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Deserter
Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past
Ian Williams
July 2004
ISBN: 1560256273
Since taking office, George W. Bush has relished the role of "Commander in Chief." His military posturing is intended to convince Americans that he alone can lead them to victory in the war on terror and is designed to appeal to the votes of the armed forces and veterans.
But his military record is disastrous. While George W. Bush supported the Vietnam War, his family influence got him into the Texas Air National Guard, which, short of World War III breaking out, guaranteed that he would never see military action. Even in this safest of positions, Lieutenant Bush broke under the strain and went AWOL in Alabama for the better part of a year--canvassing for the Republican Party.
In contrast, George W. Bush's Administration calls up contemporary national Guardsmen for front-line action in Iraq, and extends their terms in a form of backdoor conscription. As the military budget soars, the war is being fought with a dangerously inadequate number of troops. The Administration ships home the dead and disabled under cover of darkness; those who do eventually return in one piece find their veterans' medical benefits and facilities axed. Drawing on the extensive research on the President's still mysterious military career, Williams convincingly argues that our Commander in Chief is guilty of breathtaking hypocrisy, cynical doublethink and egregious neglect of the actual defense of the United States.
What readers are saying
"Williams describes a President who inhabits a world where the soldiers are tin, where our brave men and women are reduced to photo opportunities in service not of their country's security but the President's warped political and foreign policy agendas."
--Bobby Muller, Nobel Prize laureate and president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
About the Authors
Ian Williams is The Nation magazine's UN correspondent. He has also been a columnist for the New York Observer and New York magazine. He has been a regular contributor in Britain to the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, the European, the Observer, the Independent, the Sunday Herald and to magazines such as Tribune, The New Statesman and Punch. Williams lives in New York City and has a massive collection of rumabilia.
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