Washington (AFP) – Former US president George W. Bush has kept a low profile since leaving the White House in 2009. But he is set to reveal some of the fruits of his second career on Tuesday in a book called “Portraits of Courage.”
A collection of paintings of military veterans subtitled “A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors,” it features 66 portraits of wounded or traumatized personnel he has met who served in the US Army in Iraq or Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Although the 43rd president has never voiced regret over launching the US-led wars in Afghanistan (in 2001) and Iraq (in 2003), which caused hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, his book showcases his efforts to help some of the “remarkable men and women who were injured carrying out my orders,” as he wrote on his Instagram account.
“I think about them on #VeteransDay and every day,” he added in the post showing a photo of him painting one of his impressionistic portraits, which will be on exhibit at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, from Thursday through October 1. more
Read about the veterans chosen for his paintings, here
I’d like to see him hide in a Rock for a week . . . and show us some Real art!
lol @ dr. jay
Mixed feelings on this guy. Every year that passes makes me dislike him more and more.
Well, he didn’t defend us when we got called war criminals daily, so this makes up for it all.
Pretty sad day when I had to accept his allegiance is to the other side.
He will not divide us.
The Bush family did the republic a fair amount of harm. Even his paintings are eyesores.
”Portraits of Courage” ?
Not seeing Barrack Obama
I noticed his brother Jeb didn’t make the cut.
BFH’s paintings are much better.
Stay out of the Bushes!……
Bunch of globalist.
Didn’t Putin say GWB’s dog was queer?
Let’s see him paint Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
I still believe he invaded the wrong country. S.A. is where the terrorist came from. Saddam could have gone in, kicked ass, taken the oil and sold it to us for 50 cents on the dollar, all without further US casualties.
@Policy Hack: Saudi Arabia (assuming S.A. means that and not South America or South Africa) is untouchable, both by Arab states and the West. Even Saddam knew that, which is why he invaded Kuwait instead.
I guess I’ll get to play the role of Dana perino here.
I get the whole bush family globalist stuff and how he screwed us by not articulating the war and explaining why actions were taken. At first every one knew why. The same media that fucks us daily undermined the mission after 9/11.
Many precious lives were lost in a confusing mission but one thing I never questioned was that his heart was in the right place, even if his tactics were not. The man is using painting as penance I guess.
My beef with Bush is that he never understood that the media wasn’t attacking him, per se, but rather attacking ordinary Americans who supported their president and the effort and sacrifice of our troops after we were savagely attacked.
Should it have been Utah Beach, Juno, Sword, Omaha? Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq?
That’s Monday morning quarterbacking as far as I’m
Concerned. Everybody is smarter in retrospect than than CINC. Without the responsibility of getting it
Right.
There are a lot of questions in retrospect, most notably that Saudi Arabia has gotten a pass since all evidence points to their citizens executing
The actual attack.
Bottom line? I wish he did better but I can’t
Hate GWB just yet
Bush gave us the Fascist Department of Homeland Security …. his paintings are about as ugly as his family’s usurpation of the Constitution in the name of Global Elitism
Well said PHenry!!!
I can’t forgive him for being a globalist, but I like the paintings, and the sentiment behind them.