth to any greater degree than the
pronouncements of Bush administration officials, as they try to squirm their way
out of pre-war lies that are becoming more difficult to dodge given post-war
problems in Iraq.
First, let me explain
that much of the information on which I based my statements came from our
intelligence agencies. If I was wrong, it was an intelligence failure. I’ve
appointed an independent commission to investigate. The report will be out in a
year or so.
Second, let’s be
precise about my statement: I didn’t say George H.W. Bush gave a donation to a
terrorist group. All I said is that he was involved with a donation. He
certainly was involved; if he hadn’t been president, there would be no
presidential library with his name on it and no Associates of the George Bush
Presidential Library Foundation -- and that was the name on the check I
received. I also didn’t say Third Coast was a terrorist group. All I said is
that they have terrorist connections. It’s certainly true that people involved
in Third Coast oppose the U.S. wars and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
we know the terrorists also oppose those wars and occupations -- that’s a
connection of some kind.
Now, you may want to
press me, suggesting that I’m just trying to weasel out of responsibility for
a lie, looking for technicalities to cover my nefarious intentions. My response?
Let’s look back at
President Bush’s December 2003 interview with ABC Primetime’s Diane Sawyer,
who questioned him about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. Sawyer reminded the president that administration officials before the war
had said they knew Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons -- not just the intent
to acquire them or programs to produce them, but actual prohibited
unconventional weapons.
Bush’s response? He
avoided the question.
Sawyer tried again:
“But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as
opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still
…”
Bush: “So what’s the
difference?”
Sawyer continued to try
to get Bush to address her question, but he refused.
“Diane, you can keep
asking the question. I’m telling you I made the right decision for America,”
Bush said.
So, I’m taking my cue
from our Glorious Leader. To those who want to claim that my headline was not
the real truth but a carefully crafted statement that shamelessly manipulated
some small kernel of truth to create a false impression, I say: What’s the
difference?
My goal was to highlight
that the people running this country have taken the art of creative lying and
propaganda to new heights. If we are going to be something more than spectators
in a political spectacle -- if we are going to be real citizens in a functioning
democracy -- it’s important for us to come to terms with that, and to learn to
combat it.
If I had to be a little,
well, let’s say creative with the facts to do that, I’m telling you I made
the right decision for America.
-----------------------------
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding member of the Nowar Collective, www.nowarcollective.com. He is the author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights Books). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.