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‘In a dark time the eye begins to see’
J A B R U A R Y & M A R P R IL 2 0 0 7
-THEODORE ROETHKE
A PUNCH IN THE NOSE
"They +haf can give up essential
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
"Having lost our way, we are redoubling our efforts."
-WALT KELL Y ('POGO')
"When the empowered convince themselves that they’re
under attack, they often convince themselves that cruelty
to the powerless is justified."
-JOEL STEIN (L. A TIMES)
The essential question about unrelenting tyrants
is how to be rid of them, especially when they defy every
reasonable and lawful method of dismissal. Should they
be forcibly removed by military or law enforcement officials
sanctioned by court decree; and if that is improbable, would
assassination be a valid consideration?
Assassination of Presidents and other public officials
is a forbidden subject in the USA; even the thought of it is a
criminal act, much less expression of it. Yet, the world might
have suffered less if such monsters as Hitler, Stalin (Idi Amin,
Saddam Hussein) were to have been done away with before
they reached their maximum of depravity.
Much has been said about being rid of G. W. Bush.
Recent poll numbers indicate that 58% of Americans wish his
presidency would end now — and even arch-conservatives are
phlegmatic about the possibility. One especially rock-ribbed
Republican, asked if Bush ought to be impeached, emphatically
replied, “He should be shot!”
But that might paradoxically martyr him. It has often
been conjectured that G.W. (“a useful idiot," in Lenin's phrase)
might better serve the goals of his political gurus if he was
martyred. Given his poll ratings, martyrdom could be a good
career move
Speculation about the ruthless response to an
assassination attempt on Bush elicits a probable declaration
of martial law by his dictatorial successor Dick Cheney (who
seems to never be seen with Bush, perhaps so neither could
be taken out together; hardly anyone knows where Cheney
hides out) and massive roundups of suspects (such as known
“Bush haters," which is about 70+% of the population if one goes
by the polls) that can hardly be imagined except in Orwellian
terms.
But a solid punch in the nose would be well deserved
and particularly appropriate for such a schoolyard bully (also
for “the big fat idiot” Rush Limbaugh). Assassinating Bush (or
Limbaugh), whose intractable sullenness has caused and will
continue to cause thousands of needless deaths, would not be
half as satisfactory. After all, a straight shot to the schnozzle is
the all-American response to iniquitous bullying.
Eugene McCarthy, once a candidate for the Presidency
to end an earlier unpopular and irresponsible war, might have
been speaking of G.W. when he said of a Republican colleague
in Congress, “He has the kind of courage of a soldier who
observes the battlefield from a hill and then rides down to shoot
the enemy’s wounded men.” Or consider Hunter S. Thompson's
eloquent description of President Richard M. Nixon as “a foul
caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions,
with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad."
A comparison with Nixon is apt: even though recidivists
now praise the recently late Gerald Ford's decision to pardon
Nixon for crimes against the Constitution, which derailed
impending impeachment proceedings, a very unpopular act at
the time that cost him the Presidency on his own right the next
election (he was the first “appointed” President before G.W
Bush), it was the wrong decision that has caused the nation
real and lasting harm (which Ford attempted to prevent by the
pardon) because Bush must now be prosecuted for more serious
crimes impeaching (and convicting) Nixon might have spared
history Ford meant well — bu, a democracy will hardly survive if
it is squeamish about holding its leaders to the law, and because
Nixon was not held to account, Bush feels he can arrogantly
flaunt himself as above the law — indeed, in Jim Hightower’s
words, he thinks he is the law He considers himself the unitary
executive’, arbitrarily declaring the Presidency and its vast
apparatus of law, intelligence gathering and especially its military
ascendancy at time of war, supreme over every other political,
legal or public organization; King Emperor, in other words, in
defiance of a reform Congress that hasn't quite yet got the grasp
of holding this renegade President’s feet to the fire
George W Bush is an atrocious example of unwarranted
and certainly undeserved privilege, born into a patronage he
would never accomplish on his own, and which has obviously
given him a lift-up to become, neither by election nor hardly by
merit, a President hell-bent to impose a militant theolitical pluto
cracy through unconstitutional despotism. He does not abide
disagreement or dissent and seldom concedes he might be
wrong, and only lamely if forced to, as if someone else is at fault
for having failed him He is determined to be the last if not the
only authority, the unquestioned “decider" Yet he is really a
stooge, which makes one wonder if he is so self-deluded, so
unself-aware to even suspect his malleability
“Shrub," as the superb Molly Ivins labeled him (if anyone
grasped his real character, she certainly did as a schoolmate;
she relentlessly punctured his posturing), and his neocons have
come closer to dismantling this nation than any terrorists “They
hate democracy," G.W. says of so-called Islamofascists — but
he and his ilk are the true haters of democracy, and they have
spent six years subverting it into their very own ludicrous
invention, the afore-mentioned unitary executive aristocracy
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M A T T W U ERKER
They dishonestly and clumsily fixed at least three elections,
until voters got mad and policed last November's midterms and
wrested dominance of Congress from the Republican Party. And
they are responsible for everything that has gone wrong with the
Iraq War, which includes the moral depravity of invading Iraq in
the first place, an egregious example of unrestrained hubris.
The Bush administration demands the loyalty (and
obedience) of all Americans while it simultaneously betrays
their trust at every turn.Their domestic policy is tax cuts for the
wealthy, corporate anarchy, and suspension of civil liberties for
everybody else. Their foreign policy is to make war or threaten
war.
The real ambition of the invasion of Iraq was the most
obvious: to secure its oil for U S. consumption and to construct
a series of powerful permanent military bases from which to
assault and threaten whatever or however many Middle Eastern
nations (primarily Iran and Saudi Arabia which are oil rich, and
Syria which is politically volatile to U S. interests although it
apparently tortures prisoners under contract to the U S.) who
oppose our subversion. Masking it as a (holy) “war between
civilizations" and as a perpetual war of "good against evil,"
the Bushites have failed in their ultimate “crusade'' because of
terribly wrong assumptions about military power and democracy,
— they had no experience with the former and little respect for
the latter, using the war to actually curb domestic democracy,
perhaps the only part of their plan for conquest and empire that
has worked, but is now being thwarted by popular demand.
Bush lambastes and threatens Iran and Syria for
supporting and supplying “insurgents” and “terrorists” fighting
American troops in Iraq. They are portrayed as enemies ("axis
of evil"), but instead they could be thought as neighbors fighting
to help a neighboring country to rid itself of foreign invaders who
have occupied it as conquerors for four years. Of course, that
seems somewhat simplistic, but more so is Bush's constant
refrain of American soldiers as “liberators" exporting democracy
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — such as more
than 60% of Iraqis want the U S. out of Iraq; presence of
American troops caused and exacerbates the bloody schism
between the two major Islamic sects, one of which ruled Iraq
under Saddam Hussein, the other which wants its turn
Iran does not roll over to U S threats but instead — a
result of the old grievance of displacing their elected government
half a century ago with a puppet Shah — refuses Bush's demand
to abolish its nuclear program, which of course makes him livid.
He accuses Iran of providing weapons to kill American soldiers
in Iraq But G.W has cried "terrorism" too often, and his lies that
promoted the invasion of Iraq are not playing too well this time
There is no reason to trust Bush’s assertions that Iran
is responsible for providing lEDs and other weapons that are, in
Bush's words, “killing American soldiers" (a phrase he flagrantly
invokes) But it is almost certain he is laying the foundation for
military action in Iran, yet he made the same claims about Iraq
and has little credibility in his “certainty" of Iran's culpability And
wha, indeed should Iran do with American arms and armor as
well as airpower prowling its western and eastern borders in Iraq
and Afghanistan, raising the specter of imminent invasion —
even though invading a sovereign nation was and remains an
egregious violation of international law.
The Bush White House is trying to blame Iran for
the deteriorating war in Iraq, yet these “explosively formed
penetrator” weapons Iran is being accused of supplying Shiite
insurgents, have been known to be in use since 2004 — and
for that matter protective armor developed against them has not
been distributed to American troops. And, in the matter of rogue
weaponry, U S.-manufactured weapons sold on the world
market, legally or illegally, can be found nearly everywhere,
which includes Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Afghanistan.
Bush compares himself to Churchill and both Roosevelts
— he postures as a war leader of their stature and declares the
stakes are even more critical; yet after four years, longer than
America's involvement in World War 2, the U S. is quagmired
in Iraq, unable to win, refusing to “cut and run." Certainly there
were grievous losses and dark periods during World War 2, but
after less than a year a turn-around began (“not the beginning
of the end," Churchill famously pronounced, “but the end of the
beginning ”) Not so with Bush's “war on terror.” He clamors that
he is the “decider" yet his decisions — if indeed they are his
decisions — are wrongheaded and disastrous.
In the early days of World War 2, Hitler promised the
German people great victories, and with the defeat of continental
Western Europe, he was wildly cheered. But Britain resisted, and
other upsetting circumstances occurred (such as the huge error
of attacking Soviet Russia) — so with G.W. Bush and his current
poll ratings in the lower 30 percentiles, which in graphic detail
indicates the fecklessness of toxic nationalism.
Ironically, it wasn't the war in Iraq that began the
unraveling of the Bush Presidency, it was the destruction and
abandonment of New Orleans, perhaps the nation's most
colorfully famous city, by Hurricane Katrina It was then that the
American people as well as much of the world could no longer
refuse to see the ineptness behind the facade of swaggering
pomposity. The curtain was pulled on the wizard, as many
have said since. Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times last
summer, a year after Hurricane Katrina, “The ineptitude bared
by the storm — no planning for a widely predicted catastrophe,
no attempt to secure a city besieged by looting, no strategy for
anything except spin was indelible New Orleans was Iraq redux
with an all-American cast The discrepancy between Mr Bush's
heckava job’ schtick and the reality on the ground induced a
Cronkite-in-Vietnam epiphany for news anchors. At long last they
and the country demanded answers to the questions about the
administration's competence that had been soft-pedaled two
years earlier when the war first went south."
Bush claimed the attack on Iraq was because of WMDs
and 9/11 co-conspiracy with al Qaeda When WMDs weren't
found and cohesion with 9/11 disputed, Bush said the invasion's
purpose was to rid the world of a brutal dictator with links to al
Qaeda After Saddam Hussein was captured, the rationale for
the war reverted to the goal of “spreading democracy" through
the Middle East That illusion has been replaced with the solemn
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