W's Last Stand: As Orwellian as it Gets

Interior, the President’s private bathroom in the White House on the morning of George W. Bush’s final press conference. Bush lathers his face and begins to shave. The camera pans in close. As he pulls the razor across his face Bush stares at his image and murmurs, quietly but resolutely: “Heckuva job, W, heckuva job. You kept the homeland safe from those evil terrorists for seven years. That’s a legacy, and something to be proud of. Your record is solid, with plenty of accomplishments. Don’t give a second thought to those elitist writers and bloggers who criticize you. OK, the economy hit a little-bitty bump, but America is strong and respected around the world. Heckuva job. Hold your head up.” Fade out.

Bush convenes his final press conference and political junkies across the country can’t decide whether to shriek with joy or wail with despair. For pure jaw-dropping, head-scratching spectacle, Bush set the bar very high and in that regard, and only in that regard, we will miss him.

Whenever Bush opened his mouth it was an adventure, not to mention a felony against Mother English. For decades to come, scholars will ponder how a man born with a silver spoon between his lips and a platinum spoon between his ass cheeks, educated at Yale and Harvard, could come across as stupid, obstinate and petulant.

Even after eight of the longest years in American history, we don’t really know W. He acts like a jackass, talks like a moron, evades responsibility like a 7-year-old, but is it an elaborate act or is he a simpleton?

There’s W at the podium, familiar smirk on his face, refusing to admit that he made any mistakes during his reign. There will be no frozen Frost/Nixon moment, no breakdown or cathartic tears, no plea for forgiveness. Disappointments, maybe, but mistakes, never. While America wallowed in foreign wars and turned its economy into a giant casino, W went on vacation, spending some 900 days at Camp David or his Crawford dude ranch. No worries, no stress, just Laura and the Lord, the twins and Karl Rove for comfort and companionship. Not a drop of bourbon in the pantry, no vial of cocaine hidden under the bed – W totally fucked things up without illicit narcotics.

But don’t assume drugs didn’t play a central role in W’s White House. How else can we explain the criminal shit and blatant venality that passed for standard operating procedure on W’s watch? The truth will eventually emerge that W was crocked ninety percent of the time on a wicked combination of Paxil, Effexor and Ambien. No semi-intelligent person can watch Bush in action without concluding that he’s a drug fiend.

W insists that America’s moral standing around the world is untarnished. This is laughable but W appears to believe it. Unfortunately, for those of us who dwell on Reality Avenue and read foreign newspapers, we know what the world thinks of us, and it’s not comforting; when a great many people view the United States as dangerous and bellicose, a force of instability and a beacon of hypocrisy, you know the wheels have fallen off the bus.

The list of W’s crimes, abuses of power and fuck-ups is too extensive to run through here, though every one should be examined, dissected and probed with the same fervor the Government brought to investigating Bill Clinton’s indiscretions. If the Government can spend several years and millions of tax dollars investigating land deals in the Ozarks and tawdry Oval Office sexcapades, then certainly the Government can devote some time and coin to investigate eight years of real crimes against the country.

It’s unlikely to happen, for the political class is intent on “looking forward” rather than back, and the Democrats are too spineless to force the issue, even though Americans deserve a full-scale investigation. Simple justice, the one ideal the United States rarely delivers any more, demands an accounting so that no one is fooled when the next wannabe dictator comes around. But don’t hold your breath. Even if the Democrats find some courage and force an investigation, the lawyers will make sure it’s limited in scope – to avoid, naturally, “putting the nation through needless trauma.” Bush, Cheney, Rove, Miers, Paulson, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and every other shit-head who served Bush and participated in the rat-fucking of our country will walk away scot-free; some will score big dollar book contracts or become respected commentators on Fox News; others will land gigs as lobbyists or consultants or think tank analysts; but nobody will pay.

W was defiant to the end, still insisting that white is black and black white, and any evidence to the contrary is not simply wrong, but a product of the “elite,” whoever they may be. Everything else about his Administration lays in ruins, but the bubble surrounding W remains intact, shielding him from truth, fact and consequences; in what’s left of his mind, W sees himself standing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath the Mission Accomplished banner.

The Graveyard of Empires

Why is the U.S. in Iraq? Most thinking citizens realize that the Bush Administration misled the nation into a pre-emptive war based on bogus information and an aggressive PR campaign that used ex-military officers and a compliant, negligent news media to push the case for invasion.

As the situation on the ground in Iraq changed, when it became clear that the Iraqis did not want us in their country, our rationale for the invasion changed from finding WMD to spreading Democracy to rooting out terrorists.

For the record: we found no WMD; discovered that freedom and Democracy cannot be imposed on another country, particularly one lacking a tradition of political freedom; and created chaotic conditions that will undoubtedly produce more terrorists, not less.

Yet, like empires before us, we persist in thinking that our will can be imposed on Iraq, that we can coerce a weak, fragmented Iraqi government to sign a security pact with the U.S. that will allow U.S. bases in the country in perpetuity, and secure the grandest prize of all – exclusive access to Iraqi oil for multinational energy companies.

I was listening to a lecture by a professor of classics a few days ago and perked up when he said that through the ages the Middle East has been the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires. Americans don’t like to think of their country as an imperial power with an empire; we shy from linking the freedom and Democracy-loving US of A with the Romans, the Ottomans or the British, but the fact is that America often imposes its will, its culture and its values on other nations by force – economic, political and military. We need to believe that America only wages war when it’s absolutely necessary, and that other, less enlightened nations, choose to start wars.

But we made the choice for the world to witness, and no matter how President Bush or John McCain or the mouthpieces on Fox News spin the truth, the consequences have been disastrous. The Occupation of Iraq is a military, political and moral failure, and a humanitarian nightmare. When American politicians or generals talk about “Victory” in Iraq it’s obvious they have little idea what victory looks like. The corporate-controlled U.S. news media may ignore what’s happening in Iraq in favor of the latest celebrity gossip, but ignoring what we have wrought will not make it go away.

I read somewhere that the U.S. seeks as many as 50 permanent military facilities in Iraq. I wonder about the proximity of those military bases to oil fields or distribution facilities and major highways. When we slice through the rhetoric and the distortions and the bluster, one fact stands clear and alone: multi-national energy companies want to use the taxpayer-supported U.S. military as a security force for their private investments.

Access to Iraqi oil was, and remains, the ultimate objective of this war-of-choice.  

Hypocrite In Chief

I’ve been scanning the headlines of the Wall Street Journal ever since my neighbor in Unit A moved out; it’s his subscription that keeps giving me access to the Bible of the corporate-set.

Anyway, for a union activist, this is kind of like reading the playbook of the Capitalist class – or at least learning some of their lingo and getting a strong sense of what excites them.

A couple of days ago, in an article about the UAW and Honda, the Journal seemed right pleased with itself when it reported that, “The moves now are helping the foreign-owned plants to lower wage scales.”

Take that in and digest it. For the Capitalist class, keeping unions out and wages for workers down – which is why Honda chose to locate a plant in Greenburg, Indiana, and get Indiana officials to give it generous tax subsidies, and than allow the company to restrict hiring to a small sliver of the state population and geographic territory – is a noble thing. Executives reap big rewards for it. That’s called rigging the game in your favor, and the Capitalist class is skilled in the practice.

Anyway, I pick up the Journal from the driveway this morning, and there’s a piece about President Bush and trade. Here’s Bush, whose tax and trade policies have shifted billions of dollars in wealth from less well-to-do Americans to the wealthiest, whose policies have created a vast gulf between haves and have-nots, chiding corporate boards for giving Top Execs lavish salaries and stock options; Bush talking about how Americans want fairness, when his Administration has been anything but.

Does Bush believe that anyone buys his shit? He’s not a lame duck, he’s a moron, a complete, fucking moron. He had no trouble denying fairness to Katrina victims or Iraq vets discharged from the Army and denied disability benefits on the basis of bogus personality disorder claims or vetoing a decent bill that gave children a shot at decent medical care.

No trouble at all. He just smacked his titanium heart with his fist and claimed that the American economy is strong, robust, cooking, full of opportunity for all.

No wonder Bush smirks so much, there’s just no way to spew that crap with a straight or serious face. You either have to smirk or grimace or burst out laughing. Bush went to Yale on his family dime, studied occasionally, partied a lot, learned little, and still, still, the motherfucker thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.

Here’s this dingbat airhead, saying that America has lost confidence in its ability to compete in the global economy. Memo to GW: we don’t build things in this country anymore! Instead of building products the rest of the world might want to buy, we play with paper, make deals out of thin air, produce nada. And your pals in High Finance make millions, and pay to keep guys like you in the saddle, and it’s because of you, and them, that average people have finally figured out that there’s no way for them to win at this game; they realize too that they will not do as well as their parents did.

This cold knowledge is at long last beginning to sink into the nation’s TV-muddled brain, the veil of distraction is lifting as the general misery deepens: housing, health insurance, food, gas, it ain’t getting any cheaper folks, and with these jackasses in full control, there’s damn little we can do about it.

Except bitch, rant, scream and swallow anti-depressants. A few souls will see that it may take a lot more than that for us to be noticed. We can’t interest people in the ballot box, and even when we do, the powerful can steal the fucking election out from under us, stick one of their own in the White House or the Congress or the statehouse or City Hall.

Rigged games go one way. It baffles me that it took so long for the majority to catch on. I mean, did we really believe that supply-side, trickle down bullshit? Yeah, just let the rich get as rich as they possibly can, justify their belief in the creed of Ayn Rand, talk about morality and self-reliance and the sanctity of the individual, and then close their purses and forget they ever heard the term trickle down.

They turned the full power of their PR industry on us, their think tanks, encouraged, cajoled, and seduced us to buy slob SUV’s, shop for cheap goods at Wal-Mart, hate unions, and worry more about gays in our classrooms than about the organized, coordinated, and legal theft occurring right before our eyes. These fuckers are genius, genius and money, Midas on crystal meth.

They don’t even piss on us, anymore; they can’t be bothered.

Hey, it says so in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and who am I to doubt that venerable journalistic institution?

Surge of the Status Quo

Tonight Bush will give us another serving of his Iraq jive.

More “stay the course” garbage, more lies about Iraq being the central front in his failed “War on Terror,” more gibberish about America’s “vital interests.”

The people’s elected representatives will once again suck it up and choke it down, then wipe their chins and justify their cowardice on Fox News and CNN.

The people won’t buy it, but then, it’s clear that our opinion doesn’t make a bit of difference.

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a platinum fork up his ass, and, in addition to believing that the Almighty speaks to him and him alone, he obviously believes the American people are dolts.

Bush’s ballyhooed troop reduction next summer merely brings us back to the same fork in the road where we stood in February 2007. The United States military will still maintain a gargantuan footprint in Iraq, and will still stand between numerous armed factions fighting for hegemony in a political vacuum.

Americans and Iraqis will still be killed, maimed, wounded, and displaced.

Our chances for success – whatever the hell that means – will be the same then as they are today: slim and none.

Face it, Americans never quit an Occupation voluntarily. Sixty-two years after the end of World War II, America still maintains major military installations in Germany and Japan. More than fifty years after Korea, we’re still hunkered down in the South. And if the government of South Vietnam had been less corrupt, we’d still be there, too. Vital interests, you know?

Bush’s troop reduction shell game buys time for his two primary neocon dreams to come true: the completion of permanent American military facilities in Iraq, and the passage by the Iraqi government of legislation that will give American oil companies access to Iraq’s reserves.

Once those objectives are accomplished, we’ll have to stay in Iraq forever in order to protect our “vital” interests, not to mention the investments of American oil companies.