George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Bush's release notes that "Bush, who was President of Zapata Off-Shore, said one of the
firm's drilling rigs was at that time, and is today, working off the coast of Borneo." Was
this a conflict of interest?
With accents that provide an eerie presentiment of the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis, Bush went
on: "Today the borders of the Malaysian Federation are lined with Indonesian troops,
bearing Russian-made arms, purchased with American dollars. The Indonesians are still
poised to crush Malaysia. And what have we done? We gently slapped Sukarno on the
wrist, then loaned him another $20 million, which he used to buy a couple of jet aircraft,
one of which he uses to fly his foul assignations around the far east. What we should have
done, and still should do, is tell Sukarno: 'You violate the sanctity of the Malysian border
and you have to deal with the force of the entire free world!'"
Shortly thereafter, Texas GOP Senator John Tower sponsored a cutoff of US aid to
Sukarno, which passed, although Yarborough voted to maintain the aid. Bush made this
the occasion for a new onslaught. In a contorted argument, Bush pointed out that
Yarborough's vote for aid to Indonesia had come one day after Sukarno had extended
"the friendly hand of recognition to the communist government of North Viet Nam. This
country, Sukarno's friend, is waging a war in which scarcely a day before Yarborough's
vote, communist bullets slammed through the body of a young helicopter pilot from
Texas. Yarborough voted to give US aid to a country that is friends with a mob that is
killing young Americans and Texans...He votes to aid the friends of a mob that is killing
Texas boys." Yarborough rejected this "wild criticism," and said that the charges
illustrated Bush's lack of comprehension of the "delicate balance of power in foreign
affairs, and his lack of knowledge of the state of affairs in Southeast Asia." Yarborough's
point was that the important thing was to prevent any war between Indonesia and
Malaysia, and that this task must override any desire to humiliate Sukarno.
Bush's remarks in this campaign mesh perfectly with the US buildup for the 1965
military coup d'etat in Indonesia, in which more than 200,000 persons were killed,
primarily during the course of anti- communist massacres carried out by the army with
the encouragement of US advisors.
In economic policy, Bush's starting point was always "unbridled free enterprise," as he
stressed in a statement on unemployment on March 16: "Only unbridled free enterprise
can cure unemployment. But, I don't believe the federal government has given the private
sector of our economy a genuine opportunity to relieve this unemployment. For example,
the [Johnson war on poverty program] contains a new version of the CCC, a Domestic
Peace Corps, and various and sundry half-baked pies in the sky." Bush's printed
campaign literature stated under the heading of "federal economy" that "the free
enterprise system must be unfettered. A strong economy means jobs, opportunity, and
prosperity. A controlled economy means loss of freedom and bureaucratic bungling." On
April 21 Bush told the voters: "We must begin a phase of re- emphasizing the private
sector of our economy, instead of the public sector."