I refuse to canonize GHW Bush. He was responsible for a lot of pain and suffering. By comparison to his son and the current Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was better. But the caravans out of Central America, that was partially his doing. #ProxyWarInCentralAmerica
He campaigned against Ronald Reagan, calling his "free-market" fundamentalism "Voodoo Economics." (it's not truly free-market but that's a tale for another day) And yet, when he became Reagan's running mate, he stopped his reality-based critique of Reaganomics.
He was also head of the CIA at a time when the CIA was very busy interfering in the affairs of many sovereign nations, both in and out of the Imperium first claimed by President Monroe in the Doctrine named after him. He had no problem voiding elections with assassination.
He had nothing to do with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact bloc of nations and with the collapse of the USSR. That happened completely without our intervention. Gravity sort of pulled that "Potemkin village" down.
When the Soviet Bloc fell, we should have stepped in, like we did after WWII, with aid to our former foes and an offer of help to transition their economies to Western economies. Back in 1945, it was called the Marshall Plan. There should have been a similar Bush Plan.
As a result of the Marshall Plan, the groundwork was laid for an Unified Germany and a demilitarized and innovative Japan. Both countries prosper and are staunch allies now, 73 years later. Instead, Bush The Elder declared victory and stepped back to let the chips fall.
What was prevented by the Marshall Plan is what precisely happened in the Russian Federation. Gangsters took the place of politicians. A weak buffoon yielded to a strong snake in the grass, a former KGB Lt. Col., who brought his Intel buddies into his regime.
Eastern Europe, the former Soviet "stans" and the Russian Federation are now losing their luster as democratic republics, and similarly falling prey to autocrats, neo-Fascists, and kleptocrats. The ordinary people of these lands are arguably less well-off now.
You cannot say that everything about GHW Bush was hype. He was legitimately a war hero. He was legitimately a man of good intentions. But his policies were not necessarily best for this country and the World. We suffer from the damage inflicted on this country by Reagan & Bush.
@threadreaderapp unroll
