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George W. Bush - On a different planet


On a different planet by Mahir Ali

Dear Mr Bush, In the light of what happened in Florida back in 2000, it would be inaccurate to address you as "Mr President". And I trust you won't take the "dear" too seriously. It's just a form of address. Doesn't mean a thing. But do read on. Much of what I say could be of some help to you, although Karl Rove will try to convince you otherwise. And one suggestion, if taken, could promote the welfare of all humankind.

I know welfare isn't one of your favourite words. You and your friends don't believe in employing it to mitigate the misery of the poorer sections of society. If truth be told, however, welfare is very much a part of your philosophical package. Remember all the huge tax cuts you have given, possibly at the insistence of Uncle Dick? Well, don't they guarantee that the richest Americans will get even richer? That's welfare, too - corporate welfare.

It was interesting to hear you say nice things, or at least neutral things, about Medicare and public education in your State of the Union speech last week. Don't worry, none of the friends who matter will even for a moment suspect that you have softened. They know it's an election year, and you are forced to say things that your advisers and pollsters think the voters want to hear. They wouldn't want you to repeat Poppy's feat of winning a war and losing re-election.

But then, perhaps to compensate, you've also got to say things that your friends want to hear. Hence all the stuff towards the end about legislating against homosexual marriage and encouraging religious charities. Measures that would warm the heart of John Ashcroft. And, for that matter, Osama bin Laden.

Sometimes I wonder whether you realize how much you have in common with Osama. Apart from certain members of your coterie, who else in today's world shares so passionately your belief that mass slaughter is a perfectly acceptable means of achieving your goals? Or mirrors your unshakeable delusion that you are acting according to the wishes of the Almighty? In a different world, you two would have made a terrific double act. Arguably, you already do.

But, wherever he is, Osama must be somewhat miffed. Two years or so ago, he was the star of your orations. You were going to hunt him down in his hole. However, it was another old friend of the CIA who turned up in a subterranean cavity, and thereby earned a State of the Union mention. Not a word about bin Laden. Unlike Osama, Saddam wasn't planning any atrocities against civilians on American soil. Yet you said your country is much safer with him in the slammer.

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. Attacks against US occupation forces actually increased since Saddam's capture. Come to think of it, the 500 or so Americans killed in Iraq also failed to rate an honourable mention in your speech. No one expects you to give a damn about the tens of thousands Iraqis killed in the past year, but would a minute or two of silence for the American dead have gone astray?

Instead you said: "No one can doubt the word of America." It takes a great deal of chutzpah to make that claim in the year after almost every reason advanced in public for the invasion of Iraq has turned out to be a gargantuan whopper.

Weapons of mass destruction primed for use against the West? Not one has turned up. Uranium from Africa? Zilch. This time you referred, instead, to weapons "programmes". And so thrilled was David Kay at being cited in your speech that he promptly resigned as chief weapons inspector, saying it was highly unlikely Iraq had tried to build any illegal weaponry after 1991.

Not long ago your former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill admitted that a plan for invading Iraq was on the table well before September 11, 2001. That caused a bit of a stir in your country, which made me wonder: You must be pretty good at keeping your fellow Americans in the dark.

Links with Al Qaeda? Documents taken into custody alongside Saddam suggest he was instructing his followers to be wary of the fundamentalists who seeped into Iraq in the wake of the aggression. Brutal tyrant? Yes, but that story is incomplete without acknowledging that the US was among his patrons when he committed his vilest deeds.

You sounded a great deal more complacent about the future of Iraq and Afghanistan than anyone who's there, on the ground. You expect both nations to shortly be transformed into exemplary democracies. Your optimism bears about as much relation to reality as your assertion that the US, Britain and a bunch of coerced allies invaded Iraq in order to salvage the honour of the UN Security Council.

As evidence of the good fortune that awaits Iraq, you produced Adnan Pachachi, current chief of the American-nominated Iraqi governing council, who was reportedly greeted by Congress with "sustained applause". Well, I guess everyone loves a puppet show. You were applauded 70 times during a speech that lasted less than an hour. That's more than once a minute. I don't have the relevant statistics, but I somehow doubt whether Stalin or Mao could have managed a comparable feat. Kim Jong Il must be suitably envious.

Seeing how important acclamation was to you, I am astonished that you didn't mention, even in passing, your plan to put a man on the moon once more, and perhaps even on Mars in due course.

Your inspirational oration on that subject a couple of weeks earlier had also caused some surprise. Some critics noted that in all your years as governor of Texas, you never visited the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, which suggests a lack of interest in space-related matters. But I guess it's never too late to expand one's horizons.

Others recalled that Poppy had announced a similar plan back in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing - a proposal that died a natural death when it was estimated to cost at half a trillion dollars. You have offered no estimate of the overall cost of setting up and maintaining a space base on the moon, and from there undertaking missions to Mars and beyond.

It does, admittedly, all sound rather Star Trek-ish. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. True, it could be done much more cheaply with robots, and the hundreds of billions thus saved could be devoted to spreading peace and prosperity on Earth. But they wouldn't, would they? I mean, you don't believe in peace. And prosperity, in your view, must be restricted to the few. So the defenceless targets of future preventive wars would be decidedly happier if the US funnelled its energies and resources into conquering outer space.

But why should take-off take so long? Why wait until 2020? Surely, a nation as great and adventurous as yours could reach for the moon today if it really wanted to. After all, it's been done before. Hasn't it?

But hang on. What good would it do to have a bunch of anonymous faces kicking up moondust? This is too symbolically too important to be left to NASA. For a change, why not lead the charge? You, George Dubya, have every right to go where no Bush has gone before. So, as the folks at Nike like to put it, do it now.

And if it can't be done by November, when you'll most likely be seeing off one of the clowns battling it out in New Hampshire this week, then it must be pursued thereafter with renewed vigour. Wouldn't it be awfully impressive to deliver your next State of the Union on a satellite link from the moon?

Please don't go alone, though. There's strength in numbers, you know. Don't, on any account, leave behind Cheney, Rummy, Rove or Wolfowitz. Where would you be without them? Dick Perle probably deserves a berth. Maybe even Rich Armitage. You couldn't possibly ignore Ashcroft. Colin may have blown his chance by acknowledging at the weekend that Iraq may have had no WMD stockpiles when it was attacked, but I'm sure you can find place for Condi in the back of the spacecraft.

Loyalty must be rewarded, so do reserve a seat for poor Tony, who's been having a rather nervous week, what with a crucial parliamentary vote on university fees and the release of the Hutton report. But don't stop there. Take Saddam as well - and Osama, if he can be found. They'll provide entertainment en route, and should they turn out to be unpleasant fellow travellers, you could always push them out of the window.

Once the moon base has been set up, you could zoom off to Mars. I somehow can't imagine you appreciating the Red Planet, even though it's named after the Roman god of war.

Should it turn out to be duller than Texas, you could always move on - to Uranus, perhaps. I may be mistaken, but isn't that where you came from in the first place?

Whatever you do, don't look back. The rest of us, marvelling at your exploits, will get along just fine without you. One smallish step for the Bushies could prove to be a quantum leap for humankind. Goodbye and good luck, Mr Bush. But above all, good riddance!

e-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net


 
  
 
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