Obama Honors Bush With Medal of Freedom (Seriously.)
Source: bloomberg.com
President Barack Obama said billionaire Warren Buffett and 14 other people awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom today “reveal the best of who we are and who we aspire to be.”
Photo: J. Scott Applewhite
Buffett is “not only one of the world’s richest men,” he is “one of the most-respected,” Obama said during a ceremony in the White House East Room.
Former President George H.W. Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, poet Maya Angelou, and Democratic Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a leader of the civil rights movement, are among today’s recipients. Sports legends Stan Musial, of baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals, and Bill Russell, of basketball’s Boston Celtics, also were honored.
The medal is the nation’s highest civilian honor and is presented to people who have made worthy contributions to the U.S. or to world peace.
Buffett [left], 80, who was an adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign, is chairman and chief executive officer of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which has subsidiaries in industries spanning insurance, energy and ice cream. Forbes magazine estimated Buffett’s fortune is worth $45 billion.Buffett has pledged to donate most of his wealth to the foundation established by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, as well as other philanthropic organizations. Obama said Buffett “uses his stature as a leader to press others of great means to do the same.”
No Fancy Ties
The president said Buffett doesn’t wear “fancy ties” or drive “fancy cars.” Instead, “you see him devoting the vast majority of his wealth to those around the world who are suffering, or sick, or in need of help.”
Obama said Buffett is “so thrifty” that the last time he came to the White House Obama gave the billionaire a new tie because the one he was wearing was “looking a little shredded.” The president joked that “when Bill Gates came, he wanted one, too.”
Bush, 86, the 41st president and the father of Obama’s predecessor, was cited for his long service to the country. Before winning the White House in 1988, he was vice president under Ronald Reagan. He is a U.S. Navy veteran, was a U.S. representative from Texas, an ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
‘Late Bloomer’
Obama also honored cellist Yo-Yo Ma, 55, and joked that while Ma was a “late bloomer” -- beginning his concert career when he was 5 years old, “he went on to record over 75 albums and win 16 Grammies.”
Obama said that Merkel, 56, “broke barriers” when she became the first woman and the first person from the former East Germany to serve as German chancellor. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she progressed in politics as the East and the West joined as a unified nation. Merkel didn’t attend today’s ceremony. Obama said she would soon be coming to the White House for an official visit.
“To America, Chancellor Merkel and the country she leads are among our closest allies,” he said. “To me she’s a trusted global partner and a friend.”
Also honored was Tom Little, an optometrist who was one of 10 medical workers murdered by the Taliban in August as they returned from an aid mission. He and his wife, Libby, had lived and worked in Afghanistan for three decades, according to the announcement.
The other recipients were: labor leader John Sweeney, the former president of the AFL-CIO; John H. Adams, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Gerda Weissmann Klein, who has written several books about surviving the Holocaust; civil rights activist Sylvia Mendez; artist Jasper Johns; and Jean Kennedy Smith, the sister of slain President John F. Kennedy who was U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998.
Article from: bloomberg.com
President Obama dropped a bipartisan bombshell today, announcing he will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom next year to ex-President George H.W. Bush.
The magnanimous gesture of bestowing the nation’s highest civilian honor to the 41st U.S. President came a day after ex-President George W. Bush gave a respectful nod to Obama at the groundbreaking of his library in Dallas.
“The decisions of governing are on another President’s desk, and he deserves to make them without criticism from me,” Bush said at the site of his future library at Southern Methodist University.
Source
George H.W. Bush Receives Medal of Freedom
Video from: YouTube.com
Buying silence: Bush awards Medal of Freedom to key figures in Iraq debacle (2004)
By Barry Grey | wsws.org
President Bush’s awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to three of the chief architects and executors of the Iraq war is an affront to the concept of freedom of Orwellian proportions.
The White House ceremony that saw Bush bestow the gold medallions on retired general Tommy Franks, former CIA Director George Tenet and former US administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer for their roles in an illegal war and brutal occupation that have killed 100,000 Iraqis and 1,300 US soldiers could not come as a shock to those who follow this administration with a degree of critical thought and are genuinely devoted to the principle of freedom. Many people throughout the world will react, appropriately, with revulsion.
The Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honor bestowed in the name of the American people. The dispensation of the award for overtly political purposes is by no means unprecedented. President Lyndon B. Johnson, for example, in the final 24 hours of his presidency in January 1969, gave out 20 medals, including to McGeorge Bundy and Walt W. Rostow, two leading Vietnam War advisers.
Johnson, however, used the award to defend his war policies on the eve of leaving office in response to mounting popular opposition and growing conflicts within the US ruling elite fueled by the worsening military situation in Southeast Asia. The timing of Bush’s awards, and the individuals honored, are clearly meant to show that the military quagmire in Iraq, the continuing opposition within the American population, and the increasingly bitter divisions within the state apparatus—including the military itself—will not deter his administration from continuing its militaristic policy—not only in Iraq, but against future targets of US aggression.
The glaring contradiction between Bush’s praise for the three honorees and the disasters over which they presided—in Tenet’s case, within the US as well as in Iraq—points to an additional motive behind the awards. In the atmosphere of crisis and palace intrigue surrounding the Bush White House, the medals suggest a payoff to buy the silence of individuals in a position to tell tales that could prove highly damaging.
The awards ceremony took place only days after US soldiers about to be shipped to Iraq confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait on the lack of armored vehicles and the “stop loss” policy of forcing soldiers to remain in the military beyond their agreed term.
An indication of the anger growing among the troops was given by Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army lieutenant who served in Iraq and presently heads an organization of veterans opposed to the war. He called the awards “a slap in the face to the troops” from “an administration that loves the big PR move...It validates how out of touch Washington is with the reality of what is on the ground in Iraq.”
On the very day of the ceremony, Republican Senator John McCain declared that he had “no confidence” in Rumsfeld. The same day, the Senate Armed Services Committee announced plans to hold hearings when the new Congress convenes next month on the unprepared state of the military and complaints from troops on shortages.
The triumphant pose struck by Bush, the honorees and the assembled dignitaries in the East Room of the White House was belied by the actual records of the recipients. Bush heaped praise on three men who retired from their posts in semi-disgrace. Each, in his own way, had a direct role in what will be reckoned by future historians as major debacles for US imperialism.
Read the full article at: wsws.org
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