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CounterPunch
February
14, 2003
He'll Be Remembered as an Asshole
Peaceniks Win
War!
By BEN TRIPP
Hey, gang! We won, if you don't mind Pyrrhic
victories. I feel like the guy at Hiroshima who was in a fart-lighting
contest just as the A-bomb went off. His last words were "beat
that". In a topsy-turvy way that would baffle the Cheshire
Cat, we who desire peace will triumph in the event of war. You
see, if there's a clear loser in the pending savagery, it's George
W. Bush and his administration of barking scrotum monsters.
Right now it doesn't look like
they've lost. They'll have their war on Iraq; they will rain
bombs down on that godforsaken patch of petroleum-soaked dirt
and before you know it instead of the Iraqi population being
50% children, it will be 20% children, because kids can't run
as fast as adults. After a few days of hand-to-hand combat through
the streets of once-legendary Baghdad it will all be over. But
George never read the Arabian Nights- too long and too dirty.
So he doesn't know that Baghdad is infested with genies, and
we're not talking about the cute blue ones with ADD who talk
like Robin Williams. The ones in Baghdad are the djinn,
ancient magical spirits that inevitably trick their masters into
self-destruction. Voila! Or if you're Mozart, viola. But the
effect is the same. George W. Bush has already lost the most
important battle of all: the battle for the future.
Setting aside money and power for a moment
(sometimes I do), what really matters to a guy like George is
that he should someday join the pantheon of Great Americans whose
marble busts inhabit the halls of our nation's capitol. He's
got all the power and money he could ever misuse in a thousand
lifetimes. What he needs now is to be honored by posterity.
This is where he loses and we win. One could argue that George
is a marble-headed bust already: that's as close as he'll come
to being pals with posterity. Posteriority, yes. Posterity,
no. He will not be remembered as a brave warrior, a noble patriot,
a statesman, a father to his country, a son of God, or even a
well-meaning delusional psychotic. He will be remembered as
an asshole- and that's exactly how it will read in the history
textbooks, although they'll spell it a**hole so as to avoid mantling
the kiddies' cheeks with blushes.
In the future, assuming we can still
hope for one, George XLIII's reign will be derided, scorned,
mocked, and other words to that effect. jeered and disparaged
at the very least, maybe even subject to opprobrium. We-- the
unlikely alliance acting against his lunatic regime, we Liberals
and Conservatives, Libertarians and Progressives and Pentagon
generals and disenfranchised veterans, mothers, fathers, mimes,
entomologists, podiatrists and transsexuals, all sons and daughters
of a government that has turned its back on the principles upon
which we were nurtured from cradle to shallow grave-- we will
bask in the hallowed light of kind remembrance, not George.
A fat lot of good it will do us, but there we are. I didn't
say victory would be sweet. Those kids who took a bullet at
Kent State? Martin Luther King? The Kennedy brothers? King
Kong? They had to die at the hands of The Man to get immortal-
it's a mug's game. George W. Bush, how will we loathe thee?
Let me count the ways.
Foremost among his epic buggerations,
history will record that Bush precipitated modern America's first
utterly unprovoked war and rekindled the arms race. Saddam's
not even a communist. A war of opportunity, possibly World War
III: this is what Bush will be remembered for, not the inevitable
victory over some whiskery homunculus in Baghdad. And that's
not all.
Another first: George will be remembered
for reversing the outcome of both the Civil War and the Civil
Rights movement. He will be remembered for mixing Church and
State: his invisible cloud superhero and your tax dollars, together
at last. He will be remembered for nose-diving the economy from
a great height. For record deficits and massive bureaucratic
expansion- he'll knock Reagan off the charts. For 50 bankrupt
states. He will be remembered for turning his back on treaties.
For insulting great nations. For calling the leader of Russia
'Pooty Poot'. For oppressing the weak and unleashing the mighty
upon them. For eviscerating the Bill of Rights, and for secret
detentions. For ignoring the desperate environmental crisis
which grips the globe like a gut-spasming case of Montezuma's
Revenge. For slipping the government's unclean fingers back
into the womb of every woman in America. For stealing the election
of 2000. For rigging the election of 2002, and probably for
canceling the election of 2004. Need more? You can't spin the
history of the future, which will read something like this:
Bush, G.W. 43d American President
(locum tenens)
In private life an unsuccessful oil
executive, George W. Bush was installed as president of the United
States by the Supreme Court in the year 2000. At first an ineffectual
president both at home and abroad, he was invested following
the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 (see sidebar) with enormous
political authority. Seizing opportunity in the name of fighting
terrorism, Bush advanced an aggressive agenda to secure the world's
natural resources for private interests, especially the petroleum
industry. After initiating a disastrous program of economic,
military and diplomatic actions coupled with severe domestic
security measures, Bush's administration collapsed under a wave
of scandals. The impact of his presidency on America's international
standing is still felt today. According to an obscure satirist
of the period, "George W. Bush was the a**hole that ate
the world."
See also Stalin, J. and Hitler, A.
Just you wait and see. The genie is
out of the bottle, and this is one bottle George won't put down.
Us real patriots, the dissidents, have already won- and
we'll get our country back someday. What's left of it. Hell,
in ten years we'll be able to travel overseas again. History
will smile on us. Meanwhile, buckle up your poniards, because
we may have won the war, but the battle has only just begun.
Ben Tripp
can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Yesterday's
Features
Jennifer Berkshire
Columbia
and the Signs from Above
Jason Leopold
It's
the Oil, Stupid
The Markets of Mass Destruction
Neve Gordon
Arabs
and Jews Unite for Peace
Charlie Clements, MD
A
Report from Iraq
Bombing the Starving, the Sick, the Homeless
Linda Heard
Oh What a Web They Weave!
Will Hans Get Blixed?
Jeremy Brecher
Alternative
to War
Democratic Protest Can Avert Calamity
Senator Robert Byrd
Bush Administration is Reckless
Ray McGovern
CIA Man on the Agency's Days of Shame
Kurt Nimmo
The Propaganda of Anxiety
Website of the Day
Rock
Out Against War
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February 8
/ 9, 2003
Bill Christison
The
US Gameplan for Iraq
Intelligence Officers for
Sanity
Memo to Bush on Iraq
Olive Lowell
Homeland Insecurity
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Michael Neumann
Nonviolence: Its Histories and
Myths
Alison Weir
A Thousand Professors
David Krieger
On the Brink of War
Muqtedar Khan
The Logic of the Hawks
Anthony Gancarski
Pakistan on the Brink?
Jason Leopold
GAO Surrenders to Cheney
Anis Shivani
A Post-Liberal Theory of Consciousness for the Starbucks Habitué
David Vest
Dive Bomber
Norman Madarasz
The New Brazilian Cinema
Poets' Basement
Handleman, Smith, Engel
Website of the Weekend
Cities for Peace
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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