A couple of weeks ago, former President George W. Bush accidentally told the truth about the Iraq war.

Bush was the first president I ever hated, and the Iraq war ingrained in me a long-lasting (and  ongoing) hostility toward government and every member of Congress who voted for the war, so, this “gaffe” is of particular interest to me.

Speaking at an event in Dallas, Bush was talking about the lack of political checks and balances in Russian government, and was about to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine as he denounced the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”

Catching himself, he clarified, “I mean, of Ukraine,” before muttering, “Iraq, too.”

Of course, Bush passed it off as a slip due to his age. And Bush has always been known for his “Bushisms.” And so after making the rounds on social media, it has mostly fizzled away.

But I personally choose to be uncharitable toward Bush. I don’t care that he paints and seems like a nice guy. Personally, I think he should be painting in his cell at The Hague.

The costs of war

According to the Costs of War Project, based at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, between 275,000 and 306,000 people were killed directly due to war between March 2003 and August 2021.

“Several times as many more have been killed as a reverberating effect of the wars — because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease,” the researchers note.

In Iraq, over 9 million people were displaced from their homes, with millions having to flee the country entirely.

Was it just?  No. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq wasn’t a threat to the United States.

Was it brutal?

Yes. The net loss of life and destruction was made more horrifying to me hearing about incidents like the Haditha massacre in which U.S. Marines slaughtered two dozen innocent people or the gang rape by U.S. soldiers of a teenage girl, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, followed by the murder of her and her family.

And so, it was worth hearing Bush acknowledge, even via a slip-up, that the Iraq war was “wholly unjustified and brutal.”

The horrors of the Bush years

Then, when I string it together with the disastrous war in Afghanistan, countless drone strikes across several countries which killed civilians, the civil liberties abuses of the Patriot Act, the “black sites,” torture, the xenophobia against people from the Middle East (or who “looked” like they were) and the creepy “support the troops (and don’t you dare criticize our wars)” mantra of the time period, the awfulness of Bush and the Bush regime comes back into focus for me.

That whole era, and the Bush presidency, left a lasting influence on how I view the world.

For context, I was one of those kids, who came across and read Noam Chomsky’s small booklet “9/11” in 2002, when I was 11, which revealed to me that U.S. foreign policy was less clean and virtuous than I had been raised to believe. So in the run-up to the Iraq war, I was already opposed to it as an 11- and 12-year-old.

It was horrifying to see everyone from Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton to the New York Times editorial board — allegedly all good liberals, or whatever — clap like seals in support of the war. I still haven’t forgotten that.

Changing politics

Most people don’t have the same story as me, but it’s almost certainly the case that the Iraq war for many — especially when coupled with the other horrible things from the Bush era — changed the way many people view government and American politics.

In 2007-08, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who voted against the Iraq war, was booed and denounced for speaking the truth about U.S. foreign policy while seeking the Republican nomination for president.

Less than a decade later, Donald Trump was saying things like, “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none.” And he, of all people, got elected president.

While I fundamentally believe that Trump is an absolute charlatan, I have to admit I do appreciate how much he has ripped into Bush over the years. Ditto his rhetorical swipes at the intelligence community. I enjoyed every moment of that. It’s just a shame he’s … who he is.

Meanwhile, the last two Democratic candidates for president voted for the Iraq war, causing internal panic among the Democratic establishment both times amid progressive resistance and reluctance.

Here’s to hoping we get a president in 2024 who didn’t vote for that “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”

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In 2019, Pew Research Center found that 64% of military veterans think the war in Iraq wasn’t worth fighting, a couple of points higher than the general public (62%). Two years later, Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found similar numbers, with 63% saying the war wasn’t worth fighting.

Those numbers should really be higher.

But memories are short and the American education system is a dumpster fire.

I hope Bush’s Freudian slip reminds more people about the horrors of the Iraq war and the Bush years.

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected]