The recent opening of the George W Bush Presidential Library brings to mind the East African Proverb; “Half the truth is often a whole lie…” Swahili. Disclaimer: I have not been to the new library and I am not sure whether I will ever cross its threshold. Historic events of decades past can often become fuzzy as we attempt to reconstruct them. Sometimes we falter with dates and times. However, viagra 60mg the legacy of the BUSH years is a part of our nation’s most recent history not decades past. How could we so quickly forget what actually happened during those years? Not what we believe or how we interpret what we believe but rather what actually happened?
There are two major revisions of history in the GWB Presidential library with which I take exception: 1) the representation of events leading up to the Iraq War and 2) the justifications given and recounting of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. No matter your personal politics or affinity there are certain truths and facts in the matter of the GW Bush Presidency that are indisputable. During those years the United States went to war with Iraq based on the assertion that Iraq with the help of Al Qaida, cialis led by Saddam Hussein attacked America on September 11th of 2001. Further, order Iraq was, at the time, developing and hiding WMDs. The administration claimed that Iraq, Al Qaida and others in the region were the “axis of evil” in the world and must be destroyed.
The rationale given for the lack of response by the federal government to the horrific losses and desperate struggles of the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was to criminalize the population of the 9th Ward in New Orleans. This justified the government’s designation of those residents as refugees and combatants, instead of as citizens of the United States in desperate need of emergency help and assistance. The story told in the hallowed halls of the library’s recounting paints the GWB administration as righteously protecting the public safety for the “good of the people” of Louisiana. If that’s not Revisionist History I don’t know what is?
Libraries are places where collections of things, books, memoirs and the re-member-ing of human history are stored for time and memorial. The re-telling of the aforementioned stories, as represented in the new GWB Presidential library in Texas have re-drawn the history of our recent past in such a fantastically re-constructed way that if you believe it …I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you! Ultimately, it is our responsibility to keep the truths of our history TRUE. Do not be a victim of “short-term memory loss” and the type of nostalgia that renders history to the bookshelves of fiction, novellas and new media full of fantasy instead of fact. WAKE UP and talk to me!
Dr.T
Artistic Director and Founder of
The Conciliation Project & Professor
At Virginia Commonwealth University
DrT@Margin2theCenter.com
www.theconciliationproject.org
Up next week: Neighbors & Neighborhoods then & now
