The Road To Hell
The Bush Legacy
Focus On Deception
President George W. Bush was addressing the
cheery throng on Tuesday, September 17, at
Pledge Across America— a grass roots effort
backed by the Bush Administration and federal
Department of Education to organize school
children for a national recitation of the Pledge
of Allegiance in the midst of a national debate
over whether the words “under God” should be
included in the pledge. Veering off-topic into
foreign policy for his daily Saddam bashing
sound bite, the president summoned all of the
authority and solemn gravitas of his
administration when he cockily leaned against
the podium and, in his best John Wayne Glare,
said, “There's an old saying in Tennessee, I
know it is in Texas, but probably here in
Tennessee, which says 'Fool me once— shame on...
shame on... [long pause, then, in unsure,
half-whisper, half-prayer] ...you...” And off he
went, into the now-famous Bush
Deer-In-Headlights Freeze. A VCR pause in actual
time when the president appeared to suffer a
small seizure as the electrical system in his
brain shorted out while he fought desperately to
not get this “old saying” wrong. But the
struggle, consuming Bush for long seconds before
he defensively sputtered out, “—fooled— you
can't be fooled again,” was actually much worse
than the gaffe itself.
Bush's inability to achieve any level of comfort
with himself is what frightens me the most about
Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove's impending
“war” with Iraq. Bush seems not only
uncomfortable with himself, and wholly unable to
laugh at his own silliness, but he seems unable
to just admit his little mistake and move on. As
though, somehow, keeping a straight face through
an embarrassing moment will somehow salvage his
dignity. Which, in turn, seems to suggest
salvaging the president's dignity would be worth
the greater sacrifice of his credibility.
This nation has had a lot of experience with
leaders who put saving face above saving the
nation. Bill Clinton put this country through
enormous pain and turmoil and, indeed, set the
stage for this man to succeed him, by simply not
admitting, way back during Paula Jones's suit,
that he'd had inappropriate conduct with a White
House intern. George Bush before him spent
billions of dollars to bring us to Saddam's door
and then turned and went home, and then
proceeded to squander a 90% public approval
rating to be beaten by an Arkansas governor we'd
never heard of.
Richard Nixon sentenced tens of thousands of
teenage boys to die in the jungles of Southeast
Asia because he wanted to win reelection in 1972
and because he didn't want to look bad, or be
the first president to “lose” a war. We fought
in Vietnam for a principle, to protect our
values and our way of life from a tiny,
impoverished nation that we pretended was the
linchpin to Soviet world dominance so General
Dynamics and Bell Helicopter could make a
fortune.
But, perhaps the most tragic example of a
president putting dignity above morality and
common sense was Lyndon Baines Johnson's use of
the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” as a rallying cry
to escalate the Vietnam War in 1964.
Into The Quagmire: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs “Gulf of Tonkin” resolution. August 10, 1964.
Collective Amnesia
38 years later, the American pubic is amnesiatic once again,
this latest bout sponsored by the terrorist attacks that have
coalesced America into flag-waving Reaganite jingoists desperate
for closure. We need a villain, we need a bad guy, and we are so
very desperate to believe every word issued from Donald Rumsfeld
during his stand-up act at the Pentagon briefings. We are
completely spellbound by the hard-charging Beltway square jaws
and, desperate for Ronald Reagan but finding him no longer
available, we have settled upon George Dubya the illusion of
greatness, correcting his flawed humanity and seeing and hearing
what we so desperately need to see and hear.
Which is a perfect environment for a political shark like Karl
Rove to thrive in. Here Rove has Lyndon Johnson's America: an
America so distraught, so wounded by great tragedy, that we are
prepared to believe whatever statements Washington issues. The
panicked strum und drang of Bush's rush to Baghdad speaks almost
entirely to political opportunism over any real semblance of
national security. While we certainly believe getting rid of
Saddam will ultimately be a good thing for everybody, we don't
believe hostilities must, must, must start before the November
elections, elections which would otherwise certainly be a
referendum on the administration's Iraq policy.
The timing of Bush's efforts to panic the American public and
change the topic from Enron to Tehran makes Bush appear pathetic
if not evil. The tactic is insultingly blatant, so much so that
we have to assume it is not a tactic at all, but a genuine call
to arms for genuinely scary reasons, because if they really
wanted to wag this dog, they'd be much more clever about doing
it... right? I mean, they wouldn't be this obvious and this
brazen... right?
The Bush Administration is selling high-end copper and oak
coffins to the grieving widows and widows-to-be of America;
taking advantage of our grief to shove this obscenity down our
throats, ramming it through a congress of cowards and liars who
will most certainly give him his Tonkin Resolution. And, that
paperwork in hand, this president will unleash hell, sweeping
even more likeminded GOP candidates to victory in November
amidst the flag-waving rah-rah of an America rallying to support
our troops as they sail into what Bush must, by all evidence,
see as his own Grenada, but which holds the distinct possibility
of becoming Bush's Vietnam if not Bush's Waterloo if not
America's Waterloo. Bush wants his own Tonkin Resolution because
he is acting like it's still 1964, like America can still run
around firing its guns whenever and wherever we like. Like the
political landscape and the rules of war haven't irrevocably
changed in 38 years.
This reminds me of the pathetic British armies, orderly and
civilized, marching to a loud drum beat— a drum beat— into the
wooded Maryland hills, wearing bright red, and being slaughtered
by un-uniformed terrorists and guerilla warriors hiding in tress
and attacking from all directions. We now call those factions
patriots, patriots who won largely by changing the rules of war,
while the powerful, established nation continued to employ
tactics and rules that no longer applied. If Desert Storm proved
anything, it's that we can bomb Baghdad into the stone age
without affecting much of the political landscape there. But we
are all too grief stricken and perhaps too gullible and too
stupid to even see it.
Doing The Pepsi Challenge between Bush's proposed resolution and
the Tonkin Resolution conjures up possibilities that'll have me
sleeping with the light on for quite awhile. Or, am I just being
unreasonably cynical? Maybe. But, in the final analysis, the
Bush Administration's Iraq policy boils down to this: these men
are either evil or stupid. There's really not much middle
ground. Rallying America for a just cause would seem to invite
if not require bipartisanship, and eschewing even the appearance
of politics. No component of Bush's mealy, meandering attempts
to convince us of the rightness of his cause presents any
compelling reason why the whole matter couldn't be tabled until
the new congress is seated in January. The merits of his case
are not my issue here so much as the timing, the urgency being
so seemingly transparent. For all I know, the president has a
valid case for this policy, but he squanders it on brazen
political opportunism, which makes me question his ethics and,
therefore, his judgment.
Now It Can Be Told: the step-by-step true story of how the American people were sold on the Iraq war.
Osama and Sadaam
At my fairest, I can characterize this issue as a
damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't moral dilemma. If the
administration is right, waiting to disarm Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein can and will have devastating consequences. If
the administration is wrong, attacking Iraq will, in fact, bring
about the unprecedented wave of terrorism Bush presumes to
prevent. I am actually not attempting to sift through the wisdom
of this call to arms so much as to vent my discomfort with the
stink of it; a sinking Wag The Dog feeling about the timing and
ultimate purpose of this saber-rattling, of this seemingly
madman Bush, who has now only one topic of conversation— Saddam
Hussein.
I think it interesting to note Osama bin Laden's disappearance
from the White House daily theme. The president has successfully
turned our attention away from Osama, the other mission we've
spent billions of dollars and killed thousands of people without
a successful or satisfying conclusion to those matters, and
focused us on his next multi-billion dollar expenditure and epic
loss of life that will not only end inconclusively but will
likely plunge this country into deep recession if not
depression, de-stabilize the Middle East, and initiate a wave of
terrorism against this country unprecedented in this nation's
history. The president's reasons for pursuing his course seem to
change daily. There is a Reason Of The Day, like a child
desperate for a new bike, pressing his cause with ever new and
largely unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims. Watching the
poll numbers, Bush recently linked Saddam with Osama, an
extremely unlikely paring, as my friend G. Edward Jones, Jr.
pointed out on my weblog:
“Osama and Saddam have been openly HATEFUL
towards each other. Saddam detests organized religion (this is
why we funded him against uber-religious Iran) and Osama hates
secularists. The chances of these two working together are
roughly the same as Jerry Fallwell and Bishop [John Shelby]
Spong opening a ministry together. “
Other Reasons of The Day imply alliances with Iran (laughably
unlikely), arming and supporting the Palestinians (more likely,
but nobody believes we're going to war to bring peace in
Israel), and, most unworkable, the notion that Saddam might
someday attack us. Currently, the Bush drum beat is about nukes.
The president danced around Saddam Nukes for months, then kind
of intimated Saddam Nukes, but now, ever more intent on
panicking the American public, he is all but saying Saddam has
nukes (but no enriched uranium to blow them up). The president's
southern drawl, regrettably, has him clearly and painstakingly
enunciating (with, as Dana Carvey pointed out on a recent
Letterman appearance, a smug look of satisfaction when he
pronounces the big words correctly). The word nuclear is often
pronounced by this president as “nuculer,” which, for me,
really doesn't help me take him seriously. The nukes claim was
eventually revealed to have been a complete hoax and, to date,
no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
The administration is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, and nukes tend to stick. The notion of a terrorist setting one off in Times Square scares the heck out of all of us, as it should. But, making the American people believe attacking Saddam will somehow prevent that is, for me, as heinous as the potential terrorist act itself. There are any number of states out there with the bomb, including our allies, like Israel and India, and hostile states like North Korea. I think it inevitable that terrorists will someday have nuclear capability and the capacity to deliver it to our door. Should we work like hell to prevent that? You bet. But creating the myth that all roads lead to Baghdad, and that regime change will guarantee our safety, is a pretty cruel lie to foist on the American people. We are an open society. We are not safe. 9|11 has demonstrated to all the nut jobs in the world just how vulnerable we truly are, and that they've been, mostly, wasting their time going after our embassies and military installations when our mainland remains incredibly vulnerable.
