The Constitution Center hands out Awards for Munchhausen By Proxy on a National Scale

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President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush are set to be awarded with the “Liberty Medal” on November 11, 2018. The Constitution Center is awarding them “for their commitment to veterans.” The last seven years of Liberty Medal recipients include a strangely mixed bag: John McCain, John Lewis, the 14th Dalai Lama, Malala Yousafzai, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali and Robert Gates. Three of seven listed here have espoused warmongering policies and actions. Adding the Bushes to this list would mean that over the last eight years, the Constitution Center has given more or less equal honor to those who would initiate violence against countless innocents and those who are the victims of that unrestrained authoritarian power.

McCain, Clinton and Gates have all acted to continue US military involvement abroad. Thanks to Gates’ work at the CIA, McCain’s insistence on American warfare on behalf of our “brothers and sisters” in distant lands to bring them peace, freedom and Democracy and Clinton’s willingness to prove she can do anything those men can do, but better; the US continues to be at war and in support of war across the globe. McCain was an ally to Bush. Gates worked, not only for Obama, but Bush as well. George W. Bush presided over the start of unending war. Bush supported the Surveillance State’s rise by signing off on the Patriot Act. We are poorer as a Nation because of Bush, McCain, Clinton and Gates, not people like them, but them as individuals. US military involvement abroad has garnered more enemies for us. It is a lie that “they hate us for our Freedom.” The harsher truth, the truth that will color me as unpatriotic or traitorous to some, is that they hate us for killing their fathers, brothers, sons, lovers, husbands, friends, uncles and anyone else who we killed in the name of spreading Liberty and Democracy. The power to do all of that flies in the face of our Constitution, a document I value for setting up constraints on the Government.

I find it bitterly ironic that The Constitution Center is heaping accolades on collectivist authoritarians like the deadly quartet I cited above when their mentality and the policies springing from them, hurt people like the other half of their recent Liberty Medal recipients. The Constitution is designed to protect the Rights of the individual. The State has broken free of those chains a little more with each President, each conflict and each crisis. Lewis, Dalai Lama, Yousafzai, Ali all suffered as individuals at the hands of oppressive regimes. Ali refused to fight and kill people he had no quarrel with, so the State stripped him of his boxing license and he was put on trial and convicted for violating the draft call. Yousafzai was shot in a failed assassination attempt because she acted against the Taliban in Pakistan who were trying to enforce their brand of law. She wanted to be educated and for other girls to have that same opportunity, this violated Taliban law and she was shot three times for her violation of that law. For pushing back against that authority. The Dalai Lama wanted the Tibetan people to be free of the Chinese government; the Constitution supports this idea, but it does not require the US to get involved. Apparently the CIA used Tibet against China during the Cold War to the detriment of the Tibetan people. Lewis fought peacefully for Civil Rights. He sought to be treated as an individual with all the protection of his Rights promised by the Constitution.

I don’t have proof to lay out to you here, but I am fairly certain that Bush’s war in Afghanistan helped to push the Taliban into Yousafzai’s part of Pakistan where her father had previously run several schools for girls. Bush seeking the nebulous, collectivist goal of protecting all Americans from a tactic (terrorism) may be responsible for bringing harm to Yousafzai.

Finally, Bush launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He created the need for so many soldiers to be utilized in the Global, unending War on Terror. He put these men and women in harm’s way. He made them veterans. That a group claiming to support the values of the Constitution is awarding him for the help he has offered those Americans hurt by his needless wars that have chiefly served to make the world a more dangerous place, rippling out waves of violence and bloodshed for the last 17 years, is like congratulating a mother or father for bandaging the very child they physically abused.

For your edification, you can read about the CIA Tibet program and an exhaustive history of the War in Afghanistan by following the links provided. Scott Horton’s a Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan is available in hardcover, digital and audiobook format.