George Bush Snr

[relm1]

England profited by the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire. a treeful of plums fell into its lap. The French didn't do much to get Syria and Lebanon. TE Lawrence organized a ragtag army to hound the Turks from the East and South. The problem with the Sykes-Picot agreement was drawing lines in the sand when indeed they should have been according to tribes, the same mess they made in Africa.

The french were horrific to Algeria and the colonies they owned.  Worst of all was post WW2 atrocities after they themselves were victims of tyranny.   They treated African's and Vietnamese as subhuman in the 1950's 1960's.  Very cruel times.  Just calling a spade a spade.  My take the Bush family, George W. Bush was a kind and gentle man who sadly wasn't very smart.  He was played by Cheney who was more cunning than he was.  George H.W. Bush was a shrewd man who lacked political savvy.  Ultimately sharp but didn't know how to express it to the masses in a way a politically savvy man like Reagan understand, who lacked Bush Seniors mind but was extremely gregarious and still had a conscious.  Unlike modern day republicans.

[Ken B]

George H.W. Bush was a shrewd man who lacked political savvy.  Ultimately sharp but didn't know how to express it to the masses in a way a politically savvy man like Reagan understand, who lacked Bush Seniors mind but was extremely gregarious and still had a conscious.  Unlike modern day republicans.

Your impression of Reagan would be a bit wrong then. Reagan was the driving force (and the other key player was Schultz ) See eg The End Of The Cold War, Robert Service. It is alas a dry read.

[zamyrabyrd]

This following is only a sampling of what is freely available about the Bush family on the web.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bush-familys-links-to-nazi-germany-a-famous-american-family-made-its-fortune-from-the-nazis/5512243

This article is cross-referenced from the above one, written in 2003 after a visit by George W Bush to Auschwitz.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/06/bush-j05.html

I found the following profoundly shocking, given how the word "evil" was thrown around at the turn of this century. George Bush could never be counted on to be a great thinker or speaker, so he said they are EVIL, so we were supposed to believe his rallying cry.

I was thinking back then: Tell us, oh Great Leader, what the heck does Iraq have to do with the 9/11 attacks? Oh, they're "evil" and we're spreading "freedom" while killing half a million people and displacing many more. The pernicious missing link is of course Bin Laden who allegedly carried out them out which was the pretext for invading Iraq and finishing the job left by Bush Sr. This is really terrible in hindsight.

In a speech delivered in Krakow that same day, Bush declared that the concentration camps "remind us that evil is real and must be called by name and must be opposed." He continued: "Having seen the works of evil firsthand on this continent, we must never lose the courage to oppose it everywhere."

The cause of the Holocaust, Bush suggested, was "evil." For the US president, the word "evil" serves to cover up a multitude of sins. He has used it repeatedly to describe the Islamic fundamentalist group that carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On numerous occasions he has referred to the leader of Al Qaeda as "the evil one." This particular expression serves a very immediate political purpose, since it avoids naming Osama bin Laden and thereby calling to mind the longstanding business association between the Bushes and the wealthy bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia.

The existence of "evil" constitutes the only explanation given by the Bush administration for the emergence of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Such a semi-mystical and religious presentation (which, of course, assumes that the United States government embodies "good") has the advantage of precluding any consideration of politics or history...

The use of the word "evil" serves a similar function in the case of the Holocaust. This attempt to obscure the social, political and economic roots of the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and the horrific crimes that followed is not unique to Bush. The adoption of anti-communism as the core of the post-World War II US ideology made any analysis of the anti-socialist roots of fascism inconvenient. Rather, communism and fascism were equated as "totalitarian" and "evil."

...It was widely understood that the Nazis, like Mussolini's fascist party, had been elevated to power with the backing of big business for the purpose of smashing the socialist workers' movement and eradicating the threat of revolution.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the US occupation authorities found themselves obliged to recognize the culpability of German big business in the crimes carried out by the Nazi regime. Gen. Telford Taylor, one of the principal prosecutors in the Nuremberg war crimes trials, pressed for the conviction of some of the top German industrialists. One of these was Friedrich Flick, the co-owner of the German Steel Trust with Fritz Thyssen. From 1932 on, he was one of the main financial contributors to the Nazis and the SS.

Prescott Bush and the Nazis

In Bush's case, covering up the historical origins of fascism in Germany serves a particular, indeed personal, function. While the president's father had dealings with the bin Ladens, his grandfather made a considerable share of the family fortune through his dealings with Nazi Germany. Some have suggested that the Bushes' assets have their ultimate source, in part, in the exploitation of slave labor at Auschwitz itself.

From the 1920s into the 1940s—after the Second World War had begun—Prescott Bush was a partner and executive in the Brown Brothers Harriman holding company on Wall Street and a director of one of its key financial components, the Union Banking Corporation (UBC).

Together with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker—the current president's great grandfather—Prescott Bush controlled another asset of the holding company, the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line, which was utilized by the Nazi regime to transport its agents in and out of North America.

Another subsidiary of the Harriman group, Harriman International Co., struck a deal with Hitler's regime in 1933 to coordinate German exports to the US market.

UBC, meanwhile, managed all of the banking operations outside of Germany for Fritz Thyssen, the German industrial magnate and author of the book I Paid Hitler, in which he acknowledged having financed the Nazi movement from 1923 until its rise to power.

In October 1942, 10 months after it had entered the Second World War, the US government seized UBC and several other companies in which the Harrimans and Prescott Bush had interests. In addition to Bush and Roland Harriman, three Nazi executives were named in the order issued by Washington to take over the bank.

An investigation carried out in 1945 revealed that the bank run by Prescott Bush was linked to the German Steel Trust run by Thyssen and Flick, one of the defendants at Nuremberg. This gigantic industrial firm produced fully half the steel and more than a third of the explosives, not to mention other strategic materials, used by the German military machine during the war years.

On October 28, 1942, the US government confiscated the assets of two firms that served as fronts for the Nazi regime—the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, both controlled by UBC. A month later, it seized Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation (SAC), directed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Walker.

The seizure order, issued under the Trading with the Enemy Act, described Silesian-American as a "US holding company with German and Polish subsidiaries" that controlled large and valuable coal and zinc mines in Silesia, Poland and Germany. It added that, since September 1939 (when Hitler unleashed the Second World War) these properties had been under the control of the Nazi regime, which had utilized them to further its war effort.

Among SAC's assets was a steel plant in Poland in the same district as Auschwitz. The plant reportedly used the concentration camp's inmates as slave labor.

Among those who have investigated the links between the Bushes and the Nazis is John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's War Crimes Unit, who now heads the Florida Holocaust Museum in Saint Petersburg. Loftus has charged that the Bush family received $1.5 million from its interest in UBC, when the bank was finally liquidated in 1951. "That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich," Loftus said in a recent speech.

Loftus argues that this money—a substantial sum at that time—included direct profit from the slave labor of those who died at Auschwitz. In an interview with journalist Toby Rogers, the former prosecutor said: "It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920s, but giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed Allied solders. As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen's coal mines used Jewish slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and historical questions to be answered about the Bush family's complicity."

Prescott Bush was by no means unique, though his financial connections with the Third Reich were perhaps more intimate than most. Henry Ford was an avowed admirer of Hitler, and together GM and Ford played the predominant role in producing the military trucks that carried German troops across Europe. After the war, both auto companies demanded and received reparations for damage to their German plants caused by allied bombing.

[Todd]

Oh really? is that the one with the near total destruction of civilian infrastructure, and massive civilian casualties through bombing dwarfed by the ongoing and far higher civilian causalities caused by exposure to depleted uranium? And where they left without removing the dictator?

Yes.

George H. W. Bush was bad (and should have been convicted of war crimes). For more hot takes, please subscribe to my newsletter.

Moral labels are irrelevant in practical terms, particularly when applied to foreign policy.  While it is true that Bush I, like every president since at least FDR, committed war crimes, it must be remembered that prosecution for such crimes is relegated to leaders of weak or defeated powers and will be until such time that a meaningful global enforcement mechanism for international law is agreed to and adopted by all sovereign nation states.  Don't expect a change this century.

[Ken B]

Apparently the only thing worse than the Nazis was overthrowing the Nazis. 

[Todd]

Apparently the only thing worse than the Nazis was overthrowing the Nazis. 

I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.

[Ken B]

Because Nazi justice is renowned for its fairness. And because Curtis Le May was President.

[Todd]

And because Curtis Le May was President.

I thought the point was simple, but allow me to explain it to you: LeMay was honest and understood that had the US lost he likely would have been tried and executed.  Fortunately, the US won and we were the ones who got to perform the executions after shoddy show trials.  (I know you stand by the validity of the trials, which is certainly your prerogative.)  This is one reason why winning big wars is so important.

As to FDR, he was Commander in Chief, and as such he was ultimately responsible for the actions of the military.  Comes with the job.  Also, he imprisoned an entire race of Americans during the war.  That's one of those actions that borders on being a war crime.  Certainly, when leaders in other countries engage in similar actions, they are considered downright unwholesome. 

[Florestan]

I thought the point was simple, but allow me to explain it to you: LeMay was honest and understood that had the US lost he likely would have been tried and executed.  Fortunately, the US won and we were the ones who got to perform the executions after shoddy show trials.  (I know you stand by the validity of the trials, which is certainly your prerogative.) 

I don't know if Ken really stands by it but I certainly don't --- USSR prosecuting Nazi Germany is a bad and tasteless joke. Stalin prosecuting Hitler! Risum teneatis, amici?

[SimonNZ]

Apparently the only thing worse than the Nazis was overthrowing the Nazis. 

I think of Gulf War One as an example of "destroying the village in order to save it", so I'd see an analogy closer to Vietnam than WW2.

[Ken B]

I thought the point was simple, but allow me to explain it to you: LeMay was honest and understood that had the US lost he likely would have been tried and executed.  Fortunately, the US won and we were the ones who got to perform the executions after shoddy show trials.  (I know you stand by the validity of the trials, which is certainly your prerogative.)  This is one reason why winning big wars is so important.

As to FDR, he was Commander in Chief, and as such he was ultimately responsible for the actions of the military.  Comes with the job.  Also, he imprisoned an entire race of Americans during the war.  That's one of those actions that borders on being a war crime.  Certainly, when leaders in other countries engage in similar actions, they are considered downright unwholesome.

You aren't defending your claim. Curtis Le May making an observation about "victor's justice" is not an admission he committed any war crime. It is certainly no proof FDR did. Interning the Japanese Americans was a very bad act, but it wasn't a war crime.

How exactly do you know what I think about Nuremberg?
One thing I will say. Justified or not they were not just show trials because several were acquitted, including Schacht.

[Todd]

USSR prosecuting Nazi Germany is a bad and tasteless joke.

So was the US prosecuting Nazis.

The treatment of enemy countries has seldom been just after any war, but only now are we beginning to get some justice into our treatment of Germany. Our treatment has been harsh in the American Zone as a deliberate matter of government policy, and has offended Americans who saw it and felt that it was completely at variance with American instincts. We gave countenance to the revengeful and impracticable Morgenthau plan which would have reduced the Germans to economic poverty. We have fooled ourselves in the belief that we could teach another nation democratic principles by force. Why, we can't even teach our own people sound principles of government. We cannot teach liberty and justice in Germany by suppressing liberty and justice...

I believe that most Americans view with discomfort the war trials which have just been concluded in Germany and are proceeding in Japan. They violate that fundamental principle of American law that a man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute. The hanging of the eleven men at Nuremberg will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret.

The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice. I question whether the hanging of those, who, however despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice.

In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trials, government policy and not justice, having little relation to our Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing vengeance in the forms of legal procedure, we may discredit the whole idea of justice in Europe for years to come. In the last analysis, even at the end of a frightful war, we should view the future with more hope if even our enemies believed that we have treated them justly in trials, in the provision of relief and in the final disposal of territory. I pray that we do not repeat the procedure in Japan, where the justification on the grounds of vengeance is much less than in Germany.

I think of Gulf War One as an example of "destroying the village in order to save it", so I'd see an analogy closer to Vietnam than WW2.

The first Gulf War was not about doing anything beneficial for Iraq or Iraqis.  It was about enforcing the Carter Doctrine.

How exactly do you know what I think about Nuremberg?

You've written about it before.  On this forum.

And there is unequivocal evidence that FDR and his senior military commanders committed war crimes.  Strategic bombing of civilian centers in Germany and the fire bombing of Japanese cities, organized by LeMay as it happens, were war crimes using the standards of "justice" applied by the Allies and established under international law after the war.  Total war relies on systematic application of techniques that result in the murder of millions of civilians.  But, again, the US won, so we got to apply victor's justice. 

You will note also that I did not write that internment was, strictly speaking, and taking into account the standards of the day, a war crime.  Today, it would be considered ethnic cleansing and could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity.  Well, I mean, if the US was not the most powerful single nation state on earth and its head of state could be held accountable under international law.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

There are war crimes and there are war crimes. Bombing of civilian centers in Europe and Japan meet the definition of terrorism. Hiroshima was selected specifically because it had been more-or-less untouched by U.S. bombing and the destructive power of the atomic bomb would be more evident. The fact that the US was at some level ashamed of this action is demonstrated by the fact that Harry Truman lied in his address to the U.S. after the attack, when he described Hiroshima as a military base. There was a small military garrison in Hiroshima, but the bomb targeted the city center, not the military base in the outskirts.

But there is something to be said for intent. It can be honestly argued that the intention was to end the war as soon as possible. And the U.S. made a genuine effort to help its former enemies return to stability and prosperity when the war was over.

[amw]

And there is unequivocal evidence that FDR and his senior military commanders committed war crimes.  Strategic bombing of civilian centers in Germany and the fire bombing of Japanese cities, organized by LeMay as it happens, were war crimes using the standards of "justice" applied by the Allies and established under international law after the war.  Total war relies on systematic application of techniques that result in the murder of millions of civilians. 
[...]
You will note also that I did not write that internment was, strictly speaking, and taking into account the standards of the day, a war crime.  Today, it would be considered ethnic cleansing and could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity.

Honestly, aside from their early pact with Hitler, the USSR comes out of WWII with cleanest hands. US efforts to "rebuild" West Germany consisted of putting lots of former Nazis back in power with the understanding they'd stay on the US's side to fight the Soviets—for all the show trials and everything, it was East Germany that was most thoroughly denazified, at a certain cost (a highly restrictive surveillance state—but then we had, and still have, one of those in the US and Five Eyes countries as well—and the Berlin Wall).

As well, virtually all of the US's wars over its history would be considered illegal & involving war crimes if the US lacked the military and economic power to withstand international sanctions and condemnation. Historical reading of note.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Honestly, aside from their early pact with Hitler, the USSR comes out of WWII with cleanest hands. US efforts to "rebuild" West Germany consisted of putting lots of former Nazis back in power with the understanding they'd stay on the US's side to fight the Soviets—for all the show trials and everything, it was East Germany that was most thoroughly denazified, at a certain cost (a highly restrictive surveillance state—but then we had, and still have, one of those in the US and Five Eyes countries as well—and the Berlin Wall).

You claim that in the post-war period West Germans suffered and East Germans prospered? East German border guards shot and killed citizens who were simply trying to cross the frontier and leave East Germany. That and the Stasi is your definition of clean hands?

[amw]

You claim that in the post-war period West Germans suffered and East Germans prospered?

No, more that West Germany continued to have Nazi collaborators in their military, security services, etc and East Germany didn't.

East German border guards shot and killed citizens who were simply trying to cross the frontier and leave East Germany.

American border guards shoot and kill people who are simply trying to cross the frontier and enter America. This isn't a good thing but it's also not a particularly unusual thing.

That and the Stasi is your definition of clean hands?

The USSR in WWII had relatively clean hands. The Stasi was a project of the postwar period, much like most of the USA's current intelligence agencies, & had the usual issues caused by the Soviet deep security state (NKVD/KGB), its attempts to gain political power to overthrow Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev/whoever else it decided to overthrow, & those figures' attempts to resist it without alienating it. The Stasi also happened to be pretty effective at getting rid of Nazis, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a primary means of doing so.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

American border guards shoot and kill people who are simply trying to cross the frontier and enter America. This isn't a good thing but it's also not a particularly unusual thing.

No. They do not. They intercept, take into custody, temporarily detain, and deport people who are simply trying to cross the frontier and enter the United States. Those entering may occasionally become violent, requiring a violent response, and there are mistakes and/or individual agents who use their position as an excuse to express their sadistic impulses.

The USSR in WWII had relatively clean hands. The Stasi was a project of the postwar period, much like most of the USA's current intelligence agencies, & had the usual issues caused by the Soviet deep security state (NKVD/KGB), its attempts to gain political power to overthrow Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev/whoever else it decided to overthrow, & those figures' attempts to resist it without alienating it. The Stasi also happened to be pretty effective at getting rid of Nazis, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a primary means of doing so.

Stalin made a truce with Hitler and was prepared to turn over his enemies to the Nazi's, until Hitler reneged. That is your definition of clean hands. Stalin ordered the order of Polish military officers and civilians in 1939. Very clean hands. And Stalin, by the way, murdered more political opponents than Hitler, according to most historians. Clean hands.

[amw]

No. They do not.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2017/03/27/judge-let-border-patrol-agent-swartz-murder-case-proceed/99696226/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/border-patrol-agent-kills-woman-attempting-cross-texas/story?id=55457805
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Authorities-Identify-3-Killed-in-Border-Patrol-Pursuit-Crash-on-I-15-442814733.html
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Father-shot-by-border-agent-while-holding-his-3848597.php
(etc)

Stalin made a truce with Hitler and was prepared to turn over his enemies to the Nazi's, until Hitler reneged. That is your definition of clean hands. Stalin ordered the order of Polish military officers and civilians in 1939. Very clean hands.

Relatively speaking, Stalin committed fewer crimes against humanity in 1939-45 than Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Churchill, the Japanese Empire etc. You can draw what conclusions you like from that statement, but it is (as far as I know) true. 1931-36 or 1948-51 would be different stories obviously.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2017/03/27/judge-let-border-patrol-agent-swartz-murder-case-proceed/99696226/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/border-patrol-agent-kills-woman-attempting-cross-texas/story?id=55457805
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Authorities-Identify-3-Killed-in-Border-Patrol-Pursuit-Crash-on-I-15-442814733.html
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Father-shot-by-border-agent-while-holding-his-3848597.php
(etc)

I didn't say bad things never happen. Half a million or more people are removed per year. You've cited a handful of deaths, not all of which were deliberate.

Donald Trump's conduct has been a disgrace, but any country has a right to decide who is permitted to enter and who isn't.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

I'm not sure Marx advocated communism, so much as believed it was the inevitable endpoint of political/economic evolution.

Thank you for polite response. And a perfectly valid point. To be sure, it has been some time since I read Marx as well (I think Das Kapital is more interesting than Manifesto).