Jeb Abandons "I Am My Own Person" in Favor of "I Am W" - Revisionist History Included

Jeb Bush speaking in California on Tuesday (AP photo)

what eye thynk:  Being from Texas, I can see how Jeb Bush would have trouble relating to history; after all, the state school board there is revisionist history central.

Recent changes to Texas history books include downplaying the evils of slavery, removing references to the slave trade, de-emphasizing Thomas Jefferson's words on the separation of church and state, the assertion that the right to bear arms is an important part of being a democratic society, and suggesting that McCarthy was right in his 1950s communist witch hunt.

As a man fighting to be heard among the cacophony of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, Jeb is embracing his home state's truth twisting with a vengeance, re-writing history that is both recent and, for him, personal.

Gambling that a potential political weakness, (his brother) can be turned into a strength, he has reversed himself on his promise to be his own man, making his brother's foreign-policy advisers his own and describing W as his guru on U.S. policy in the Middle East.  In deciding to enfold and glorify his brother's disgraceful legacy, he is now free to blame the consequences of that legacy on--you guessed it--President Obama and Hillary Clinton. 

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Tuesday, Jeb referenced Iraq asserting that President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away."

His main talking point seems to be that President Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq prematurely creating a vacuum which ISIS was only too happy to fill, thus destabilizing the entire region; after which Hillary Clinton did nothing to preserve the peace his brother had brought to the country. According to Jeb's new, I-am-my-brother vision, when W. left office, the Middle East was awash in blooming flowers, the sun was shining bright in a clear blue sky, all citizens strolled arm and arm through gardens where little bunnies slept snuggled up between the paws of lions who purred peacefully while watching over their tiny friends.  

Then Barack Obama happened.

There is only one problem with Jeb's re-write.  What he is calling the first step to Middle East de-stabilization--the schedule for American troops to withdraw from Iraq--was set by W. in his final days in office.

As Time Magazine's Tony Karon wrote in 2011: "In one of his final acts in office, President Bush in December of 2008...signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that set the clock ticking on ending the war he'd launched in March of 2003.  The SOFA provided a legal basis for the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq after the United Nations Security Council mandate for the occupation mission expired at the end of 2008.  But it required that all U.S. forces be gone from Iraq by January 1, 2012, unless the Iraqi government was willing to negotiate a new agreement that would extend their mandate.  And as Middle East historian Juan Cole has noted, 'Bush had to sign what the (Iraqi) parliament gave him or face the prospect that U.S. troops would have to leave by 31 December, 2008, something that would have been interpreted as a defeat.'"

George W. Bush on May 2, 2003

And W. sure didn't want to admit defeat, not after playing dress-up and arriving on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a navy fighter jet to declare "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003.  The fact that neither W nor any of his  advisers  handlers had any ideas or any plan regarding what to do with Iraq after he declared hostilities at an end is seen by real historians as being responsible for that conflict--despite W's premature declaration of a fait accompli--continuing for eight more long years

And that's the legacy that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton inherited--not some fairy tale, happily ever after bulls**t.  

Washington Post blogger Paul Waldman noted the way Republican Washington sees the Iraq conflict: "Nothing is the fault of Republicans, or of the people who supported and launched the Iraq war... George W. Bush made no mistakes that might have any lessons for us..."

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that Jeb is the latest Texan to drink the W kool-aid.  W himself consumed a healthy portion when he approved his presidential library, a whitewashing of the Iraq war so extreme that it was called "the latest, grandest example of the eternal struggle of former presidents to rewrite history."  Washington Republicans have served up a daily dose of the same brew over the past years, ignoring W's mistakes while being only too happy to see President Obama's calm. steady diplomacy as standing in the way of another war. Guns! Tanks! Dead soldiers! Macho America at it's finest!  Whooopeeee!

And make no mistake, war is on Jeb's mind. Referring to ISIS, he told his Tuesday audience, "Civilized nations everywhere, especially those with power, have a duty to oppose and defeat this enemy."  Reading that statement, I am reminded of President Obama's opposite philosophy: "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean every problem is a nail."

Jeb may try to blame his support for another war on Hillary Clinton's failure as Secretary of State, but as Brad Woodhouse, president of Correct The Record wrote, "If Jeb Bush wants to spread blame for the situation in the Middle East, he doesn't need to look much further than his next family reunion."  Mr. Woodhouse is right.  Middle East wars are like a side-line family business for Bush presidencies.

So I guess I can't fault Jeb for picking up a violin and joining in the Bush Family/Republican War-chestra.   But, please, don't expect the rest of us to applaud Jeb's symphony--not when he is writing it in the key of lies.