12/18/06: When Bush leaves office, he intends for his “legacy” to continue in a presidential library at a Texas university. He intends to raise half a billion dollars, far exceeding the cost of any presidential library, to create not a center for objectivity, academic research, and historical study – but a promotion of the Bush agenda that has brought horrors on the world. The New York Daily News reported:
Patterned after Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Bush’s institute will hire conservative scholars and “give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President’s policies,” one Bush insider said.
Southern Methodist University, University of Dallas, and Baylor University are the three universities in Texas Bush is considering opening his presidential library. But in his home state, Bush’s attempt to enshrine and promote his agenda in academia has been met with rebukes and resistance. At Southern Methodist University, a letter of protest was started in the theology school and quickly attracted signatures from dozens of professors. The letter described how under the Bush administration, we have seen the “erosion of habeas corpus, denial of global warming, disrespect of international treaties, alienation of long-time U.S. allies, environmental predation, disregard for rights of gay persons, a pre-emptive war based on false premises, and other perceived disrespect for the created order and global community.” And that rather than enshrining all this, such issues “beg for the kind of space” where “historians and scholars can fairly assess the years of George Bush’s presidency and its forms of impact on our nation and the entire globe.”
The possibility of opening a Bush presidential library at a Methodist university has also drawn resistance from Methodist leaders, who do not want their religion associated with the practice and justification of torture. Some have even went as far as saying that if Southern Methodist University hosts the Bush library, the word “Methodist” should be removed from its name.
In a letter published in The United Methodist Reporter, Dr. Andrew J. Weaver (United Methodist minister, research psychologist and graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU
New York City, NY) and Fred W. Kandeler (Retired United Methodist pastor, former district superintendent and graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU New Braunfels, Texas) write:
Anyone who thinks that the name Methodism or Southern Methodist University should be associated with George W. Bush needs to read the book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror by Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Professor Miles has based this volume on painstaking research and highly-credible sources, including eyewitness accounts, army criminal investigations, FBI debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports and prisoners” medical records. These documents tell a story strikingly different from the Bush administration version presented to the American people, revealing involvement at every level of government, from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prison health-care personnel. The book also shows how the highest officials of government are complicit in this pattern of torture.
While much of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces troops remains concealed, Dr. Miles documents how 19 prisoners have been tortured to death by American military personnel…
Torture is a crime against humanity and a violation of every human rights treaty in existence, including the Geneva Conventions which prohibit cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. Torture is as profound a moral issue in our day as was slavery in the 19th century. It represents a betrayal of our deepest human and religious values as a civilized society…
If the Bush Library and think tank are placed at SMU, the United Methodist Church should withdraw its association from the University and demand that the good name of Methodism be removed from the name of the school. If the United Methodist Church cannot take a stand against the use of torture and those who employ it, including President Bush, what does it stand for?
This condemnation of the horrors the Bush presidency for the world coming from academics and Methodist leaders is a welcome development in a country still filled with all too much passivity and acceptance as torture is legalized and war crimes are committed. Their firm stand that a Bush presidential library is not welcome at their university or in the name of their religion breaches this passivity, and coming from Texas is all the more significant.
Not only is Bush seeking to enshrine the war crimes his presidency has committed in the halls of academia, but the plans for this presidential library also reveal the way this administration has sought to systematically obscure reality, define truth however it suits them, enforce an absolutist ideology, suppress dissent, and prevent the pursuit of the truth. Their track record on this speaks volumes:
They continue to claim they do not torture, and define torture in such a twisted manner so as to substantiate their claims.
They have denied the overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming and even distorted and suppressed the research on NASA scientists.
They have replaced science with Christian fundamentalist, including in order to deny women the right to choose or have access to birth control.
They have blatantly lied about the justifications for war on Iraq and continued to lie about the conduct of that war.
While the list above could go on, beyond the damage done by any one of these outrages there is a dangerous precedent being set where the Bush administration can invent reality to serve its objectives. The letter from Southern Methodist University professors described how “there are two distinct, irreconcilable visions” for the library – one being used to get the campus to go along with hosting it, and another advocated to those being asked to contribute the hundreds of millions of dollars. As the professors’ letter described:
In the first vision, the library will be a neutral space. Using archived artifacts and documents from President Bush’s administration, scholars will do non-partisan, academic inquiry into his presidency. They will attempt objective, balanced assessment of the president’s thought, legacy and impact on our country and the world.
In the second vision, the library will be a partisan space. Going by various terms, such as conservative think tank, institute or policy center, the library will hire conservative scholars to pursue a partisan agenda in favor of the president’s policies and programs.
How the Bush regime goes down in history and the impact that has for the pursuit of truth and kind of society we will live in for decades to come is what is at issue in this battle over the presidential library. In seeking to prevent this library from enshrining and promoting the Bush agenda on the Southern Methodist Univerity, professors and Methodist leaders have drawn a clear line of what it right and wrong, what is true and what is false, and are acting to stop Bush administration from continuing it crimes in their names. Will you do the same?
(Sources: Scholarly Archive or Ideological Center?, InsideHigherEd.com, 12/18/06; Objections to Bush library mount at Texas university, RawStory.com, 12/18/06, Methodism, torture and the Presidential Library, Letter to Editor, The United Methodist Report, 12/11/06)
The criminal behavior of the entire Bush Family should not be blessed with the name of the Methodist Church. The professors are right to reject the obvious revisionism that would ensue and legimacy that association with the Church would bring. We can only hope that the power elite that that forced this criminal presidency on the people of the earth will be rewarded for their efforts and by that I mean a long vacation in a very hot place!