Making America great again, the theme of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, depends on dispelling the myths and myth-making that made America bad.

Beginning with George W. Bush.

Said Saint Augustine: “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.”

The Republican Party under Bush did the devil’s work. Bar the sainted Ron Paul, not a dog of a Republican lifted his leg in protest of the unjust war on Iraq.

To embark on the good, the GOP must come clean about the bad. To that end, Donald Trump has begun a vital process of expiation.

The 43rd president is categorized as “bad” and ranked 37th by Ivan Eland, author of “Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.” Having undermined the republic at home and peace abroad, “Bush’s presidency,” avers Eland, “was one of the worst of all time.”

Coming to terms with the Bush legacy, moreover, ought to prevent the rise of another Bush. For the bogus Bush Doctrine is alive and well-exploited in the words and promises of each of the Republican candidates, bar Donald Trump.

The Bush dictum of fighting them over there so they don’t come here —as if Islamic State can’t, won’t and hasn’t attacked there and here—is alive and well-exploited by almost every fork-tongued politician in the Republican and Democratic races.

Other than Trump and Bernie Sanders, there’s a potatoes vs. spuds quality to the foreign policy articulated by both sides.

Each time the interchangeable John Kasich or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush are asked about death by Muslim in the United States; they whip out that dumb “W” Doctrine, tethering attacks like San Bernardino in the US to wars the US should be waging over in the Middle East, and will be waging if these candidates have their way.

If you liked Bush’s willful and criminal war on Iraq; if you enjoyed watching aw-shucks “W” “Shock and Awe” Iraq to kingdom come with BLU-82s—boy, do you have a treat in store.

If you took pleasure in Bush unseating and executing law-and-order leader Saddam Hussein; you’ll love the plans Rubio, Kasich and Brother Jeb have for Bashar Assad and his family. As for Vladimir Putin, the not-so-comical three stooges have practically diarized conflagration with Russia.

I almost forgot: If you licked your chops when Bush disarmed dem little Iraqi boys by littering their playgrounds with cluster bomblets; your vampiric urges will be sated. In Bush’s Baghdad, hospitals teamed with limbless kids successfully disarmed. The Rubio-Kasich-Bush bandidos will similarly oblige their supporters. Happy times are ahead for their acolytes.

In brother Jeb, promised George Bush in South Carolina, on February 16, the country will be getting a “steady hand” to steer the ship of state.

Yes, in his many addresses to the nation, during the crises into which he plunged America, Bush used to bang on about the joys of bringing about “the triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond.”

ORDER IT NOW

Plenty of that poppycock awaits America should Bush III or his other three foreign-policy clones materialize in the White House. Hawk Hillary must be added to present company, as nation building at the point of a bayonet makes her barking happy. (The rabid Mrs. Clinton has taken to barking at her rallies. Check it out.)

Laudably and mercilessly did Trump taunt Jeb Bush at the CBS News Republican debate, in South Carolina, February 13. Jeb had brought out Big Brother to fight his battles for him:

Said Trump: “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? Now, you can take it any way you want … George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Why would the guy, Donald J. Trump, take up Rand Paul’s libertarian foreign policy stance when he leads among Republican voters? So asked a Republican strategist on “Hardball,” Chris Matthews’ MSNBC show.

The special-needs media was abuzz, questioning Trump’s anti-G. Bush “tactics.”

But badmouthing G. Bush to a South Carolina electorate, apparently still partial to the man, is no tactic; it’s a higher calling. The reason Trump has no qualms about repudiating Bush II’s colossal war crime—the invasion of Iraq—is because he speaks the truth.

Trump is not a politician. To hear Ted Cruz tell it, Trump’s past support of this or the other position was done in a political capacity. Cruz forgets that Trump was a civilian.

And unlike Hillary Clinton and every single Republican and their media mouths—Trump is not ankle deep in the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and other Middle Easterners, Muslim and Christian. He didn’t cast a deciding vote to prosecute their war and he had the good sense to question it in his limited capacity as a civilian.

That Trump is accused of sounding like the ladies of Code Pink isn’t an argument; it’s an ad hominem attack. For it is quite possible, even likely, that Code Pink, a restraining influence on jingoism and imperialism, is correct about Bush.

So white-hot is the hate for Donald Trump; that it has united The Machine in defense of the indefensible, George W. Bush

This, too, is understandable considering Mr. Trump’s accomplishments:

So far, Trump has upended the Media Complex, the Republican Party Complex (in the form of the Republican National Committee), and the phony Conservatism Complex. It’s time for the War Party faction within to take its last gasp.