Goodbye Mr. Bush - Op Ed from Turkey

Goodbye Mr. Bush, we will never miss you
by
MUSTAFA ACAR

(Op-Ed in Today's Zaman)

Dear George W. Bush,
I have to say a few words now that you are no longer in office. Please accept this as a farewell message you have deserved for a long time. Congratulations, Mr. Bush; you came into office as a hope of contributing to the development of a "new world order" of peace and prosperity, but you are now leaving behind a world of war and misery. You came into office promising to increase security and confidence; thanks to your unrespectable policies, now the world is less secure and less confident.

The neocons of Washington manipulated your power and the tools at your disposal to fulfill their evil desires for aggression, war and invasion. You used the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001 as an excuse not to fight against terrorism in any real sense -- i.e., tackling the real causes of terrorism -- but to invade countries and topple governments, hence feeding terrorism. You have never been fair or just in international conflicts, the worst example of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Your administration supported Israel unconditionally and blindly, ignoring all the atrocities, pain, massacres, destruction and aggression suffered by innocent Palestinian men, women and children. Millions have been killed, murdered or expelled from their homeland, died of hunger or suffered from lack of basic necessities like food, medicine, electricity and water in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine thanks to your unjust, aggressive use of military power. Thanks to your irresponsible policies, anti-American feeling skyrocketed worldwide. The international community's trust of America hit bottom; you destroyed your country's image and credibility in every sense. Thanks to your evangelical-neocon hybrid mentality and power-hungry policies, the world became a much worse place to live in and the world economy now faces its biggest crisis since the Great Depression.

In fact, you used the chance God bestowed upon you in the worst way one can think of. You could have used the power at your disposal for peace and construction, but you chose to use it for war and destruction. You never acted in accordance with what you said: You said you were for democracy and freedom, but you acted as a world dictator and pursued the enslavement of countries and people. Hundreds of men were tortured and treated inhumanely at Guantanamo and other secret torture houses around the world. You kept silent when India developed its nuclear weapons, but went crazy when Iran tried to do the same. You never criticized Israel for its nuclear weapons or the atrocities carried out by the brutal Zionist leaders; on the contrary, you supported their crimes against humanity, the last example of which was experienced in Gaza over the last month. You blocked the UN Security Council from making a decision to stop Israeli atrocities. You treated all the movements in the Muslim world as terrorist, regardless of the huge diversity and differences among their approaches to democracy, peace, freedom and the use of violence. During your so-called "War on Terrorism," the world witnessed the worst examples of violence, aggression, invasion, maltreatment and double standards. Treasures of humanity and civilization were plundered in Baghdad and many other cities.

All these terrible acts, Mr. Bush, emerged out of or were legitimized by a neocon-evangelical mentality, the twin sister of which I would call the "radical-Salafi" mentality in the other part of the world. This mentality has certain characteristics that I believe are commonly shared by all radical movements across the world: radical-Jewish Zionists, radical-Salafi Islamists, racist-chauvinist nationalists, fascist socialists, radical-revolutionary communists and, of course, Christian evangelical-neocons. All share the common characteristics of egocentrism, intolerance, arrogance, believing that there is one and only one truth that they themselves represent, that they are right and everybody else is wrong and that they have the right to force others to follow their way, easily resorting to violence when things go wrong and binary thinking of "black and white," "friends or foes," "us and terrorists" and "either my way or no way."

The unavoidable consequence of this mentality, unfortunately, never leads to peace and prosperity. On the contrary, it always brings fighting, war, destruction, sanctions and all varieties of bans and restrictions on human freedom, as your eight years in office proved. The political reflection of this mentality is not democracy and human rights, but dictatorship and oppression. The economic reflection of this mentality is not free trade and or a market economy, but protectionism and monopolies. This mentality uses religious-ideological symbols and banners to cover and legitimize its power-hungry pursuit of hegemony and economic and political self-interest. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush, your administration set a very bad example during your term. Thanks to you, the world is now less secure, less prosperous, less safe and less confident. We see insecurity, invasions and bloodshed everywhere. What a bad finish, leaving the office as one of the least reliable and most hated persons in the world.

But this is not the end of the story: There is an end to every bad, unrespectable and inhumane thing in the world. Every dictatorship, every hegemonic power, eventually faces the unavoidable collapse or end. And there is always hope for a better, brighter future, which makes us human beings grab the rope of life despite all difficulties. Now, with a new president in office in Washington, we can hope that he can undo every bad thing you did, and do a lot of good things you avoided, such as trying peaceful ways of solving problems, giving negotiation and diplomacy a chance, international cooperation, respecting democracy, freedom and human rights and promoting investments, free trade and the market economy, rather than war, unilateralism, threats, aggression and invasion. We hope that the American people learned enough from your period that unilateral, arrogant, militarist policies are not the way to go and that the neocon mentality is not the one American people need in the White House. We hope that Barack Obama turns a new page, as he promised in his inauguration speech, with the Muslim world based on mutual understanding and mutual respect.

Professor Mustafa Acar is a lecturer at Kırıkkale University, Turkey.

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