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From
http://www.thetexasmercury.com/articles/copold/DC20010923.html
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We
Americans,
We Unhappy Americans:
Bush's War Whoop Dissected Derek Copold
Tongue
freshly darkened by presidential bootblack, David Gergen burbled
on about
George W. Bush�s Thursday night speech. Waxing Shakespearean, the
invertebrated Gergen told his interviewer that our Prince Hal of
Andover
fame had grown up to become a Henry V. As Henry V�s successful
career eventually
spawned St. Joan of Arc�s far more successful martyrdom which led
to
England�s bloody eviction from the European continent, I didn�t
find
this analogy as heartening as Mr. Gergen apparently did. But then
again, I
would expect no less from him. He�s the sort of man more fascinated with
politicians than he is with parties or even the nation. That nation,
unfortunately, is more in agreement
with Gergen than myself. With the grief and anger caused by September 11th�s
events, this comes as no surprise. However, despite my sharing in the nation�s
outrage, I was not encouraged by the president�s address; indeed, I was rather
frightened by it and the uncritical reaction it has met. Un
surprisingly, Bush declared war on the Taliban,
but he did so in his own unique way. Employing his uniquely ingratiating
�compassion�,
our dear leader distinguished between Afghanistan�s ruling faction and its
people, "The United States respects the people of Afghanistan�" Sure we do. And we
no of now better way to
express this deep respect for other peoples than to give them a bit
carpet-bombing and impose economic sanctions, which manage to kill almost
everyone except terrorists. Once he had finished crooning his soothing song
of respect, informing the American populace that he respected Islam, whose
"teachings are good and peaceful", the president then listed a set
of demands. The Taliban, unsurprisingly, rejected them. In fact, they were
designed for that very purpose, and now we are committed to fighting a war
in Central Asia. I need not detail the difficulties involved with
a war in Afghanistan. It is a remote and barren land. Its mountains, the
Hindu Kush (Killer of Hindus), defeated both the British Empire and the
Soviet Union when both were at their pinnacle of power. We also have the
added disadvantage of being forced to access Afghanistan through unreliable
allies, such as Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Indeed, the peoples of
these countries probably hate us as much, if not more, than they do the
Taliban. Afghanistan will be a very tough nut to crack. Yet I think we may be able
to break it. To our
advantage, there is a native force in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, the
Northern Alliance. Made up of Uzbeks, Tajiks and other ethnicities, they
have no love for the Pashtuns running Kabul. After years of neglect, much of
the Taliban�s more advanced weaponry, like the Stinger missiles we gave
them in the 80s, have deteriorated. Given a well thought out plan and
intelligent use of the Northern Alliance, we might just be able to displace
our new enemies, and maybe even capture Osama bin Laden. But then what? This is
where the President�s
speech takes a dangerous turn into a vague fog of abstraction. Bush isn�t
satisfied with just Afghanistan, and he says so: "Our enemy is a
radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." And he�s
serious. You know this because he uses
the �n� word. No, not that one, the other one. The terrorists, Bush
tells us, "�follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and
totalitarianism." I�m glad he mentioned "fascism" and
"totalitarianism"; we wouldn�t want to confuse them with Nazism. In pursuit of
this glorious (dare I say it)
crusade, our dear leader declares, "Every nation in every region now
has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the
terrorists� From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or
support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime." Thus begins the great "War on
Terrorism." We are now engaged in a death struggle with a noun. But before we
attack the offending verbiage, let�s
ask ourselves a few questions. What does our dear leader mean by terrorism?
Is it just the Middle Eastern flavor, or are we going to include the IRA? If
so, Massachusetts could be considered a hostile regime. Personally, I wouldn�t
mind seeing Hyannis Port bombed, especially when Prince Ted is in town, but
others might object. Are we going to include "narco-terrorists"?
If so, we�d better send the armored divisions south to the border, muy
pronto. Mexico is infested with narcos, and the government there
protects them, which is why it keeps failing its official Drug War
certification. Should we lift the executive order forbidding assassination
so that the CIA can cap George W. Bush�s good amigo, Vicent� Fox? Or would our
definition of terrorism include a
nation that protects a force who enters a bordering country, incites a
minority ethnicity into civil war, burn churches, monasteries and drives out
rival ethnicities? Someone like, say, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has
done just this in Kosovo and is now doing it in Macedonia. Maybe we should
bomb the bastards who fund and support these monsters. Ooops, that�s us. President
Bush has managed to declare war on both
nobody and everybody, all within the space of one sentence. We can�t
possibly hope to prosecute the kind of war he�s talking about because
nobody has the same idea of what constitutes terrorism. So very often, our
terrorists are another nation�s freedom fighters, or holy warriors.
As a result, this war will be about as successful as the "War on
Drugs" or the "War on Poverty." And, it will come at a
greater cost. The President should have steered clear of this
verbal swamp and limited himself to the people who attacked us. Our nation
has no interest in which faction runs Belfast, nor does it really matter to
us if the Tamil Tigers or their enemy take northern Sri Lanka. We don�t
care who governs Chechnya, nor should we really give a damn about whose flag
flies on top of the Temple Mount. What we do care about is who it is who killed our
people, and we should instead concentrate on eliminating them and their
state sponsors. Let�s not be coy. We know who these countries are: Iraq,
Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and a few others who (surprise, surprise) all
practice that religion whose teachings President Bush believes are
"good and peaceful." These countries, and only these countries,
should have been the subject of the President�s speech. But instead he
chose to fight an omnipresent chimera, one that could make potential enemies
out of almost every other nation in the world. The president�s belligerency isn�t
limited to
foreigners either. The final part of his speech created yet another
bureaucracy dedicated to regulating the American people. Because the FBI,
the BATF, the Secret Service, the CIA, the DEA, the INS and all the other
letters of the alphabet failed to protect us on September 11, the president
now wants to add another set of letters to the list: the OHS, the Office of
Homeland Security. If you think the name sounds familiar, then you�re
right. During Hitler�s reign, Germany was protected by the RHSA, the
Reichshauptsicherheitamt, which roughly translates into "Main Office of Homeland
Security." Governor Tom Ridge will fill this cabinet level
position, and his role will be modeled along the lines of the Drug Czar�s.
And we all know how successful the Drug Czars have been. Needless to say, this new
office will soon be
butting into all affairs American. Tapping phone lines, reading e-mails and
ransacking residences. It�ll have enough power to bring A. Palmer Mitchell
back from the dead, trembling with ghastly delight. In the end this Office
of Homeland Security will do just about everything but make us secure. We
certainly won�t be secure from it. In fairness, some might object that Governor
Ridge is a good man, and intrusions under his reign will likely be limited.
I agree. But it isn�t Ridge I worry about so much as it is the next
person to fill his position, or the person after him, or the next, and so
on. Put it this way: if Bill Clinton were still president and Janet Reno
were still the Attorney General, would we, especially those of us on the
Right, still favor this new agency�s creation? And remember, there is
another Clinton out there who could become president. Indeed, how much of this
speech would make us
happy had it been delivered by someone with such a low character as Bill
Clinton? Would we want to allow him a vague declaration of war against
a word? Or to commit troops and resources willy-nilly across the globe,
hypocritically supporting one faction of thugs while condemning another? (Ooops,
too late) Would we want him and his cronies having yet more power than they
already possessed? These are the kinds of questions that flattering
curs like Gergen ignore. The modern day paladins don�t care who�s in
power, just as long as whoever it is can do them some good, like getting
them an appointment or creating an interesting news story. But the country
can�t afford to play the courtier�s game. When it allows a Henry V to
lead it into foreign conquests, it may prosper for a time, but that moment
is fleeting. Conquest�s obligations eventually fall into the hands
incompetent successors, like the ones who saw England tossed out of France.
From there the country faces great ruin as one foreign disaster
leads to
another. In England this cycle ended with the murderous tyranny
of Henry
VIII. But for all his flaws, at least Henry VIII knew
how to handle Gergen�s type. I hear he went through courtiers
even faster
than he did wives.
Derek Copold
End<{{{
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Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
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