Goodbye, good riddance

George W. Bush’s farewell address was a feeble defense of his eight years as U.S. commander-in-chief. This top war criminal reminisced about the rubble he stood on following 9/11 for a piece of photo-op propaganda. He avoided explaining his role in filling scores of cities around the world with the debris of war and imperialist subjugation, killing hundreds of thousands of people, committing acts of massive state terrorism, trying to make torture an acceptable tactic, and using state powers to repress movements that oppose the crimes just mentioned.

Even in the U.S., where the population has been inculcated with racist, imperialist and chauvinist ideology, George W. Bush is clearly one of the most unpopular and hated presidents in history.

Bush bragged about creating the “Department of Homeland Security” and expanding the powers of the government to “fight terrorism.” Perhaps to the bankers and capitalists whom he served faithfully, this was an accomplishment.

For all his talk about “homeland security,” Bush and his regime allowed thousands of innocent people to die in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and then treated those who survived as criminals. Tens of thousands are still displaced from the Gulf region, while luxury contractors grow rich rebuilding New Orleans into a city where the poor are not welcome to return.

Bush bragged that following 9/11 not another U.S. city was filled with rubble because of a terrorist attack. But this is a lie. As he departs his throne atop the world empire of capitalism, the country he stares down upon is filled with destruction and economic terrorism.

Whole neighborhoods are emptied by home foreclosures, houses sit empty and rotting, yet the population of homeless people grows. Bush’s cronies meanwhile are the criminal bankers who caused the mortgage crisis and subsequent capitalist meltdown. Like Bush, they too have not been brought to justice. Yet. Rather, Bush has rewarded them with a $500 billion bailout for their crimes, signing the bill with his usual sarcastic grin.

Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons, none is guilty of killing one-thousandth as many civilians, stealing one-thousandth as much money, and harming one ten-thousandth as many innocent people as the one who commands the country that locks them away. Bush’s criminality flows from the bosses and capitalists he serves, who own and control the world in their quest for never-ending profit.

Bush, Cheney and the other figures of this criminal regime will leave office. They are scheduled to live the rest of their lives in the same luxury and wealth they were born into. But let us hope for and fight toward the day when they are forced to suffer consequences for the crimes they committed against humanity and against the environment.

Bush’s departure is a welcome relief to the peoples of the world, who have already suffered too much. The capitalist system Bush so enthusiastically fought for and defended is more bankrupt and criminal than ever before. The best goodbye we can give this hated despot is to build a fightback movement against the capitalist class and stop the wars it wages on the workers and oppressed in the U.S. and around the world.