|
Our Ironic President, Ironically Speaking
After the stupendous and horrific explosive collapse of the World
Trade Center Towers and the accompanying destruction of part
of the Pentagon, the editor of Vanity Fair famously declared
that irony was dead. Irony will always be with us, of course,
along with tragedy, comedy, parody, and, alas, melodrama. It
is doubly ironic, then, that President Bush's leadership since
9/11 has pushed irony onto the domestic and international political
stage to a preposterous degree. How could this be?
The man himself is a stranger to irony and
indeed self-consciously so, presenting himself during his campaign
and to this day as a plain direct straight-shooter from the West
with no patience for the sissified wits of the East, the Democratic
Party, Old Europe, and especially the dandified French, who he
pointed out have no word for entrepreneur. Our president does
not indulge in irony, he embodies it.
The president wants freedom restored to Iraq
while presiding over a Justice Department that is systematically
dismantling American civil liberties and seeking federal veto
power over state initiatives on drugs and euthanasia. He wants
democracy to spread over the globe behind his armada, while dismissing
the unprecedented global megaprotest against his planned war
as a trivial difference of opinion about the character of Saddam
Hussein. The president is exercised, obsessed even, with the
horror of weapons of mass destruction after his government has
ignored and ridiculed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, our prior
agreements with Russia on missile deployment, UN sponsored conventions
against biological and chemical weapons, and bipartisan initiatives
to help Russia secure its nuclear weapons and retrain its nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons technicians and scientists.
The President, along with the now increasingly
isolated Tony Blair, has been stridently insisting that Saddam
and Iraq are the most pressing threat to the United States and
the world. Yes, that's right, that Iraq - the crushed
country, surrounded by militant and well-armed Kurds, rich and
powerful Arab states with world class air forces, and a massive
Iran. And, oh yes, a country that has been bombed regularly by
the American and British air forces for the last six years.
Appparently Osama Bin Laden is not so much
of a threat because he is not so easy a target. And those 8000
plus Al Qaeda terrorists we let escape from Kunduz a year ago
with their Pakistani ISI and military mentors? Well they are
certainly dispersed, but many thousand are in the wild west of
the Afghan-Pakistan border, called by some Pushtunistan,
backed by a divided Pakistan population with millions of Muslim
supporters underneath the unsteady hand of General Musharaff
(known locally as Busharaff). Now there is a place that
could use some straight shooting no-nonsense Seventh Cavalry
types, to back up the brave few hundreds of 82nd Airborne and
other elite American troops on what amounts to guard duty with
the occasional aggressive probe. And, oh yes, the Pakistani do
have the atomic bomb and the means to deliver it.
Speaking of which, Mr. President, it seems
that the missile technology the Pakistanis have was traded by
the North Koreans in order to get some enriched uranium and nuclear
weapons technology from Pakistan. Of course, North Korea has
also been supplying Iran and others with missiles, as the Chinese
have. Could be, as Seymour
Hersh has surmised, Pakistan/Korea might have done some business
with Indonesia, another Muslim land like Pakistan, along weapons
of mass destruction lines. But we digress.
It seems the Koreans are hurt because they
are being dismissed as insignificant threats, when they know
they certainly put Saddam in the shade. They keep shouting how
ready they are to use weapons of mass destruction unless we pay
some attention.
The fact is, and it is no secret for the majority
of the attentive public, that all these lands and people are
truly threats and they already have access to nuclear weapons.
And, irony again, our attacking Iraq and ignoring Korea is a
powerful incentive for every nation on earth who can develop
nuclear weapons to do so post haste, to deter American aggression.
Final irony. According to the chickenhawk
ideologues, now that Russia has collapsed and while China is
still working its way up from poverty, America is the unrivaled
superpower and can do anything it wants. We will establish Democracy
and Freedom no matter how many people we have to kill and imprison
indefinitely to do so. It is true that we spend more on weapons
and armed fighters by far than any other nation and any combination
of nations even remotely liable to arise. But, alas, unrivaled
power does not equal unlimited and perpetual power. Right now
we are not able to go after Al-Qaeda and the North Koreans because
we are loading up the Persian Gulf and Turkey with outrageous
overkill. And of course it takes troops on the ground to secure
whatever targets massive destructive weapons may have hammered
into initial submission. And the standing survivors, who have
seen their families and homes incinerated, might they be actually
willing to die fighting us, with nothing to lose and honor to
gain? Nah.
Let's see. Iraq, then maybe Iran, Syria is
close, might as well do it. Maybe by then the Japanese and Chinese,
those traditional allies, will have solved that North Korean
distraction and perhaps India might hold off Pakistan with their
nukes until we can get around to, what was it? Pushtunistan!
right. Osama's bad liver will probably have done him in by then,
anyway.
Cumulative irony: If we don't strike Saddam
now, we might have even bigger troubles later. Er, but if we
do go ahead with this elective war, we may well have a truly
big war, with big armies and opposing nukes, forced upon us even
sooner - with our resources depleted.
Only a chickenhawk would not bother to think
of the cost in American lives (we know they have not a thought
for non-American lives). How many body bags will we be willing
to see coming off military planes all over America? Will we finally
have to institute a draft? How will we pay
for it? Dip into the Social Security Trust Fund?
Before 9/11 President Bush made no claims
to foreign policy expertise and indeed reassured his heartland
constituents that it was time to be humble and not try to change
the world. After 9/11 the mainstream media, especially the television
talk people, awarded the President 46 additional IQ points and
now he is single-handedly taking on the reformation and salvation
of the world.
But we are leaving irony behind and heading
into tragedy. Besides, if we stay focused on that major baddie
in all-threatening Baghdad, we won't have to think of these nasty
nasty things. SUV shopping, anyone? It's the patriotic thing
to do.
|