The Helen and George Show

Occasionally you find a text that cries out for deconstruction. Such a text was the recent press conference held by President Bush, in which he and Helen Thomas, doyenne of the Washington press corps, went at it over the Iraq War.

I'll quote their entire colloquy, explicating as I go:

Helen Thomas: Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point -- bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

I have to admit I felt really patriotic when I heard Helen Thomas say those words. She spoke truth to power, and acted in the best tradition of a free press. The fact is that George W. Bush and no one else is responsible for this war, and all the deaths that have ensued are on his head. And his conscience, if he has one, which I sincerely doubt.

The president, however, was slinging the same old bullshit. Pointedly ignoring Thomas' remarks on the tragic consequences of his decision to invade Iraq, he goes straight into the Big Lie:

President Bush: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.

Does anybody believe this? Anybody? Does anyone really believe that Bush went to the UN as anything but a sop to Tony Blair and the Brits, and as a way of giving a figleaf of legality to what was a clear invasion of a sovereign state?

When I hear Bush talk like this, I have to wonder whether he's either delusional or a sociopath. Does he even believe what he's saying? Saddam Hussein did everything he could to avoid being invaded by the US -- including giving up his weapons of mass destruction, none of which, almost four-and-a-half years after we invaded, have ever been found.

Bush then takes the opportunity to go off on a rant:

Helen Thomas Didn't we go into Iraq --
President Bush: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

Oh, really? I don't know about the world, which is a pretty big place, but I can think of about 700,000 corpses that would not be corpses if Saddam Hussein were not in power. Are they better off? I can think of several dozen if not hundred Iraqis who, in a grisly irony, would not have been tortured if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Are they better off? No one is denying that Hussein was a disgusting dictator. But anyone with eyes in their head can see that the chaos that is currently Iraq is not better than what the Iraqis had when Hussein was in power.

President Bush: Now the fundamental question facing America is will we stand with this young democracy, will we help them achieve stability, will we help them become an ally in this war against extremists and radicals that is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.

Actually, this is not the fundamental question. That question is: how long will American troops be made to referee in the middle of a civil war between Sunni and Shia? The "young democracy" in Iraq is a joke and everyone knows it -- except the Bush Administration, of course.

President Bush: We're at the beginning stages of a great ideological conflict between those who yearn for peace and those who want their children to grow up in a normal, decent society, and radicals and extremists who want to impose their dark vision on people throughout the world. Iraq is obviously -- Helen, it's got the attention of the American people, as it should; this is a difficult war and it's a tough war. But as I have consistently stated throughout this presidency, it is a necessary war to secure our peace.

Perpetual war for perpetual peace, as Charles Beard would say -- a war that will keep Halliburton and the armaments industry in business and making fat profits for a generation.

This was not in any sense a necessary war. That is just one of the many lies that this administration propagates in order to advance their bloodthirsty agenda. This was a war that Bush and his stooges wanted from the minute they got into power, and they exploited the deaths of 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 to make it happen.

President Bush: I find it interesting that as this young democracy has taken hold, radicals and extremists kill innocent people to stop its advance. And that ought to be a clear signal to the American people that these are dangerous people and their ambition is not just contained to Iraq. Their ambition is to continue to hurt the American people. My attitude is we ought to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here, and that we ought to defeat their ideology with a more hopeful form of government.

Another big lie, arguably the biggest, and easily the most all-encompassing, which they always pull out when they get desperate: we have to fight them there to keep from fighting them here.
In fact, if we left there the Iraqis would kill, not us, but each other -- and in record numbers. Saddam Hussein was remarkably successful in stifling that sort of internecine bloodshed, but now that there's a vacuum in power, each side is willing to slaughter each other in order to gain the upper hand. And if we leave and there is a bloodbath in Iraq, as there surely would be, that would be oue responsibility as well.

It's like I've said for as long as I've been writing this blog. We're screwed if we leave, and we're screwed if we stay.

Tom Moran

Why Should We Believe You?

Don't you find it interesting that, at a time when the president is experiencing the worst approval ratings of any president in 50 years, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says that he has a "gut feeling" that we're due for another round of terrorist attacks in this country?

This at the exact time when the president is fighting Congress over funding for (and, by extension, control of) the war?

Do you find the timing as suspicious as I do?

An AP story says that Chertoff "based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose."

Warnings based on intelligence he would not disclose. Something bad might happen and I know this but I'm not going to tell you how I know -- you'd just better do whatever I tell you to do.

Haven't we heard this song before? Many times? When this administration wants to get its way and can't find another method of doing so they just cry out that the sky is falling until they get their way.

And of course, if by some mischance there is a terrorist attack this summer or fall, what will it signify, as Trollope would say? That they were right all along in warning us about the potential threat? Or that they were just incompetent to stop it?

Tom Moran

A New Idea for NBC

Are you tired of NBC being That Pedophile Network? Is it getting a little boring to watch one poor schlub after another walking into a clear case of entrapment and getting arrested for child molestation? Is it getting old? Would you like to see something, well, a little bit different?

Well you're in luck, baby, because I have the perfect idea for you. An idea that captures the smug smarminess of Dateline: To Catch a Predator and merges it with the gut-wrenching suspense of Deal Or No Deal.

You're intrigued, aren't you? I can tell you are.

Okay, here's the deal:

NBC sends a man out into the streets of an American city. But not New York or Los Angeles -- we want the heartland. Maybe Minneapolis or Austin. A large city, but not too large. Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland. Cities like that.

The man is reasonably attractive and in fairly good shape, but he's no Richard Gere. A little snow on the roof. No spring chicken. Definitely well into middle age. But he's dressed well in an expensive suit and wearing a Rolex watch on his wrist that costs more than I make in a -- well, let's not go there.

So this guy is on the street. And he approaches a young woman. A very young woman. A teenager -- somewhere between the ages of 15 and 20. Either jailbait or very close to it.

He tells the girl that he's there on a business trip and he'll only be there for the one day -- he's flying out of town tonight. He tells her that he finds her very attractive and that, if she'll agree to go back to his hotel room right now and have sex with him, he will pay her $3,000 in cash.

What the girl doesn't know is that the guy is fitted with a hidden camera, and that everything he says, and all of her reactions, are being not only recorded but transmitted to a monitor in the man's hotel room.

And who's in the man's hotel room, you ask?

The girl's parents. Waiting to see what her reaction will be to the man's proposition.

Keep in mind, the man tells her that he's getting on a plane in a few hours. She'll never see him again -- and he's offering her $3,000 in cash.

Let's say she agrees to go back with him to his hotel room. The hotel room is in reality a two-room suite: the man and the girl are in one room, the host of the show and the girl's parents are in the other room, watching the proceedings on a monitor. They can see and hear everything that goes on in the next room.

Now here's where the fun really starts.

The parents watch while the man and the girl walk into the hotel room. He starts to disrobe their daughter. Their impulse is to rush into the other room and stop it from happening -- and probably call their daughter a disgusting little whore while they're at it.

But what if the host decides to make it interesting? What if, let's say, he offers them $10,000 in cash to let it continue? And what if, once the girl is down to her bra and panties, the host offers them even more money to let her keep going without them interfering? What if he keeps upping and upping the ante? What if he finally ends up offering the parents half a million dollars if they'll sit there, not interfere and watch their teenage daughter have sex with a stranger for money right in front of them?

Will they rush into the room to keep it from happening? Or will they accept the money and allow their daughter to prostitute herself on national television?

I can tell you're dying to find out. You want this show on the air tonight, don't you?

And the funny thing is, I think NBC would go for this idea -- in a heartbeat. Assuming that they could iron out all the pesky legal difficulties involved in portraying prostitution involving minors on television, that is. But you have to admit, it would get great ratings.

Tom Moran

Bush Seeks Answers

"He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way."

That sentence fairly leaps out at you from Peter King's recent Washington Post article on President Bush. The story, which has gotten a fair amount of press (King was on Charlie Rose this week to discuss it) portrays a president who seems to be torn between the psychotic self-confidence of a dry drunk and the jejune intellectual searching of a college freshman stumbling his way through Philosophy 101:

At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.

Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?

Now, I'm not an author (not having published a book yet) or a historian (in spite of having an interest in history that began when I was a small child, the legacy of a father obssessed with American history) or a philosopher (in spite of the fact that I've read a fair number of philosophers) or a theologian (in spite of the fact that I've certainly read more theology than the current president), but I nonetheless believe that I have answers to the questions that Bush is, very belatedly, raising. I'll get to my answers in a minute.

King continues:

Not generally known for intellectual curiosity [a masterpiece of understatement], Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.

As you can see, Bush, once again, wants to have his cake and eat it too, which is a hallmark of his administration. Think of Rumsfeld's desire to achieve overwhelming victory in Iraq on the cheap, or Bush's desire to fight a full-scale war without asking the American people to sacrifice much of anything, contrary to the practice of America in almost every previous war it's ever waged.

So it is now with Bush. He wants the American people (or that pathetic remnant of it that still supports him) to believe that he is "staying the course," but at the same time, in private, he is asking intellectuals, the same kind of intellectuals he has poured scorn on his entire life, to explain to him just how he could have fucked up his presidency so badly.

Typical.

So here are my answers to Bush's questions -- with some commentary.

1) What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world?

The very fact that you still think of this as a Manichaean question shows the extent of your intellectual limitations. The great problem of our age is the conflict between a secular modernity and the more reactionary religious elements -- of all three monotheistic religions -- as we inexorably move into a secular century. The very extreme nature of their pushback indicates how intractable this struggle is. My own opinion is that mankind will have to slough off monotheism if we as a race are going to be able to move forward and, you should pardon the expression, evolve. And you, Mr. President, with your brain-dead evangelical version of Christianity, are as much a part of the problem as Osama bin Laden. Quite possibly worse, as you've been responsible for far more deaths than he has.

2) What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing?

Don't go to war for petty personal reasons, for one thing. If you had been able to look at the world in general and that region in particular with the strategic eye of, say, a Richard Nixon, you would have known that destabilizing Iraq was like opening Pandora's box. As bad as Saddam Hussein was, what's come after him is unquestionably worse for the vast majority of Iraqis (the Kurds in the north being an exception). What history has to tell you now is that there are times, as with Eisenhower in Korea or Kennedy with the crisis in Berlin in 1961 that resulted in the building of the Berlin Wall, when you have to get out of a bad situation the best you can -- and then be man enough to deal with the consequences.

3) How will history judge what we've done?

To quote Tonto in that old joke about the Lone Ranger: what's all this "we" shit, white man? It's what you've done. And barring a miracle (such as democracy suddenly blooming in a part of the world where it's never existed before), you will go down as quite possibly the worst president in American history. Worse than Harding. Worse than Grant. Worse than Buchanan. The worst president ever.

4) Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America?

The key word in that sentence is "seem." The rest of the world does not hate America. It resents us sometimes -- justifiably so, because of the way we throw our weight around and don't pay attention to the opinions and interests of the rest of the world -- but I don't really believe they hate us.

5) Or is it just me they hate?

Of course it is. And can you blame them?

Tom Moran