The great journalist David Halberstam left us a timely gift before his untimely death earlier this year — an eloquent essay in which he argues that George Bush’s verison of history, like the Iraq war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance and a total disdain for the facts.
Halberstam knows history, and while I stand in his shadow, so do I, which means that Bush’s exerable and frequent comparisons of the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Harry Truman, to cite two of the more egregious distortions, rub especially raw.
It almost goes without saying that the reason for this history mongering is because Bush and his coven cling to the canard that history will prove their failed policies and reckless actions successes.
I’ve posted some excerpts from “History Boys,” Halberstam’s essay in the August Vanity Fair here.