E-Mail This Article to a Friend Pox Americana (continued)

Unwelcome wagon

The free Iraqis soon began to take to the streets to protest deplorable conditions exacerbated by the war, as well as civilian casualties and the absolute absence of public safety. They also had some religious scores to settle and clearly didn’t appreciate the presence of troops supremely commanded by a born-again Christian. They will be even less happy when the several thousand missionaries authorized by Bush arrive to save their pagan souls. People who drop death from above really should be careful about implying that salvation emanates from the same point of origin. The power was out, water was scarce, looted hospitals were unable to provide care, and Western devils were everywhere. On two consecutive days, Americans opened fire on protesters outside an Iraqi school where the soldiers were holed up. Considering all the National Guard troops the US had over there, Qent State was bound to happen sooner or later.

Disarmed and dangerous

The central premise for Bush’s war was the weapons of mass destruction he assured us Saddam had and would use unless he was stopped. Well, Dubyahoo got his war, but there wasn’t a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon to be found. Four More Years — Because W. Needs the Time To Find the WMD! Saddam had such weapons in the past, and the US knew it and condoned it. The Reagan administration had helped facilitate their use in Iraq’s war with Iran. Like Osama bin Laden, Hussein was just another little monster the US helped bolt together. Two months after the US invaded Iraq, the world knew that Hussein had been disarmed — before the invasion.

Leadership vacuum

Once the US-led coalition "won" the war with Iraq (the military equivalent of the Los Angeles Lakers defeating a CYO team), its first move to bring democracy to the area was to name Retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner the head honcho of efforts to transmogrify Iraqi oil into obscene amounts of lucre for the corporate riffraff in line to profiteer from the devastated nation. In an April 2003 interview with the New York Times, Garner said, "If President Bush had been president [during Vietnam], we would have won." Why Garner thought a drunken, drug-abusing, MOOA (Missing Out of Action) National Guardsman would have made a good president back then remains unclear.

Garner’s ineptitude once more demonstrated the court-appointed Bush administration’s lack of preparedness for any Iraqi eventuality that did not involve oil. It was a weak move even by Bush’s feeble standards to select the inept Garner to enter Iraq’s political vacuum. Garner did next to nothing to stabilize the country during his brief rule. Seeing an opportunity, Henry Kissinger managed to place one of his lackeys, L. Paul Bremer III, the former managing director of Kissinger & Associates (and the man in charge of counterterrorism in the Reagan White House), in the void widened by Garner.

The vast crusade

Few people, including those in the Middle East, lament the demise of Saddam Hussein, but to the Arab culture, this war was not seen as an invasion of Saddam’s Iraq — it was viewed as an attack upon the Islamic world. It won’t soon be forgotten. These folks are still emotional about the Crusades. In Vietnam, people have put America’s assault upon their country behind them as best they could. But 30 years from now, you won’t find anyone in the Middle East burning incense for enemy souls lost in this war — embassies maybe, but incense, no.

Wars are easy to start but very difficult to end. Just because Americans have been told this is over and it’s time to flip to another show, doesn’t make it so. They’ll hold the Republican Convention in Paris before Gulf War II hatred for the USA even begins to subside in the Middle East. As the Bushists work toward the neocon dream of Pox Americana, the Islamic fundamentalists will work just as hard to make sure that a Jihad rain is gonna fall.

Stammering about in blissful ignorance on the day after he replaced Garner, and just hours after a series of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, Bush was in Indiana explaining why the best tool in the war on terrorism was a $550 billion tax cut for fat cats. After all, what good would it have been to conquer Iraq and profit obscenely from its rebuilding if the profiteers just had to turn around and pay taxes on their booty?

Rove-ing reporter

Bush has been sold to us by Karl Rove, politics’ answer to Ron Popeil. Rove is a low-blow boxing champ who knows how to serve us shit and get us to pay extra for it by calling it freedom filets. After the conventional portion of GWII was over and before it began to look too much like a war of occupation, Rove, the mother of all photo-opportunists, decided to have Junior Bush dress up like a pilot and land on the deck of the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in a fighter jet. If Bush pulled this off, Rove promised him a horsy ride next.

Wrapped tightly in the flag, this ersatz patriot took to the deck of the Lincoln as if he were Jefferson. The deserter in drag as a war hero gave a predictably jingoistic speech. Bush stood there, wielding power derived from stolen office, as Rove backlit him in red, white, and blue political glory. It didn’t matter that he lied. These days veracity doesn’t matter if the video is slick. And this slick video had Bush standing under a gigantic banner that announced: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Rove has a smaller sign in his White House office that says: MISSION ACCOMPLICE!

Last summer, when W. was asked about the obvious upsurge of insurgent activity in Iraq, he responded, "Bring ’em on!" His machismo is boundless when others are at risk, but if his ass is even within shouting distance of the proverbial line, the lights go off, the lies become more brazen, and not even Queen Elizabeth’s quarters are up to security snuff. ("Psst ... Hail the conquering hero. Pass it on.")

Rove’s imaginary president capped the year with a heroic secret mission to serve plastic turkey to troops at the Baghdad airport on Thanksgiving. One thing was certain: Bush was comfortable traveling with the lights out, something he has been doing for years.

Spider-hole man

The war-year’s anticlimactic climax came on December 14, when 600 US troops removed the elusive Saddam Hussein from a spider hole (as opposed to a mite hole, where Bush stores his ethics) just outside the former dictator’s hometown of Tikrit. The pit was insulated, one presumes, with the minutes of Dick Cheney’s energy meetings. Once in custody, Hussein received something of which millions of Americans can only dream — a medical examination.

Saddam was apprehended in ignominious circumstances, his ultimate cowardice on worldwide display. Everybody knows real men hide in the darkness of Air Force One.

You don’t have to be an actuary to understand why Hussein was brought in so far in advance of a potential 2004 October Surprise. Had his homelessness continued, the haggard 66-year-old wasn’t a good bet to live long enough to stand trial, much less before an executioner. Saddam’s biggest mistake was trying to blend in in Iraq. Had he realized how invisible disheveled homeless men are in America, he’d have taken up residence in Washington, DC, and lived unobserved for years. I’d lay odds that Osama bin Laden is in either Detroit or Buffalo right now.

The US corporate media responded by showing us close shots of huge crowds of people supposedly celebrating in the streets of Baghdad. In a country where the unemployment rate is now 80 percent, the streets are already pretty crowded with those left homeless, jobless, and powerless by Bush’s alleged liberation.

The media jubilation provoked a chorus of "All hail Bush!", as if capturing this defrocked piece of crap would make everything suddenly okay. Unfortunately, snagging an impotent old viper did nothing to solve the problems of the three million Americans who have lost their jobs since Bush literally took office. No matter how they try to spin it, we know that imprisoning Saddam will not bring a single slain "Coalition" soldier back to life, or make their deaths retroactively glorious. Nor will it resurrect any of the thousands of dead Iraqis. Not one freshly minted paraplegic arose from a wheelchair upon hearing the news that Hussein had been caught.

Even as the news broke, insurgent attacks continued apace, and US officials warned us to expect a "brief upsurge of violence." They also said there was still "a big job to do." Yes, large portions of the federal treasury had yet to be transferred to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton pension fund. And indeed, there are a lot more foreign-devil haters than Baath loyalists in the Middle East. It’s still much too easy to envision this cradle of civilization becoming the graveyard of humanity.

If the war is an issue next fall, it will be a bad issue for W. It says here that the captured Saddam Hussein will soon be nothing more than a hood ornament on a blood-red Humvee of war.

THIS ISN’T going to end soon: Congress has authorized another $87 billion allegedly for rebuilding Iraq. Those tax dollars, stolen from the pockets of working people whose children are nothing more than cannon fodder to fat-cat war profiteers, are much more likely to end up refurbishing mansions in Houston and bank accounts on Grand Cayman Island than the boulevards of Baghdad.

The only way to extricate ourselves from the Iraqi Quagmire is to use the exits. Take half the dough earmarked for rebuilding and give it to the UN. Then, as John Kerry might say, get the fuck out. There’s no other sane choice. Too many people who hate Bush’s America already live there. Thousands more are making the commute. In November 2003, 79 American families were notified that their soldier parents, offspring, spouses, or siblings would never again celebrate Thanksgiving with them.

Unless we make George W. Bush nothing more than an asterisk in the roll call of history (who was the only unelected man to serve four years — and only four years — as president?), he will have no problem harvesting our children for more senseless wars, serving up the last remnants of the middle class as hors d’oeuvres at the country-club cotillion, and blatantly robbing the elderly of their health, security, and dignity.

To employ the football terminology so favored by the patriarchs who are stomping their metaphorical cleats upon our very way of life, we are approaching the fourth quarter of the George W. Bush era — at least we had better be — because if the gun that goes off next November only signals halftime, we are in for a stomping from which we may never recover enough to field a competitive team.

This year’s news wrap-up rightfully ignored the Democrats. It’s up to you to make them the main story next year. Remember, Christmas 2004 either comes in early November, or it doesn’t come at all.

Barry Crimmins is a political satirist, radio commentator, rouser of Web rabble (www.barrycrimmins.com) and author. This essay is in part excerpted from his upcoming book, Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal, due in the fall of 2004 from Seven Stories Press.