“What If Justice Existed?”: A Review of The Trial of George W. Bush, by Terry Jastrow

 (Garden City Park, NY: Square One Publishers, 2021). ISBN: 978 0 757055065.

What If is one of the most powerful tools in the storyteller’s toolbox. From the earliest days of humankind, What If was a practical, educational, and at times life-saving tool before it later became an essential starting point for professional storytelling and entertainment. I used this technique for two and a half decades as a theatre-based social justice advocate, workshop presenter, and playwright working with middle and high school students. What If allows us to construct stories with enough resonance to evoke intellectual, physiological, philosophical, ideological, and practical responses in a safe, non-confrontational space. Because there is no immediate danger or serious consequences, participants in a What If exercise are free to take chances and explore options. What If encourages out of the box thinking and rewards participants with new, actionable insights.

Terry Jastrow’s novel, The Trial of George W. Bush, is a highly efficacious exercise in using What If. In this case, “What If the International Criminal Court put George W. Bush on trial at The Hague for war crimes connected to the war in Iraq?” If your initial response is, “Never gonna happen, but an interesting idea,” then read this review and I am confident you’ll want to read the book. If your response is, “Never gonna happen, and it’s a total waste of time to even think about,” then your time is best spent elsewhere.

Structured as a classic courtroom drama—after a dramatic abduction on the seventeenth hole at St Andrews in Scotland—with all of the attendant facets that make judge and jury trials so ubiquitous in our storytelling, The Trial of George W. Bush pits two very clear ideological forces against one another. Given that this is the Othering and Dichotomy that the Corporate Oligarchy Military–Industrial–Intelligence Complex is using through its corporate news machine to divide the American people at present, the What If postulated by Jastrow is far more applicable than to just the legalities, motivations, deceptions, and questions that continue to constellate about the controversial Iraq War.

First and foremost is the question, Why Saddam Hussein and Iraq and not bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Jastrow employs a pair of idealistic, passionate lawyers—one an Iraqi female, the other a White Anglo-Saxon male—to press the toughest aspects of this fundamental question, along with a female Iraqi blogger who is called to the stand. Through their questions and statements, Jastrow presents the core reasons why Bush and his war cabinet of long-time hawks decided to invade Iraq, take down Hussein, and leave bin Laden be. Absolutely nailing W.’s Texas cadence, Jastrow presents us with a well-read and articulate man of God far afield from the Will Farrell and other caricatures of a low-IQ, beer-swilling Frat Boy who was a puppet for Papa Bush’s egotistical cronies. There are times when I actually believed that he believed what he was saying while on trial…  

Demonstrating Jastrow’s commitment to research, the novel draws from declassified reports, open-source data, newspaper articles, and nearly twenty nonfiction books—many written by the key Republican players, including W., his wife Laura, and Dick Cheney. There is also a Preface and a few interludes where Jastrow’s voice and thoughts are clearly dominant. Regardless, by the end of the novel, I was unsure as to what his position on former president Bush’s culpability is, and that’s a good thing. My expectation was that he would heavily weight the What If to guilt, and the ending—perhaps too open-ended or frustrating for some, so reader beware—instead holds little in the way of answers. It does, however, feature a Deus ex Machina (God out of the machine) that is quintessentially Washington Beltway in its eleventh-hour theatrics. It also serves as a reminder that the Elite take care of their own, irrespective of the illusion of distinct political parties.

Jastrow also uses the international media as a type of Greek chorus, their commentary after major revelations during the trial, including interviews with talking-head experts on the ICC and various aspects of the trial, providing a summation of key points and illumination of complex ideas. Think Margo Robbie in the bathtub explaining mortgage-backed securities in Adam McKay’s The Big Short.

As far as tone, Jastrow captures the arrogance of not only W. (whom he once played baseball against as a child) but of his defense team and cabal of geopolitical schemers. If you have an aversion to smug, these are difficult passages to get through. Author James Mann terms the Bush-brigade as the Vulcans in his fascinating book Rise of the Vulcans—a name the group of seasoned Washington insiders surrounding W. gave themselves. Some going back to the Ford administration, and many rising during the reign of Ronald Reagan, these master manipulators—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Libby—were willing to do the will of W.’s father, arguably one of the few men in Washington who held the key-codes to all the darkest secrets. If you are not a student of US history—and you really should be to live in what passes as American democracy—perhaps you’ve seen Adam McKay’s Vice, and you have an idea about how the Vulcans operate. With the exception of Condoleeza Rice—W.’s National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State, whose fondness for her former boss leads her to testify on his behalf—the rest of the Vulcans lurk in the shadows, spectral architects of destruction, revenge, and greed.

I mentioned that the ending was open-ended… you’ll have to apply your own What Ifs as far as what ultimately happens to Bush. Jastrow does present a cliffhanger involving one of the two prosecutors that possibly cues a sequel, or perhaps it’s just another set of What Ifs, as in: What If you devote years of your life to seeing a justice done and that effort falls short through no fault of your own? What If it only serves to prove that the Elite will never have to pay for anything they’ve done, no matter the millions of casualties and trillions of taxpayer dollars their scheming and carnage have caused?

There’s one episode in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion that I wish was in the book. Or, more pointedly, that I wish the prosecutorial team had brought up in their effort to get a win. As Hans Blix and the UN inspectors were coming up empty as far as weapons of mass destruction, Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, was called on to make a presentation to the UN Security Council. On February 3, 2003, he took one for the team, sacrificing his credibility and duty to the American people by spouting the Vulcan li(n)e. Just prior to speaking, he insisted on having a copy of Picasso’s Guernica—arguably the most powerful piece of antiwar imagery ever put on canvas—covered with a drape. How telling is that request? Powell couldn’t stomach the idea of being party to the call for an unnecessary war with a powerful antiwar, anti-Fascist image in the frame behind him, contradicting in radiant shape and color all the malarkey he came to peddle.

What If he had refused and resigned, or spoke the truth at the crucial moment? This is just one of a hundred What If questions I asked while reading The Trial of George W. Bush.

This book unleashes a host of vile specters and, as we sit on the brink of a possible world war over the destiny of Ukraine, there is no better time to examine US foreign policy in the twenty-first century, and the ways that it has weakened America in breathtaking, unforgivable, and almost certainly illegal ways.