Poppy's Pain

by digby

I always find it interesting when Poppy Bush goes off the reservation. Crooks and Liars caught him today on Fox:

Bush defends his son’s disastrous presidency, but later in the interview as he and Wallace stood in a mock up of a tent used by U.S. soldiers during the first Gulf War, he vehemently defended his decision not to march on to Baghdad in 1991.

While watching footage of news clips from the conflict, Poppy becomes emotional when he describes what he believes to be the most lasting images from the conflict — the humane way in which the U.S. treated Iraqi prisoners.

Wallace: “The President remembered the courage and humanity of American soldiers and he grew emotional.”

Bush: “My favorite picture is a picture of American soldiers surrounding a guy whose been in a foxhole, Iraqi soldier, and the American guy says, we’re not going to harm you, we’re American soldiers.” (fights back tears)

Bush: “…See, that side of the war never got — the fact that we treated those people with respect in spite of the fact they were the enemy, it’s really good.

You can see the whole clip here.

Poppy has an ego. He became president of the United States and you can't do that if you don't have an ego. But he also loves his son and (even more importantly perhaps) the family name.

So what kind of hell do you think the man has gone through these past few years watching his idiot son not just fail miserably, but destroy his own most important accomplishment ---- the global coalition he brought together to successfully wage the first Gulf War (or at least how history first recorded it.) It must kill him to see that get all mashed up with Junior's debacle. He was a president too and now he's mostly seen as the father of the worst president in history, who, even more painfully, went out of his way to knock down his father's legacy.

And to watch all those fine old fashioned patriotic values of honor and decency that he once espoused (even if he was completely full of shit at the time) be just thrown into the trash bin by his own son must be excruciating.

Only fiction or poetry can do this story justice.