Anger and Criticisms After George W. Bush’s Slip About the Invasion of Iraq [Hashtag]

George W. Bush Jr.'s slip when he confused between Ukraine and Iraq while trying to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin made headlines on TV channels, newspapers, and social media platforms in the United States and abroad.

Soon, the statements of Bush, who had been hit in the head by an Iraqi journalist in December 2008, spread very widely on social media. The video of Bush’s comment was posted by Dallas News reporter Sahil Kapur and has collected more than 25 million views on Twitter alone.

Several hashtags, such as #FreudianSlip, #Bush, #Iraq, and #USWarCrimes, were circulated by the pioneers of social media, who also published the video that documented Bush's slip, noting that it was the truth that he had been trying to hide for nearly 20 years.

 

Brutal Invasion

George Bush, who ruled the United States of America from 2001 to 2009, described the invasion of Iraq as brutal and unjustified rather than Ukraine, in a slip of the tongue during a speech commenting on Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

During a party organized by his Center in Texas on May 18, 2022, Bush said: “One man's decision to launch an absolutely unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq - I mean Ukraine.”

Although Bush rectified his mistake, which was met with laughter from the audience who were present at the party, and made clear that he was referring to Ukraine. However, this slip provoked widespread mockery and criticism from the Americans and ignited the anger of Iraqis and the Arab world on social media platforms.

Commenting on the incident, Fox News said it was an unfortunate slip, while the Huffington Post described it as a disgraceful slip, and the Washington Examiner said that Bush made a huge mistake the size of Iraq, while Bush justified his mistake by saying that he is 75 years old.

It is noteworthy that the war on Iraq was launched by the United States and Britain, which began on March 20, 2003, after accusations of Saddam Hussein's regime of possessing weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.

 In turn, former Representative of Michigan Justin Amash pointed out that “if he had been George Bush Jr., he would have avoided talking about any head of state who had launched a brutal and unjustified invasion of another country.”

 

 

“I wish he was that honest and self-critical 20 years ago, during which countless lives were lost and trillions of dollars wasted,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

 

 

As David Sirota, a former speechwriter for Senator Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, noted on his Twitter account, “All the supporters of the Iraq War have been rewarded with big money and jobs for their work that led to the deaths of a million people, rather than being held accountable and excluded. Therefore Bush and the audience laughed at the party.”

 

 

This was also confirmed by the Lebanese American Peter Daou in his tweet, which indicated that "the Democratic Party had completely rehabilitated George Bush and his gang of war criminals."

 

 

Scott Morefield, a columnist for Town Hall newspaper, noted that “what Bush has done in Iraq is similar to what Putin is doing in Ukraine,” noting that “American officials do not have enough morals to admit their mistakes.”

 

 

This was also pointed out by Nina Turner, the former Senator from Ohio when she wrote on her Twitter account: “George Bush is a war criminal.”

 

 

In turn, Karim Dennis, known by his stage name Lowkey, a British rapper and activist, noted that “George W. Bush Center receives funding from Boeing, the second largest arms manufacturer in the world.”

 

 

 

Freudian Slip

The position on slips of the tongue varies between those who consider them to be just a linguistic error, which may be due to age, illness, and fatigue from their justifications and would require a mere apology, and the schools of psychoanalysis that see in them an indication of what is lurking just below the speaker’s conscious mind.

Some of the tweeters relied on what the famous scientist and founder of the psychoanalytic school Sigmund Freud said, who considers slips as “a mistake in speech or memory that occurs as a result of the overlap of repressed thoughts in the subconscious mind, not innocent mistakes, and they come out to consciousness in the form of slips,” which is something that applies to George Bush Jr., according to them.

Since leaving office, Bush has focused on assisting war veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan through his own Center, including assisting with the transition to civilian life and hosting entertainment events.

Bush had earlier mocked the failed search for weapons of mass destruction, as it was during the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2004 when a picture of him looking under the furniture of the Oval Office appeared on the screen, and he joked: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.”

In turn, Andrew Stroehlein, European media director of Human Rights Watch, described Bush Jr.'s stumble as Freud's slip of the century.

 

 

On his part, TV presenter John Fugelsang emphasized that “George Bush did not commit a Freudian slip, but that he admitted the truth, but according to Freud's method.”

 

 

Additionally, TV personality and tech strategist Solomon Kassa tweeted, “It's a perfect Freudian slip! Truth never dies, it always finds a way to come out!”

 

 

An account called English Study also noted that “Twitter users are horrified by George Bush's Freudian slip over Iraq,” explaining that “the meaning of Freudian slip is an unintentional error but is seen as revealing subconscious feelings.”

 

 

In turn, the journalist Mahdi Hassan noted in his tweet on Twitter that he and the families of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in that war did not laugh at Bush's slip, explaining that this unintended confession took 20 years to appear in public.

 

 

Political analyst Mustafa Mustaan asserted in a tweet that “the truth has emerged through evil itself,” noting that “this is the power of God, which also proves that even Satan himself knows that what he did was wrong.”

 

 

On the other hand, R. Christopher C. Thompson, Director of Endoscopy at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) noted that “Bush Jr.'s slip underscores America’s hypocrisy, which is trying to take over the world through democracy, while police and others are killing minorities daily inside its territory.”

 

 

 

War Crimes

The invasion of Iraq was a pivotal event in the Middle East, which led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the killing of 4,500 American soldiers and 179 British soldiers.

However, on the other hand, more than 200,000 Iraqis were killed as a result of the excessive use of excessive violence by US forces, in addition to the displacement of millions of Iraqis, among the displaced and the immigrant.

Following that invasion, the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva said it constituted a war of aggression that constituted a crime under international law.

In 2010, a Dutch investigation, the first independent legal assessment of the war, concluded that the invasion of Iraq had no basis in international law.

In 2011, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission found Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes against humanity, but the verdict was not enforceable.

It should be noted that Tony Blair had apologized, in October 2015, for engaging in the war on Iraq on the side of Washington.

At the end of 2011, all US forces were withdrawn, but, after only three years, they returned to help Iraq defeat ISIS, which crossed the border from Syria to control a large area of the country.

US reports had indicated that the invasion of Iraq was the factor that spread chaos and opened the door to a bloody era in the country's history, which culminated with a sectarian war and the unprecedented rise of jihadist organizations.

On his part, former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Moazzam Begg indicated that he testified in the Kuala Lumpur court alongside former prisoners tortured by US forces in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and wrote on Twitter: “Bush and his acolytes were found guilty in absentia of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

 

 

“This should be accepted as evidence in The Hague,” tweeted writer Daniel Denvir.