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Why aren't the Bush daughters in Iraq? The president's family has set an appallingly bad example for wartime sacrifice. By Kitty Kelley, KITTY KELLEY, who wrote "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," is working on a biography of Oprah Winfrey. March 19, 2007
WHEN I WAS a little girl in a convent school, the nuns impressed on me the power of setting a good example. These beloved teachers are no longer around to instruct the president and his family, so I recommend that the Bushes learn from Mark Twain, who said: "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
My suggestion comes after the White House announcement earlier this month that Jenna Bush, one of the president's twin daughters, is writing a book on her all-expenses-paid trip to Panama, where she worked for a few weeks as an intern for UNICEF. Jenna Bush is quoted as saying she will donate her earnings from her book to UNICEF, a commendable gesture, considering her father's net worth of $20 million. But while the 25-year-old makes the rounds of TV talk shows this fall in a White House limousine, dozens of her contemporaries will be arriving home from Iraq in wooden boxes. In Britain, Prince Harry is insisting on going off to Iraq even as his country is reducing its troop commitment.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed how the power of good example could also be powerfully good politics. When he led the country to sacrifice in World War II, his children enlisted and his wife traveled to military bases to counsel and comfort the families of soldiers. Newsreels showed the president's four sons fighting with the Marines in the Pacific, flying with the Army Air Forces in North Africa and landing with the Navy at Normandy. Soon other public figures followed suit movie stars (James Stewart and Clark Gable) enlisted and sports heroes (Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg) went off to war.
The contrast between FDR's good example during wartime and that of George W. Bush is stark and sad. The Bush family rallies to the political campaigns of its scions and spends months on the road raising money and shaking hands to put their men into public office. In fact, the public image of their cohesive family the pearl-choked matriarch surrounded by progeny and springer spaniels helped cinch more than one presidency for the Bushes. Yet now, when its legacy is most in peril, the family seems to be squandering its good will on a mess of celebridreck.
The president tells us Iraq is a "noble" war, but his wife, his children and his nieces and nephews are not listening. None has enlisted in the armed services, and none seems to be paying attention to the sacrifices of military families. Until Jenna's trip to Panama, the presidential daughters performed community service only when mandated by a court after they were cited for underage drinking. Since then they have surfaced in public during lavish presidential trips with their parents, bar-hopping outings in Georgetown and champagne-popping art openings in New York.
The first lady, so often lauded for her love of literacy, has not been seen in the reading rooms of veterans' hospitals. The president's sister, Doro, publicly picketed Al Gore's last days in the vice president's mansion as he awaited the Supreme Court's decision on the Florida recount of 2000. Yet she has been strangely absent from publicly supporting her brother's war.
The presidential nieces and nephews also have missed the memo on setting a good public example. Ashley Bush the youngest daughter of the president's brother, Neil, and Neil's ex-wife, Sharon was presented to Manhattan society at the 52nd Annual International Debutantes Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Her older sister, Lauren, a runway model, told London's Evening Standard that she is a student ambassador for the United Nations World Food Program, but she would not lobby her uncle for U.S. funds. Her cousin, Billy Bush, chronicles the lives of celebrities on "Access Hollywood."
"Uncle Bucky," as William H.T. Bush is known within the family, is one presidential relative who has profited from the Iraq war. He recently sold all of his shares in Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI), a St. Louis-based company that has flourished under the president's no-bid policy for military contractors. Uncle Bucky told the Los Angeles Times that he would have preferred that ESSI, on whose board he sits, was not involved in Iraq, "but, unfortunately, we live in a troubled world."
The only member of the Bush family to show the strains of our "troubled world" is former President George H.W. Bush, who shed tears recently while addressing the Florida Legislature. The elder Bush was talking about son Jeb's gubernatorial loss in 1994. Jeb, who was later elected, tried to console him. But the sobs of Bush 41 seemed to be more about his older son's "noble" war.
Perhaps the father's sadness sprang from his own experience fighting in what his parents called "Mr. Roosevelt's war" the good war the war that saved the world from tyranny. He enlisted at 18 to fly torpedo bombers. He flew 58 missions in two years and returned home a war hero. Since then, no one in his large family has seen fit to follow his sterling example of service and patriotism.
Posts: 6008 | From: phoenix az | Registered: Mar 2005
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1) if you have been to Iraq or Afganistan what you say is worthy.
2) if you have not, what you say is not worth hearing, so shut up.
Either or both of those is absurd and making such a demand smacks of the RNC/dubya approach to truth, i.e., it is sickeningly un-American and dishonest.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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I have, a couple of times, I was just asking Bond if he was setting an example for his kids. No offense to the Bush twins, but I don't think either of them would be cut out to do much over there. I would much rather have them back home supporting those there than them becoming a casualty. There are plenty of good men and women willing and able to make the sacrifices necessary to get the job done.
I know I know, I have been brain washed by the propaganda to believe Saddam and Osama are bad guys, that I am guilty of.
-------------------- Damn, if he wasn't right. Posts: 391 | From: Tallinn, Estonia | Registered: Aug 2004
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brainwashed? no, i don't think so. the problem is that Bush confused Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush seems to be confused deeply and frequently. Afghanistan is a righteous cause, and WAS winnable. Bush by his own words has made this whole war on terror unwinnable. He has no clue what type of victory is impossible and what type of victory is possible, he never did, and by defining victory the way he has, he has insured that we cannot win. We can win every single military engagement and LOSE the war, simply because diplomacy does not come out of the barrel of a gun.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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You are more guilty of participating in the republican campaign to misinform the public in order to subvert the Constitution and suppress the will of the people.
That Saddam and Ben Laden were (or are) "bad guys" in NO WAY justifies allowing a mad idiot with the tractics of the Nazies to plunder the world and undermine what was, before him, the most powerful and influential Nation that had ever existed.
And your efforts to imply that dubya or any of his sick aims should be supported and counter opinions silenced makes you just another fascist.
Suppression of ideas is the first need of a dictator.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Yes ohdagagain I do set a good example for my son who is a career officer in the USAF.
Why would you ask that because he was taught to think and not swallow a bunch of right wing b/s
As far as being in the middle east in war or out of war the answer is no I did go to Viet Nam though and if my country would have called I would have went to the mid east.
If you are an American you might understand the respect we have for rule of law not blood line we got rid of that at the point of a gun barrel. And our law says we can change if our leaders stop doing our will. Or going on a course of fudelism.
If you are a believer in George Bush plans you are my enemy and screw you if not that is my answer
Posts: 6008 | From: phoenix az | Registered: Mar 2005
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