The Bush library offers enormous opportunities for SMU. It will bring a number of important national figures to the campus. Important policy work will be done just minutes away from students studying the same issues. Perhaps most enticingly to the university brass, the inclusion of a presidential library on campus will boost SMU’s national and international standing.
It’s not all peaches and cream though. SMU’s reputation is already closely allied with the Bush administration and ideology. By allowing the Bush people to conduct their post-mortem on our campus, the university has cemented its ties to the nation’s 43rd president.
It’s still too early to say how history will remember George W. Bush, but if the opinions of the American public, a number of historians and plain old common sense are any indications, I’d put all my money down that it won’t be in a positive sense.
This is a president who broke American and international law along with common morality on a regular basis. His administration wiretapped American citizens, operated secret prisons, held people without charge or counsel, invaded a sovereign nation without direct provocation and practiced rendition, a nice little euphemism for shipping terror suspects to countries willing to engage in illegal and immoral interrogation techniques. The fact that these actions can be recited in a mundane list rather than as sensational revelations shows how far Bush took us down a dangerous road.
This is a president who made America less safe. He overtaxed our military’s abilities by starting a war of dubious necessity while still fighting another we had to win. Now, neither country is safe and al Qaeda operatives have scattered to Pakistan. Americans are tired of war without end and it will be hard for the new president to garner support should the need for military action arise again. Perhaps most seriously, Bush discredited the doctrine of preemption. It is possible that America might someday have to strike first to prevent dangerous people from acquiring the most dangerous of weapons. After no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, it will be a tough sell for any administration to launch a preemptive attack.
This is a president who disdained open debate. Bush was notorious for surrounding himself with yes-men, creating a bubble that made him ill-equipped to lead a nation facing complex challenges. He stifled dissent from his advisers, from experts, from members of his own party and from his opposition. This sheltered atmosphere showed its limitations when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the national government was nowhere to be found.
This is a president who tore the country apart in a senseless culture war. His top political adviser, Karl Rove, sought out wedge issues that would turn Americans against one another. The Bush team forgot that compromise and conciliation have been the bedrocks of American history and tried to attack as elitist or un-American those who questioned their policies. Barack Obama’s meteoric rise can be explained in part by Americans’ exhaustion with such tactics.
The Bush library will bring a lot of national attention to SMU. Is this what we want people to see?
Nathaniel French is a junior theater studies and math double major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
