Former President George W. Bush’s critics should be exuberant about finally being rid of their whipping boy. To the contrary, they seem reluctant to retire their whips. It’s not enough that Bush has left town. Anti-Bush tirades continue with renewed vigor, seething with the same old vitriol (even booing him at the Inauguration) but now demanding President Obama continue the whippings by convicting Bush for his “crimes.”

For obsessed critics, Bush was not only incompetent, but also “criminal.” Curious, then, that when these folks won majority control of Congress two years ago, they didn’t do then what they now insist requires immediate action. Didn’t they boast in 2006 that their mid-term election victory was a referendum on Bush and therefore a mandate for them? Democrats — Obama included, ironically — had the congressional authority for two years to rescind the Iraq War resolution, rewrite the Patriot Act, censure or impeach Bush — whatever their consciences dictated.

So what did their “consciences” dictate? Well, they name-called … they finger-pointed … they undermined … they advocated defeat and retreat. They accused an “incompetent” president of competently manufacturing a war, conspiring with oil barons, weakening the Constitution, even sanctioning torture, but did nothing about it — for two years! How could they make, but not act on, such grave allegations? What does that demonstrate?

It demonstrates that Democratic leaders never believed their own rhetoric; otherwise, they would have acted for the public benefit rather than manipulating public sentiment for their benefit. They surreptitiously sowed doubt and defeatism, scheming for political gain irrespective of both America’s interests and the damaging ramifications to those Americans, Iraqis and Afghanis with a lot more at stake than re-election. They masked their amoral tribalism as some noble, patriotic defiance of a corrupt president, camouflaging their corrupt, Machiavellian scheming. Now that they’ve won, just watch as their “consciences” conveniently start reversing themselves.

Reed Purcell