George W. Bush’s recent public relations tour, designed to rebuild his image as a tortured artist wrestling with the demons—a flawed but morally introspective tragic figure—has been remarkably effective. As FAIR (3/7/17) noted last month, Bush has been the lucky recipient of dozens of friendly write-ups, interviews and TV appearances, all with only the mildest of liberal chiding around the margins.
In all of the fawning press coverage, one thing has been notably absent: Bush’s Iraqi victims.
Bush’s new PR tour centers around him painting wounded American veterans—foregrounded as the primary negative consequence of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. In ten of the most prominent articles praising Bush in the past few months, not a single one mentions his Iraqi victims:
- “George W. Bush’s Painted Atonements” (New Yorker, 3/3/17)
- “Bush Nostalgia Is Overrated, but His Book of Paintings Is Not” (New York Times, 4/17/17)
- “‘W.’ and the Art of Redemption” (New York Times, 3/21/17)
- “George W. Bush on Immigration Overhaul Efforts, Anti-AIDS Efforts” (NPR, 4/13/17)
- “He Was Almost Killed in Afghanistan. Now He’s Been Painted by the President Who Sent Him There” (Washington Post, 4/13/17)
- “George W. Bush’s Best-Selling Book of Paintings Shows Curiosity and Compassion” (Washington Post, 3/12/17)
- “George W. Bush’s Talent as a Painter Finds an Ironic Muse: the Combat Veteran” (Guardian, 3/6/17)
- “Former President George W. Bush to Appear on Today for his ‘Portraits of Courage’ Book” (Today, 2/17/17)
- “From Caricature to Man of Character: How Time and Art Change Image of Bush” (Christian Science Monitor, 3/23/17)
- “Former President Bush Honors Veterans With ‘Portraits of Courage’” (Voice of America, 3/4/17)
Only one article makes vague reference to the Iraqis killed and injured (Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott opaquely mentions ”the trauma here and in Iraq”), but none note the specific number of deaths—with serious estimates ranging from 500,000 to 1 million—that resulted from Bush’s war of aggression. None profiled an Iraqi who suffered or continues to suffer as a result. This is likely for the same reason Bush didn’t bother to find any to paint—they simply don’t factor into the US moral calculus.
One of the glowing profiles, by Kane Farabaugh of US government–funded Voice of America (3/4/17), doesn’t even contain the word “Iraq.” Others make glib jokes about it, like the New York Times’ Mimi Swartz (3/21/17):
The New Yorker’s art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, can barely hide his surprise when describing the quality as astonishingly high, the portraits “honestly observed and persuasively alive.”
Why the shock and awe? Because Mr. Bush’s artistic talent goes against the stereotype we have of him.
To the extent the Iraq invasion is addressed, it’s a punchline. Iraqi victims aren’t just ignored; their trauma is used to jazz up an otherwise mediocre piece of art criticism.
This type of runaway nationalism is so common we hardly notice it. To the extent Bush is sorry, he only regrets the Americans he helped kill and maim, roughly 2 percent of those who suffered as a result of the invasion. The other 98 percent are faceless Arabs whose humanity isn’t worth touching on, much less exploring.
All cultures naturally prioritize their own, but the wholesale erasure of Iraqis from Bush’s rebranding tour, framed as “atonement” and “redemption”, is striking in its raw nationalist myopia.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can find him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Art, artifice and amoral absolution
Hey Doug, what would you know about art? You probably wouldn’t know quality art even if it showed up at your home and shot you in the face!
How’s that for artifice and amoral absolution.
If it looked like art, and showed up at my door and shot me in the face, I’d be more inclined to credit Dick Cheney as the artist. Obama fought to keep the unreleased Abu Ghraib photos hidden, saying that it “would impact on the safety of our troops”. I think a good compromise would be for Dubya to paint them, eh? Then maybe we wouldn’t have another pro-torture president pushing wars and policies that violate international law and actually impacting the safety of our troops.
Bravo Adam Johnson. You’ve pierced right to the substance of this issue: Bush’s Iraq victims. Yup: “None [of the media outlets” profiled an Iraqi who suffered or continues to suffer as a result. This is likely for the same reason Bush didn’t bother to find any to paint—they simply don’t factor into the US moral calculus.” Great reporting Adam! Bravo! Hurrah!
Crummy, lousy art by a lousy crummy human?
~signed, an amateur and much better artist
Johnny, don’t be jealous, who told you ,you were a good artist? Your mommy? What’s crummy is pricks like you who never learned, if you can’t say something nice, keep your big mouth shut.
“What’s crummy is pricks like you who never learned, if you can’t say something nice, keep your big mouth shut.”
You need to apply that statement to Trump, Bill O’Reilly, the teabaggers and the Republican Party because they have not been saying good for the last 37 years.
Hey Rich, would you and the other idiots of your ilk feel differently if Hitler was the artist who painted pictures of SS soilders, completely ignoring the Jews he slaughtered?
Bless you William for putting it so accurately that it cannot be misunderstood by anyone. Except Richard, who probably ignores who Hitler was, let alone the SS.
Apparently all of Bush’s shame washed off while he did his bathtub paintings. Now he has none at all.
Tommy, now is that a nice thing to say? Talking about another man in a bath tub, sounds a little strange to me. Talk about being shameless. Thomas with all do respect, eat shit!
This article was already written by Seph Rodney at Hyperallergic, weeks ago.
Both articles bring things to the table, and myopia and demand for hyper-current news are not entirely unrelated. (link he refers to)https://hyperallergic.com/368002/george-w-bushs-paintings-cannot-redeem-him/
Can’t a man express himself in a creative manner exibiting his patriotism and a compassion for people, in this case in particular U.S. veterans.News flash brainiac, President Bush dosent need your approval.
What patriotism and compassion for the US veterans? Bush, Jr., instructed the Pentagon to deny the veterans any kind of help by labeling their conditions as pre-existing conditions before they went into the military.
After it was found out that Bush did not read the memo regarding a possible 9/11 attack, the disaster caused by Hurrican Katrina and lackluster preparedness by FEMA plus the economic meltdown in 2008 caused by his no government regulation of the economy, Bush all of a sudden did care about the how the American public felt about him.
This article ignores the point of art criticism, which is to evaluate art.
There is a reason people talk about Roman Polanski’s work without reference to his sex crimes, Caravaggio without his act of murder, the Triumph of the Will movie without reference to the Holocaust, etc. George Bush’s paintings can be scrutinized without recourse to who he is and what he’s done, at least by the professionals you cite.
Attacking an artists work based on political differences is wrong, and it’s hateful and outright immature.
Conservatives don’t hesitate to attack artists’ work on political differences and right now Trump and his Republican Party want to cut funding for the arts. Talk about being hateful and outright immature.
Janis – These people you cite (and I could cite many others) were ARTISTS first — they made their living doing art, and they spent their whole lives plying their trade. They didn’t get lots of publicity (at least initially) for just ‘showing up’. GW Bush is a political figure, first and foremost — that’s the ONLY reason we and the numerous other articles mentioned above are even focusing on his art. The tens of thousands of art majors in high schools & colleges who can paint just as well (if not better) than GW Bush don’t get free appearances on major national TV shows and reviews or even mentioned in major national/international papers. Even art criticism often delves into the personal life of the artist and his politics, especially when the subject matter of the artist is political, which is often what many artists are looking for when they paint political subject matter (e.g.; ‘Guernica’ readily comes to mind).
Perfect response to an idiotic argument. I just loathe the moral “neutrality” of the Yuppies. Glad their era is almost over.
George W. Bush is a war criminal and a torturer! Why is he even talked about? He belongs in prison with his buddy who followed his lead, Obama!
You seem to be confused, the war criminal was Saddam Hussein, dosent anyone remember he gased his own people, invaded kuwait, and was paying the families of suicide bombers $25,000 promoting terrorism specifically murdering Jews in Israel. How about when he didn’t cooperate with U.N. inspectors denying them entrance into nuclear potential powerplants for 4 years. Someone had to do something about it ,and someone did. Weapons of mass distruction or not.
We back up Saddam Hussein for years as an ally of Iran when the Shah got deposed and rightly so when you look at the crimes he did against his own people. Iraq did cooperate and the inspectors found no WMDs and as many Republicans admitted, the war was about oil.
Meant to say that we back Iraq because we need an ally against Iran after the Shah was deposed so we are responsible for letting him get away with the crimes. Bush, Senior after the First Gulf War encourage the Iraq people to rise up against Saddam; however, Bush did not enforce the no-fly zone and let Saddam’s helicopters slaughter the rebels, so we are responsible for helping commit those crimes.
I also don’t think much of Bush’s art. I also keenly anticipate a wounding reply from his single supporter in the gallery Mr Avila.
I remember vividly, the scene of Bush looking for the WMD’s at the Washington Correspondents annual dinner and all the press laughing when Bush lifted a table cloth and saying–“no WMD’s here” and getting a boisterous laugh from the press. The scene though was an American soldier watching this on TV play out, who was paralyzed from the waste down from an Iraqi soldier’s bullet. This young American soldier was lied to about the WMD’s, lied to about Saddam Hussein having yellow cake uranium;lied to about the whole idea of the need to invade Iraq. I don’t know why Bush couldn’t perfect his artistic talents from inside prison walls painting fellow prisoners–Dick Chenney, Paul Wolfowitz, NYT & Washington Post journalists who sold the massive deadly lie. Thousands of American soldiers;hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men women and children dead and injured, the Syrian refugee crisis, ISIS can all be laid at the doorstep of the Bush administration profound blunder in Iraq based on lies. Let him paint the real axis of evil-doers from inside prison walls. And Madeleine Albright should be in there with him (and his cabal) for her justification of killing 500,000 Iraqi children during the previous embargo of Iraq. Presidential Prison Art has a nice ring to it.
Great!
Is Richard Avila the pen name of GW Bush? : )
so—-this anger seems all blown up—;like a wmd, I guess. As to the art, it reminds me of an older relative who said he was an oil painter, —–but back in his day they was a thing called paint by numbers and the paint in these photos reminds me of that.
My favorite GW painting is the one where all you can see is a man in a bathtub—with his legs floating out in front of him…..I seriously wondered if this was what GW thought “waterboarding” was.
** George H. W. Bush **
Final Judgment: International War Crimes Tribunal
The members of the International War Crimes Tribunal, meeting in New York, have carefully considered the Initial Complaint of the Commission of Inquiry dated May 6, 1991 against President George H. W. Bush, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Commander of the Allied Forces in the Persian Gulf, and others named in the Complaint charging them with nineteen separate crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the First Protocol thereto, and other international agreements and customary international law:
Done in New York this 29th day of February, 1992.
http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrim3.htm
Also :
Ex-President George H. Bush accused of war crimes and political killings
http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/bush_war_criminal.htm
———————————————————
** George W Bush **
Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of-war-crimes-in-absentia/
Also :
War Crimes Case Filed In Germany Against Bush Administration By Human Rights Group
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/war-crimes-case-filed-germany-against-bush
UN Could Prosecute Bush for War Crimes, Says Ex-U.S. Terror Czar
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/18441-un-could-prosecute-bush-for-war-crimes-says-ex-u-s-terror-czar
Ethiopia, Tanzania & Zambia: Arrest Former President Bush for Torture
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/ethiopia-tanzania-zambia-arrest-former-president-bush-for-torture/
War Crimes Suits Filed In Belgium Against Bush, Blair
http://www.rense.com/general38/belg.htm
George Bush Found Guilty of War Crimes in Japan
http://www.metafilter.com/32290/George-Bush-Found-Guilty-of-War-Crimes-in-Japan
Bush Guilty Of War Crimes : Court Ruling – The Arab Lawyers Union
http://songun-blog.blogspot.com/2005/12/bush-guilty-of-war-crimes-court-ruling.html
Bush on Trial for War Crimes in Halifax, Nova Scotia
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/canadian_news/2004/12/06/bush_on_tr.html
George W. Bush could be arrested in any country for War Crimes–except in Obama’s America?
https://eslkevin.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/george-w-bush-could-be-arrested-in-any-country-for-war-crimes-except-in-obamas-america/
Iraqi Single Mom And Tech Lawyer Suing George W. Bush for War Crimes
http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2013/08/17/iraqi-single-mom-and-tech-lawyer-suing-george-w-bush-for-war-crimes/
GEORGE W BUSH BANNED FROM VENEZUELA AFTER COUNTRY’S PRESIDENT BRANDS HIM A TERRORIST
http://www.infowars.com/george-w-bush-banned-from-venezuela-after-countrys-president-brands-him-a-terrorist/
————————————————————
** John Ellis ( Jeb ) Bush **
Jeb Bush and the Murder of CIA Drug Smuggler Barry Seal in 1986
http://barrysealmurder1986jebbusholivernorth.blogspot.com/2013/03/jeb-bush-was-running-drug-alcohol-ring.html
The Jeb Bush Illegal Drug and Liquor Distributorship at Andover
http://capitolhilloutsider.com/the-jeb-bush-illegal-drug-and-liquor-distributorship-at-andover/
Police ‘Showdown’ Over Schiavo Averted
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0326-03.htm
————————————————–
** Marvin Bush **
9/11 Security
Courtesy of Marvin Bush
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/911security.html
MARVIN BUSH EMPLOYEE’S MYSTERIOUS DEATH – CONNECTIONS TO 9/11?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/101003_bush_death.html
‘Frauds-R-Us’
The Bush Family Saga
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3308.htm
The Bush family and the S&L Scandal
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm
Financial Scams and the Bush Family
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO202C.html
—————————————————–
** Neil Bush **
Savings and Loan Sacandal Neil Bush and Silverado More Reporting 4 18 1991 CBS.flv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRKy4YiOCfs
TRUST OR HUSTLE: The Bush Record
http://www.campaignwatch.org/more1.htm
—————————————————–
** George P Bush **
A Look Back At The Stalkerish Past Of The Bush Dynasty’s Future Star
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/george-p-bush/george-p-bush-stalking-758409
—————————————————–
Torture isn’t politics — it’s a war crime . It’s time to ban all the bush criminals from politics .
https://www.facebook.com/George-w-bush-War-Criminal-284513418378099/
To Richard Avila: Your many comments here might be more convincing if you didn’t adorn them with junior high school naughty words.
If George W. Bush and the scumbags in the corporate media and state run media had any dignity they’d douse themselves with the oil they made rich that they stole from Iraq, and commit harikiri by dousing themselves with that oil and light themselves on fire.
when i saw the headline in the woburn times , i felt like choking you . did not finish story , because SUNDAY GLOBE HAD THE ARTICLE THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT BUSH HAS DONE .
I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR THE ARTICLE . I WILL BE ABLE TO FINISH IT THIS TIME
TRY TO SEND TO ELLEN DEGENERES . HE WAS ON THE SHOW RECENTLY . PLEASE THANK YOU . 82 YR.OLD NAVY VET