Fool's goal
By Sheila Samples
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
Sep 29, 2006, 01:01
"I will seize the opportunity to achieve big goals."
--George W. Bush
My friend Bernie says a lot of folks have George Bush figured all wrong.
"Sure he lies," Bernie said, "every time he opens his mouth. But
-- think about it. Even when Bush is lying he ends up telling us what he's
gonna do. He can't help himself -- he just blurts it out. But by the time we
understand what he's saying -- he's already made a stinkin' mess and moved on
to the next one."
Bernie says he's sick and tired of Bush running crazily through
Americans' lives, shouting at the top of his lungs -- "September the 11th!
The terrorists are coming!" while bragging insanely about his carnivorous
game plan for the entire universe. "What's the matter with the people in
this country?" Bernie asked in frustration, "why can't they figure
out this bozo?"
"Look, Bernie," I said, "maybe we're reading too much
into Bush's psyche. He's not really that complicated. Once the corporate
giants, the evangelicals and the cowardly warmongering neoconservatives had
everything in place to seize power in this country and to move onto the world
stage, and the killing it would take to get the world population down to a
manageable size so they could control its resources, they needed a front man --
a dispensable fool -- one of their own from which there would be no
blowback."
With Bush, they got a 'two-fer,' I told Bernie. "Bush was not only
chillingly insensitive, morally vacant, mean-spirited and incapable of regret,
but because of his grandoise visions, it was easy to convince him that he was
called by God and history to save, or to rule, the world.
"Remember," I reminded Bernie, "as a kid, Bush was a
stubborn, spoiled brat who got his jollies by ramming lighted firecrackers into
frogs' mouths and watching them explode. In college, he showed his penchant for
torture when he initiated guys into his fraternity by 'branding' them with
red-hot irons made from metal clothes hangers. You take a mean-spirited bully
who won't compromise, won't negotiate, has no experience, no curiousity, no
ability to succeed at anything, and he suddenly discovers he's the most
powerful man in the world -- what do you expect him to do?"
"Just what he's doing," Bernie said, "blow stuff up and
torture folks. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of that bunch who like
to call themselves the 'Vulcans' may be running things, but Bush is perched in
the catbird seat, and he's where the buck stops. Just think of all the
opportunities he's managed to seize in the last six years -- stole two
elections, lost two catastrophic wars, created a virtual assembly line for
terrorists throughout the world, and whipped up a violent civil war in Iraq.
His lack of war planning and negligible troop support is directly responsible
for the deaths of more than 2,700 American citizens and of untold thousands of
innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians . . ."
Bernie paused, shaking with fury. "Do the people in this country
even care about the thousands of injured soldiers and marines who return from
this gang's illegal war, faced with learning to walk on metal stilts -- hug
their families with metal hooks? Do they ever think of the thousands more
infected with depleted uranium who will suffer the agony of long and painful
deaths, the helpless anguish when, for generations, their babies are born
without eyes, without limbs, and other ghastly deformations?
"Bush is drunk with power," Bernie said as he stood up and
headed for the door. "He's destroyed the image and pride of our armed
forces, destroyed our Constitution, destroyed three branches of government that
have served us well for 230 years, destroyed the lives of countless
Muslim-American citizens. He's rotted the soul of this nation, and given
himself the power to rule as he pleases -- and nothing pleases him more than
bloody, humiliating torture. He's not the dumb decider," Bernie added,
"he's the mad destroyer."
Bernie's right. But even as everything Bush touches blows up in his
face, he continues to say his will -- his resolve -- cannot be broken because
history is calling, and God chose him to lead a global struggle to rid the
entire civilized world of evil. Christians should remember that God does not
suffer fools. Christians who can look out across the smoldering Iraqi
landscape, see smoke rising from burning bodies of those who did nothing to
deserve such an inhumane fate, and believe for one instant that God plays any
part in Bush's greedy fantasy need to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness
for such blasphemy.
Still, it's difficult to determine who's dumb and dumber here -- the
American people or their foolish president. I cannot believe people don't
realize that Bush gives the same damn speech over and over, word for word, and
has for five years. He uses the singed flesh of the people slain on 9-11 to
justify killing so many, many innocents throughout the world -- September
the 11th . . . we're on the hunt . . . got the evildoers on the run . . . we're
bringing them to justice . . . September the 11th . . . freedom's on the
march . . . we don't kill 'em over there, they'll follow us home and we'll have
to kill 'em over here . . . September the 11th . . . September the 11th
. . . they kill without mercy because they hate our freedoms . . . September
the 11th. Bush's speeches are replete with hate, and with horror, fear,
death, suffering, plotters, planners, and hateful ideologies..
Bush is obsessed with "September the 11th" -- so much so that
he cannot force himself to refer to it as a mere 9-11. He revels in the
delightful horror of that dreadful day upon which he became The Decider, the
commander-in-chief -- history's most important war president. That day swept
all Americans up in a state of collective insanity from which no healing
process is allowed to begin. This nation's current ills -- its shame and
disgrace -- spring from 9-11, and even as Bush flees from it, he clutches it
tightly to his bosom. It owns him. And it will ultimately devour him.
Bush reveals the truth of 9-11 in so many ways, from body language to
bungled spoken words. As recently as his Sept. 15 press conference, while
belligerently demanding the right to torture and kill whomever he pleases, like
some perverse imp, Bush justified torture by blurting out . . ."For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described
the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how
operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for
those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told
us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off
at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from
escaping."
So we are left yet again to ponder the meaning of Bush's words while he
eyes Iran and checks options on his table and paws through his tool box with
the hallucinatory goal of killing his way to glory.
A fool. With a fool's goal.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former
civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a
variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
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