Last March, academics and former policy-makers during George W. Bush’s presidency gathered for a conference at Hofstra University, to provide a retrospective and preliminary assessment of the Bush II years. Many of its top officials, including George W. himself, refused to attend, deeming it a “hostile environment.”
This is in stark contrast to previous Hofstra presidential conferences, and it says something profound about the unpopularity of the Bush administration and its alienation from the academic community.
The most memorable exchange occurred in a plenary forum involving Porter J. Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who resigned in 2004 to become director of the CIA, and Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now. During the Q & A session, Goss criticized last December’s Senate committee report on the CIA’s use of torture as a cherry-picked document that consisted of a series of half-truths.
Goodman responded by quoting from Senator John McCain, who said that torture “damaged American national security interests and the American reputation as a force for good in the world.” Goss said he respected Senator McCain and what he had sacrificed for “our country,” but that McCain may not have read the report and did not have all the facts.
Goodman also asked pointed questions of John Negroponte, a former deputy secretary of state and ambassador to Iraq, who conceded that “torture is wrong,” and said he had urged caution before going into Iraq. When an audience member asked why, as ambassador, he had failed to reign in death squads allegedly supported by a colonel in the US Army, Negroponte responded by denying that the officer had backed death squads, and suggested that “war is hell.”
Carolyn Eisenberg, a professor in Hofstra’s history department, responded by stating that Bush’s decisions did not consider popular attitudes at the grass roots. The Bush doctrine implied the strong trampling over the weak, and she bemoaned the billions of dollars spent on war which could have been used to improve conditions domestically.
The conference provided a good beginning for a historical assessment of Bush’s presidency. It is imperative though to move beyond assessment, as Amy Goodman urged, and to hold Bush administration officials accountable for preemptive war, rendition, torture and the suspension of constitutional liberties, which, she argued, have unfortunately continued under Obama.