I don’t think anyone in their right mind expected former President George W. Bush’s book Decision Points to be a literary masterpiece, but is it too much to ask that Bush not plagiarize from books written by his former advisors, as well as from other books about his presidency? While Crown Publishing promised Decision Points would offer “gripping, never-before-heard detail” about key decisions made by President Bush during his time in office, there’s no shortage of unoriginal, plagiarized material in Bush’s book.
Here’s one good example of George W. Bush’s blatant plagiarism:
From Decision Points, p. 205: “When Karzai arrived in Kabul for his inauguration on December 22 – 102 days after 9/11 – several Northern Alliance leaders and their bodyguards greeted him at an airport. As Karzai walked across the tarmac alone, a stunned Tajik warlord asked where all his men were. Karzai, responded, ‘Why, General, you are my men. All of you who are Afghans are my men.'”
From Ahmed Rashid’s The Mess in Afghanistan, quoted in The New York Times Review of Books: “At the airport to receive [Karzai] was the warlord General Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik from the Panjshir Valley …. As the two men shook hands on the tarmac, Fahim looked confused. ‘Where are your men?’ he asked. Karzai turned to him in his disarmingly gentle manner of speaking. ‘Why General,’ he replied, “you are my men—all of you are Afghans and are my men…'”
Putting aside the fact that those two passages are eerily similar, it’s worth noting President Bush was not present at Karzai’s inauguration.
Hmm. I don’t agree. Maybe George’s ghostwriter borrowed the scene from the book, or watched a news clip, or read someone else’s account of that moment. When I hear “plagiarized” I want to see text lifted intact.
But HuffPo said it, so it must be true. 🙂
Just because HuffPo reported it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Apparently the Pakistani author cited by the HuffPo thinks Bush plagiarized his work:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/bush-plagiarism-journalist-works/
it does appear to be a lazy ghostwriter. Then again, I expected a pop up book so he exceeded my expectations.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/bush-plagiarism-journalist-works/
A journalist from Pakistan says he is disappointed that his work was allegedly plagiarized by former President George W. Bush in his recently published book Decision Points.
“It is never a compliment when politicians plagiarize ideas or comments from journalists without acknowledging their work,” Ahmed Rashid told BBC News. “Unfortunately it happens all the time.”