Post by Admin on Mar 14, 2017 19:03:11 GMT
Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday warned against an "isolationist tendency" in the U.S. that he called dangerous to national security, at a time when the current president has faced questions about its commitment to the country's international partnerships. The 43rd president was speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, to promote his new book, "Portraits of Courage," a volume of his paintings of military veterans.
George W Bush, some say, is being rehabilitated. After eight-plus years of relative self-imposed obscurity, he is now emerging in public more often. It was a bit surprising to see him recently on the morning TV talk shows, promoting Portraits of Courage, a book of his own oil paintings.
It is an extraordinary work. The images it contains - renderings of 66 American war veterans, many bearing wounds both seen and unseen, whom the former president has come to know personally, and whose stories he tells – are rather like the artist who produced them: straightforward, frank, unadorned.
A cynic might suppose that this book is the product of a guilty man, of one trying to atone for the mistakes of his past to those who suffered for them. Some might suppose that for Bush, this purported attempt to honour American heroes is more about him than about them.