There is much wrong that Bush did and the media should not try to cover it up after his death. by Azeezah Kanji
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When luminary of the South African anti-apartheid struggle Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died in April, Western media coverage rushed to highlight her alleged participation in acts of violence. The very first sentence of the New York Times' story about her death, for example, stated that Madikizela-Mandela's "hallowed place in the pantheon of South Africa's liberators was eroded by scandal over corruption, kidnapping, murder, and the implosion of her fabled marriage to Nelson Mandela," and the Times' original headline (subsequently revised following complaints) described her as a "tarnished leader of South Africa's liberation."
But for George Bush, who had the privilege of directing acts of mass violence from afar, the abuses and atrocities tarnishing his leadership have been treated as mere footnotes to the main story - if they are accorded any attention at all. While commentators have fawned over cartoons depicting Bush's projected arrival in heaven, they have erased the victims consigned to hell on Earth by his policies.
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Similar deficits of truth-telling are apparent in representations of Bush's military follow-up to Panama, the First Gulf War, almost universally depicted as a courageous confrontation against the evils of dictator Saddam Hussein. Inconvenient details - that Hussein's evils had been enabled by Bush, who facilitated sales of military equipment to the Iraqi leader and continued to protect him from sanctions even after he massacred thousands of Kurds with poison gas at Halabja in 1988; ...
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Cutting through the bush of media's posthumous propaganda is not about disrespecting George HW Bush in his death, but about respecting the lives of those victimised by his policies - and the lives of those who will continue to suffer as long as the structures of American imperial power he helped construct remain in place and immunised from critique.
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