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CounterPunch
October
24, 2002
George W's Bind:
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
by BEN TRIPP
Pop quiz. When you hear the expression "regime
change", which of the following best describes what you
think it means:
A) bloody coup
B) change of government
C) leader of regime changes mind
If you said A) or B), you would be in
the majority for once. Only one man believes the correct answer
is C). Unfortunately that man is George W. Bush, the leider
of the world. I was going to say the free world, but at this
point Bush couldn't give it away for free. He'll have to pay
a hauling company to dump it somewhere. Yes, children, our number
one statesman has done it again: he has taken reality as everyone
understands it and twisted it into a balloon animal, leaving
us to determine if it's a giraffe, a wiener dog, or a pretzel.
I quote:
"[I]f he [Saddam Hussein] were to
meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions
that I've described very clearly in terms that everybody [even
a monkey] can understand, that in itself will signal the regime
has changed." (Italics mine.)
It looks like we're not going to war
with Iraq. The yellow ribbon industry is already sagging in
early market reports.
Whenever this Administration starts redefining
the English language and the concepts we hold in common, you
know there's a sea change coming. Elsewhere in his remarks,
Bush refers to the regime as "he", meaning Saddam Hussein:
"And that's why the stated policy
of our government. . . . is regime change -- because we don't
believe he is going to change."
(Italics Kofi Annan's.)
So now it's not a regime in the traditional
sense, meaning a government, but a regime in the newspeak sense,
meaning one guy, the lone Bad Hat over there, Saddam Hussein.
When Bush says 'regime change' means a change of heart by the
one guy who is the regime, you can expect another seismic change
of subject in our immediate future.
Normally I find this kind of thing disturbing,
such as when 'privatization' became 'personal accounts', 'the
terrorists' became 'terror', and Osama bin Laden turned into
Saddam Hussein like a butterfly emerging from its Chrysler.
But if it means we don't have to make an oil grab in the middle
of a double-dipshit recession, I'm all for it.
The foreign press, which can't be relied
upon because it's full of foreigners and much of its work is
published in some other language, is trying to figure out what
this means. This is typical continental word-parsing. I'll
explain what it means. The UN just stood up, one nation after
another, including our regional valet Kuwait, and said  "ixnay" to the war
despite Bush's best efforts, which to be fair weren't much.
Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, has released every single Man Jack
of his prison population. Every rapist, murderer, dissident,
horse thief, and opposing candidate has been given a 'get out
of jail free' card, and the population of Iraq, which already
voted unanimously to keep his solo regime, is now leaping about
with joy unconfined. At least in his own country, Saddam Hussein
is the man. And seeing as he's not allowed to go
anywhere else, that's good enough for him. Meanwhile Bush looks
sillier and sillier, especially on the domestic front, where
it might be said that Zero fiddles while Rome burns. And then
North Korea stands up, digging its toes in the sand and mumbling
with embarrassment, and admits it's got nukes. This is the political
equivalent of pulling Bush's bathing suit down around his ankles,
pointing amidships, and giggling uncontrollably. Strewth! The
whole situation is a nightmare. Even Hitler didn't have it this
bad.
So- and I'm now addressing the foreign
press again, having reviewed my text and noticing that I was
originally going somewhere with this- what you need to understand
is that whenever things don't go Bush's way, he changes the terms
before changing the subject. If called on it, he claims everybody
just misunderstood what he meant before. Thus Osama went from
"dead or alive" to "I truly am not that concerned
about him," followed by "Oooh, look, there's that nasty
Saddam Hussein!" The tax cut for the rich that sank our
economy went from a reward for all their hard work to a tonic
which would revitalize the failing economy (because the rich
all turned out to be criminals) to a key component of the war
against terror; when the economy remained flaccid despite all
this diddling, up went the stentorian cry, "Oooh, look,
there's that nasty Saddam Hussein!" You see? He makes
it up as he goes along, pushing an ideological ball with his
nose over every kind of terrain, regardless of what will come,
or what has gone before.
Thus, fellow anti-war types, we can all
be proud. Our nation will probably go to war with someone else
(not North Korea, but maybe Singapore or Nepal), but if we go
to war with Iraq, it will be a fluke. Bush has started changing
the subject. And for those of you who argue our nation needs
a regime change, if you simply adopt the new definition of the
term, you can now claim victory. Because if a regime is one
man, and regime change is when he changes his mind, it looks
like we've got a regime change in Washington.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. He can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
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