HypoxiaMan Weighs in on The Central Front

"We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. "The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again." Dick Cheney, Vice President, speaking in Baghdad on May 10, 2007.

Just as a stylistic note, to which I'm perhaps more sensitive than the general population, have you ever noticed Cheney's habit of inserting throat-clearing phrases in the middle of his sentences? "Above all." "If you will." I think it's his way of adding gravitas to his sententious utterances. I doubt that anyone ever born takes himself as seriously as Dick Cheney takes himself. He loves mumbling dreadful, spooky things, and it doesn't matter how often history proves him absolutely dead wrong about everything he says, he just comes back with another ominous declaration about the way it all is. I don't know if Guinness maintains a category for Most Consecutive Times Wrong About Matters of Foreign Policy, but if they do, they should retire the trophy in Cheney's honor. If Cheney had flipped a coin, I think he would have had results at least 49% better than his actual track record, being generous and allowing him a 1% chance of being right about anything.

Possibly this is all related to the fossilized state of Cheney's vascular system. He spends about half his time in the hospital getting thrombi Roto-Rooted out, and I really wonder why he puts himself through the ardors of international travel in order to growl out another dumb-ass comment on world affairs. Such as the above. What the hell does it mean? If it's true that George W. Bush, with his philtrumless face and donkey ears, is a Fetal Alcohol experiment gone horribly wrong, and Cheney is HypoxiaMan, with maybe 10% of the required oxygen actually getting through to the cerebrum - then maybe America's foreign policy woes (and looming financial catastrophe) are easier to understand.

But back to a parsing of Cheney's trenchant insight: I think the terrorists who "declared war on America" are bin Laden and his gang, who were and are Wahhabist Muslims from an extremist sect originating in Saudi Arabia. From what I have read about bin Laden's operation, he ran a kind of terrorist grant committee, assessing various promising proposals for murder and mayhem and funding those he thought especially devilish and creative. The Brain, the oft-dunked Khallid Sheik Mohammed, brought an idea to Osama for finishing off the World Trade Center, a job KSM and his nephew began in 1993 but were unable to complete to their satisfaction. KSM was a Kuwaiti national. As has been said many times, no one who attacked America on 9/11, and no one who worked in the back room to make it happen, came from Iraq. I've never read anything which indicates Osama bin Laden has ever been in Iraq. Since al Qaeda is not confined to any particular nation, and since it's mainly just a name for a group of outlaws who conduct business primarily by burro, I don't know that the "Al Qaeda in Iraq" formulation popular in White House press releases means these jihadis have anything to do with the 9/11 plot. The "al Qaeda in Iraq" moniker, in fact, sounds suspiciously like the sort of name given to upscale hotel chains: the Ritz-Carlton on Maui, or Four Seasons in Grosvenor Square.

So of course jihadis have made Iraq a "central front" in a war against the United States. Like Willy Sutton's logical answer for robbing banks ("that's where the money is"), there are a lot of Americans in Iraq, and the U.S. soldiers are required by their "mission" to expose themselves daily to bombs and ambushes. If we weren't in Iraq, they'd have to find somewhere else for the "central front." (Hint: it won't be the World Trade Center.)

The part about the "United States as the prime target in a global war against terror" [sic] I prefer to chalk up, if you will, to oxygen deprivation rather than to the more sinister imputation of a Freudian slip.

An unfortunate historical precedent

I'm a little surprised that the learned commentators so abundant in the national press and blogosphere do not make more of the rather obvious historical parallels between the American situation in Iraq and the German catastrophe in Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. See if any of this sounds familiar: "The German high command urged Hitler to allow Paulus and his forces to break out of the encirclement and rejoin the main German forces west of the city, but Hitler would not contemplate a retreat from the Volga River and ordered Paulus to 'stand and fight.' With winter setting in and food and medical supplies dwindling, Paulus' forces grew weaker. In mid-December Hitler allowed one of the most talented German commanders, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, to form a special army corps to rescue Paulus' forces by fighting its way eastward, but Hitler refused to let Paulus fight his way westward at the same time in order to link up with Manstein. This fatal decision doomed Paulus' forces, since the main German forces now simply lacked the reserves needed to break through the Soviet encirclement singlehandedly. Hitler exhorted the trapped German forces to fight to the death, but on Jan. 31, 1943, Paulus surrendered; 91,000 frozen, starving men (all that was left of the 6th and 4th armies) and 24 generals surrendered with him."
[from the Enclyopedia Brittanica article on the Battle of Stalingrad.]

The invasion of the Soviet Union, of course, was Hitler's original fatal decision. He compounded his mistake through obstinate refusal to come to terms with the extent of the catastrophe. The 91,000 Wehrmacht soldiers which Paulus delivered into captivity were the remnants of a 250,000 man army which undertook the siege of Stalingrad. During the bitter winter of 1942-43, most died of disease and cold. Of those who became POWs, only a small fraction ever made it back to Germany after the war.

Hitler had his own "surge" led by Field Marshal von Manstein, as a last-ditch effort to rescue Petraeus from annihilation. Excuse me, General Paulus. Hitler would not countenance, let alone permit, the more obvious solution of Paulus's "fighting retreat," the favored approach of "generals on the ground," you could say. Paulus wanted to save the men under his command; Hitler was interested only in his self image. The surge failed because the Soviets had been allowed to establish tactical and numerical superiority by the time Hitler reacted, as Der Fuhrer committed error upon error. And underlying it all was his inability to deal psychologically with the devastation he had wrought with his terrible miscalculation. With the destruction of the Wehrmacht in the Eastern Theatre, World War II was effectively over, and so were Hitler's dreams of a thousand year Reich.

As Justin Frank, M.D., Bush's unsolicited psychoanalyst, has diagnosed, Bush's psychological profile is that of a megalomaniac with elements of paranoid ideation. No doubt much of this same profile could be attached to the former German leader, or to Napoleon, or to Louis XIV and his "l'etat c'est moi" perspective. These are extremely dangerous qualities in a national leader, particularly one armed to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons. We can rest assured that Bush will never change course in Iraq because he is psychologically incapable of doing so. The Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, are afraid to impeach him, and most of them lack Bush's unconscionable willingness to leave the military on the field of battle whether or not the funds are there to support them.

My own sense is that we'll be lucky to get to January 20, 2009, without Bush committing one of two horrendous acts. The initiation of a nuclear war, using Iran as the starting point and justification; or the invocation of martial law under the recently revised Insurrection Act, another gift from a complacent Congress. I hope we get lucky and he leaves quietly. Leaving Iraq for another President to clean up is not the worst thing that could happen to us.

Bush @ 28%

It's still mysterious to me: who are these people who still support Bush? If he is at 28% approval, as the latest Newsweek poll reports, then maybe Bush is now down to his ineradicable base, the evangelical wingnuts who have flicked it in where life on Earth is concerned. Commander Guy still pulls about 70% approval ratings from Republicans, which strongly suggests that political and religious affiliations have entered into some sort of unholy matrimony in the reptilian brains of a large swath of the American population. I leave out the 1% or so of America's plutocratic class who like Bush simply because he doesn't get in the way of their unbridled acquisition of money. Team Bush, for example, is still researching global warming, while the rest of the civilized world has moved on to one of two positions: (1) frantically trying to deal with it, or (2) admitting that it's too late.

When I look at the photos above, I get the strong sense that Bush simply plays at being President. Long ago he figured out that the presidency was simply another in a long line of jobs for which he had no aptitude. It's always seemed ludicrous to me that politicians debate Bush's "policies," as if they were dealing with a coherent set of principles based on thorough analysis. They're nothing of the kind. Take the current tactic du jour of his Democratic opposition. They're talking of "de-authorizing" the Iraq War. Someone in the Democratic Caucus should read the original damned Authorization for Use of Military Force, October, 2002. It is, as almost all Congressional enactments are, an incomprehensible pile of bullshit. Nevertheless, the "authorization" for invading Iraq, for each and every point, depends on Saddam Hussein being in power. Nothing in the Authorization in the least grants Bush permission to engage in the endless "nation-building" exercise we've been enmeshed in since the Mission Accomplished speech. It's not a matter of "de-authorizing" the war; it's a question of pointing out there is no authority for what we're doing. None whatsoever. It is a full-blown Constitutional crisis (though no one ever talks about it) that the "President" continues prosecuting a war for which there is no legal basis, and if Congress were serious about stopping him, they could initiate litigation in the Supreme Court, hoping to slip it by the pervert/psycho wing of the Court.

So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we've got about 8 years to deal decisively with global warming, or the most extreme consequences will become unavoidable. The United States, of course, sits at the very center of the action plan, and the simian pretender pictured above sits at the very center of the U.S. We can't figure out how to stop a war which the vast majority of the American populace wants over right now. Which we don't need to fight. For which there is no legal authority. Which is bleeding us dry. And the same Congress is supposed to come up with an integrated, highly technical, comprehensive plan for averting disaster for the world?

Bush's Iraq Strategy Revealed

..."But slowly but surely, the truth will be known. Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."

So there you have it at last: Bush's Iraq Strategy. Certain elements of the strategy seem incontrovertible; for example, the dichotomy between succeed/won't succeed. I would concede that one or the other will happen. To succeed, but slowly but surely, involves sectarian violence down, although not to zero. Bush points out that "parts" of our own country have got a certain level of violence to "it" [sic]. Antecedents, along with the rest of the English language, are not Bush's long suit. I would concede this as well. He probably means urban areas, in general, but let's not forget Dick & Perry in Kansas. The reference to the United States is not elaborated, but I think I can help. Bush suggests here that no one would quibble with America as a successful country despite the violence, since Americans feel comfortable, he contends, living their daily lives. The precise level of violence which is consistent with success in Iraq is where Iraqis feel comfortable living their daily lives as well. Thus, summing up the various elements, and placing them in some kind of cogent relationship, success in Iraq will be achieved when Iraqis feel comfortable the way we do.

This is a far cry from the original rationales for the war, which dealt with mushroom clouds and Saddam's support for al-Qaeda. A million men or so have rotated in and out of Iraq (mostly in) and the country has spent $500 billion over more than a four year period so the Iraqis could feel comfortable living their daily lives. Thus, the war has been about the affective well-being of the ordinary Iraqi going about his/her daily life.

This does not seem to me an unfair oversimplification. On the broader front, the idea of "stabilizing" the Middle East, or the democracy-domino theory, or Bush's claim that so long as we fight in Iraq we'll never endure another terrorist attack in the U.S. - to all this, I would counter that these are merely conjectural theories. No matter how strenuously, or loudly, anyone says these things, they remain notions which are not amenable to empirical proof. Maybe yes, maybe no, but there is no way to know for sure at the present time.

What "metric" will we use to determine when Iraqi violence has subsided to the point where Iraqis feel comfortable about living their daily lives? A poll taken based upon a scientific sample? Given Bush's reaction to the Lancet study of Iraqi civilian deaths, he doesn't seem to give much credence to the results of such inquiries. The President's own "gut" feeling about how comfortable the Iraqis are living their daily lives? He could exhort this country, I suppose, with a thundering oration to a joint session of Congress wherein he exclaims, "the Iraqis are almost comfortable enough now! We're making steady progress!" That seems tepid and unconvincing. A soldier dying for Iraqi comfort might question his mission or the meaning of his sacrifice.

I notice that Bush does not require a fully-functioning democracy in Iraq as a condition of success; thus, Iraqi comfort in a theocracy or military junta might also make the grade, although Bush might have assumed that we all knew he meant it must be a democratically-based comfort. Or maybe not. He sometimes refers simply to a "functioning" government able to "defend" itself, and a theocratic system under Sharia law might actually manage this better than a democracy rivened by sectarian conflict. The overall good news is that with a successful mission so vaguely defined, we might get there tomorrow, especially since most polls show about 80% of the Iraqi people want the American occupation to end now or very soon. "It's peaceful enough," they'll say. "We're comfortable, we're comfortable. Now please get the hell out of here."

Bush Declares Complete Success for Surge

from New York Times, May 30, 2007
(Washington, D.C.) -

President Bush declared today that the Iraqi surge strategy had succeeded completely, and again called on the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to send him a clean bill free of any restraints whatsoever on his authority to conduct the war as he sees fit. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both expressed increasing impatience with an intractable Democratic leadership which insists on tying any further funding for the war to timelines and benchmarks.

"There's no reasons at all at these junctures to just go on with benchmarking and timelining," the President said to the press corps gathered in the Rose Garden. "Our troops is not a contingent which can be, or will, holding hostage as part of politics, and believe me, I know about politicking in this town, but wherever there's indications our strategies has leaped our mission forward, folks see these suiciders with their fabulous exploding cars and then sort of lose the vision."

In later comments at the Capitol rotunda following a meeting with Republican Congressional leaders, the Vice President summarized the Administration's position with typical concision: "These treasonous rats in the Democratic leadership need to hand over the dough pronto. The mission is a complete success."

Reports from Baghdad in fact have demonstrated a remarkable turnaround since the introduction of additional troops in the early part of this year. The numbers for sectarian fatalities caused by death squads and militias, deaths by exploding car bombs, overall Iraqi civilian deaths and the casualty figures for American troops are all significantly reduced. Indeed, the latest reports indicate the same metric for each category, namely, zero.

"We've really turned the corner," a jubilant General David Petraeus exulted in a press conference held in the Green Zone. "No one is dying here anymore, even from natural causes. The surge has brought what some had called a 'civil war' completely under control."

Congressman Henry Waxman (Dem., Los Angeles) pointed out that the rosy reports were in large part due to a change in recording fatalities and acts of violence in and around Baghdad. "The Bush Administration has instituted a policy of not counting any fatalities at all," a clearly exasperated Waxman complained at a hastily called conference outside his office. "It started by not counting deaths from car bombs, and then the Iraqi government stopped reporting civilian deaths, and when the press let them get away with that, they stopped counting all the bodies picked up on the street every morning, then anyone else found dead, and then Defense stopped reporting any American casualties. So of course it looks good, but it doesn't bear any resemblance to reality."

Congressman Waxman, a persistent administration critic, has often taken positions contrary to Bush policies, and it was not immediately clear whether his criticism represented the consensus view of the Democratic caucus. It was clear, however, that the strong improvement in conditions in Baghdad would increase pressure on the Democratic leadership to pass a funding bill with no strings attached.

Out of fairness to Karl Rove

I know what you're thinking: the resemblance is uncanny. However, I prefer to adopt Karl Rove's own approach to his political opponents, which is not to question their patriotism, but simply to publicly humiliate them for their judgment. I have heard Karl do this in characterizing the response of Democrats (en bloc, apparently) to 9/11, where he contemptuously dismissed their feeble retaliation as "therapy and lawsuits." Whereas manly men (like Karl, I guess) decided to go to war.

Thus, if Karl Rove is to be criticized, insofar as Heinrich Himmler, former head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) is concerned, it is only to question his judgment in allowing himself to look so much like this infamous Nazi. I have seen Photoshop jobs done on Karl's head in which he's dressed up in the Totenkopf cap of a real SS officer, and you might as well be transported back to the bunker in 1945. I decline, nay, refuse, to reproduce such a photo here, because I'm like Karl on that score: fairness above all. So what if he looks like Heinrich Himmler, one of the truly evil men of the 20th century? That doesn't prove anything at all. It's a cheap shot of the kind Karl Rove abjures. Karl's retention of that "K" spelling of his name, instead of the friendlier, Nordic "C" is proof he doesn't care about meaningless similarities.

Other coincidences are equally unconvincing. Toward the end of the war, Himmler got very nervous about the likelihood he would be captured, tried and executed as a war criminal. He fled Berlin as the Russians approached, altered his appearance (whether he looked more or less like Karl Rove as a result, I don't know), but he was apprehended nonetheless. He tried to make deals with the Allies, but Eisenhower was unmoved. The official version is that he killed himself with cyanide shortly after his capture in order to cheat the hangman's noose. The more likely story, favored by many historians, is that Himmler was beaten to death by British interrogators, which is certainly more emotionally satisfying.

Just because "K"arl has demonstrated some of these same qualities, as the anti-Bush forces have encircled the Administration and the White House has retreated inside its Bunker, doesn't mean that Karl Rove is Himmler. Sure, Karl let his "friend" Scooter Libby take the fall for the Plame matter, even though it was obvious Karl was as involved in this (arguably) treasonous activity as the Vice President's Chief of Staff. And there was that unedifying sight of Karl scuttling off to the grand jury four or five times to "update" his story after he "discovered" one of his missing e-mails, working tirelessly to save his own chubby ass while his colleague went down the tubes. I grant you, it's a similarity in approach, but then rats deserting sinking ships probably all look somewhat alike: frantic, snivelly, selfish. Like some people say Karl is, but I'm determined to be fair. And it's not nice to let Alberto Gonzales twist in the wind up there at the Senate Judiciary Committee, all by himself, when Karl knows full well that it was his idea, part of the vertical monopoly he's installed over the American electoral process, to can those recalcitrant (that is, honest) U.S. Attorneys. Karl won't "testify" himself unless it's on his terms, even if it would take some of the heat off Alberto. Does it matter that Libby was Jewish and Gonzales Hispanic, "races" which Himmler would have considered Untermenschen? To repeat, and I hope for the last time: that's a canard unworthy even of refutation.

You see, Himmler was born in 1900 and died in 1945. Even if, as the conspiracy theorists have it (mainly novelists looking for that old Nazi-in-South-America story line), Himmler survived, he would be 107 years old now. Does Karl Rove look 107? Of course not. And yeah, Himmler was a lousy athlete and always struggled in his relations with women and you immediately start thinking about that video of Karl doing the hip-hop (trying to keep lunch down as you do it) and his creepy epicene appearance, which you know is equally creepy to any woman looking at him, and you start building your case. There is no case. I'm taking a page from Karl's book and elevating my political criticism. Heinrich Himmler, thank God, is dead. Karl Rove, God help us, is alive. Deal with it.

Bees in the trees seem to whisper disease

Joe DeRisi, a biochemist at the University of California's Mission Bay lab, has set the entomological world buzzing with a possible breakthrough in the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder, that apian plague which is threatening to wipe out (a) the bee, and then (bee) us. DeRisi won a MacArthur Genius Award for his work in discovering the role of coronavirus in SARS. Naturally, the work of this too-smart interloper has gotten under the skin of the "government 'scientists'" at the Department of Agriculture, including the leading light in the Dept. of Ag's Plant Sciences Institute, entomologist Jeffrey Pettis. Taking a break from another PowerPoint presentation by a Karl Rove aide on ways to distort apiculture to assist Republican Congressional candidates (a standard agenda item, apparently, for all government agencies operating under Bush's control), Pettis had this to sniff about DeRisi's work, according to today's SF Chronicle: "Pettis said the parasite could simply be taking advantage of a newly developed weakness in the insects' immune systems. 'Mostly we think of Nosema as a stress disorder of honeybees,'' he said. It is possible that a more virulent strain of Nosema ceranae has evolved in the United States, but Pettis doubts it. 'We can't rule it out completely,'' he said.

DeRisi used a "shotgun sequencing" technique to analyze samples provided by the government, one of the genomic approaches he used in his SARS work. Irritatingly, DeRisi has become known as a "rapid identifier" of killer germs, even though he's not a real entomologist like the government "scientists," which makes him almost impossible to put up with. He could give the real apiary guys...hives. Okay, let that go. Yet his genetic work found that the dead bees were loaded up with sequences of microbe which matched Nosema ceranae. Which sounds promising, but Pettis pointed out that Nosema has been around "since the mid-1990's," predating the mass die-off. So it can't be the Nosema...unless it has evolved. Now how in the world would a microbe evolve in as little as 10 or 12 years? What's the gestation period for a germ like that...9 months, right? And since they're not supposed to have sex with another microbe, or with themselves, or however the hell they do it, until they're married (God, I hope they're clear about the sex of the other microbe they're doing it with), it's going to take a helluva lot longer than that.

Pettis can't rule it out "completely" because his ultimate boss, the incomparable George W. Bush, admits that the jury is still out on evolution. (As Lewis Black said in a Black on Black segment: "What jury? Where are they out?") So it's possible the microbes "evolved" into a form that is killing bees, which might account for the heavy presence of Nosema ceranae in all those dead bees Joe DeRisi was analyzing. An alternative theory, proposed by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, in a press release coordinated with the Department of Agriculture (as ghost-written by the Karl Rove aide finishing up the PowerPoint presentation on ways to use Colony Collapse Disorder to elect Republican congressmen [particularly in Utah, the "Beehive State"]), is the waning influence of Christianity among bee populations. "These godless insects have invited the wrath of the Almighty," Robertson warbled during a prayer breakfast at the Maryland office of the Dept. of Ag, where Honey Bunches O' Oats were served. Large numbers of Muslim and Jewish bees have apparently infiltrated many hives, leading to Divine intemperance and retribution (at least in America). The Muslim-infected hives are distinctive for the breaks taken five times a day by the worker bees. In the Jewish hives, there is an overabundance of queens and way too many princesses, and, in addition, a strange sub-species, Apis mellifera shabbos goyim, which apparently work only on Friday night into Saturday, when the usual bees have the day off.

Or this alternative theory may be wrong, and DeRisi is on to something. It would depend on "facts," which may or may not be relevant between now and at least January 21, 2009. I don't know where DeRisi's work leads if he's right, but I hope he shakes off the resentment and turf-warfare and makes a beeline for the answer.

The Ant in the Sand Box

Reading political "science" books was pretty dreary, back in the Jurassic Period when I was "studying" this stuff at the University of California at Berkeley, which is to say, when Berkeley was Berkeley. There was one exception - the works of Herbert Simon, the polymath who made the same sort of mistake in choosing a major as I did and then discovered that his true inclinations were more rigorous and scientific. While he knew it was hopeless to construct an actual science of human behavior, he came as close as he could with his work in companion fields such as group psychology and economic behavior. He even won the Nobel Prize in economics.

He was keen on artificial intelligence and human logical processes: how do we decide to do what we do? An arresting image that he presented as analogy was that of an insect with a simple brain, an ant, crossing a sand box. The ant gets from one side to the other. When he's finished with his journey, the resulting trail in the sand looks complicated indeed; it looks like the design of an ingenious mind. In fact, the ant simply chose, at hundreds of junctures where he confronted undulations or depressions in the sand, to go over, down, to the left, or to the right. The overall process (the general direction) was guided by some navigation-orientation we don't completely understand (although it can be interrupted, as Richard Feynman found in a clever boyhood experiment where he looked for a means of non-toxic ant interdiction). But the simple binary decisions add up and appear, in retrospect, to have been the work of higher intelligence. Simon thought humans live their lives in much the same way. We impose a narrative on our lives as we go, or at the end, but that narrative was not the guiding principle in real time. It's a fiction imposed on a pattern of binary decisions made to overcome obstacles directly in our path.

I thought about this old stuff while watching L'il Georgie in a recent interview with Charlie Rose. Bush was attempting to explain what the hell we're doing in Iraq at this point. We're trying to restore peace, he says, so a political reconciliation will be possible and Iraq will become a modern bulwark against terror. I thought about how far all of this seems removed from his initial declaration of the War on Terror following 9/11. Leaving aside the machinations and influence of the Neocons, upon whom Bush probably had very little influence, how does Bush see the journey from the World Trade Center to this war of attrition in Iraq which has been going on, and getting worse, for four years? It is mystifying. Bush probably comes closer to the binary decision-making processes of an ant than most national leaders, I would say that first. His natural impulsiveness, his impatience with deliberative processes, and the intellectual vacuum in which he makes "decisions," make it more likely that his path will double back, find a high spot against the wood planks, and carry him completely out of the sand box. It is difficult at this point to remember at all what this war was originally about, even at the level of official rationale. Bush simply slogs on, as the ant gamely struggles through a clumpy terrain in search of a final destination. The mission, as he describes it, is preposterous on its face. The American military is not going to achieve a "reconciliation" between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds by patrolling the streets of Iraq in armored vehicles. If the goal is to achieve peace by killing all insurgents, which is what would appear necessary to entice the Iraqi Parliament to emerge from hiding in the Green Zone, the task will never be finished.

But what, after all, does this have to do with the war on terror? To understand Bush's journey, it isn't enough to follow the trail that led him to this point of impasse. The ant's journey seems logical and consistent by comparison. I can't tell what sand box Bush is even playing in anymore.

Upstairs in L'il Georgie's Room

After considering disparate sources of information, including the books Fiasco, The End of Iraq and Operation Madhouse...and consulting my own inner psychic workings as a man similarly placed in the space-time continuum...I offer a brief Pondside analysis of how L'il George got to the sorry state of paralytic incompetence in which he today finds himself entangled.

Now that the huckleberries and sand cherries are all in bloom, or would be if the bees weren't dead, and unseasonably, not to say eerily, warm weather blesses Walden, and even the most in-the-now habitues can see that L'il Georgie's only got about 21 months to remake his legacy, I think we can look back and see how George Bush arrived where he is, which is to say, upstairs in his bedroom with his fingers stuck in his ears humming his favorite Saturday morning cartoon jingle at the top of his lungs. This is not an edifying sight, even for Bush-bashers. It's scary, because when he comes downstairs, his tear-streaked face and reddened eyes glaring, somethin's...got...to...give.

The presidency of the United States, bequeathed by the usual anti-democratic processes which control electoral politics in the U.S., was one last nepotistic gift which the former drunk and coke-addled George had to accept in order to launch his vindication. So about 97,000 black men were removed from the Florida voting rolls by George's brother Jeb. Karl Rove, the electoral vote-counter extraordinaire, knew that the Grapefruit State would control the outcome, and Karl lusted after a L'il George presidency with the passion and ardor of the love-struck. Ever since he saw George get off that train in Washington, with his cracked leather jacket and tin of Skoal in his jeans back pocket, Karl, saddled himself with a squishy body and a nimbus of doll-hair, appealing to neither set of chromosome pairs common to homo sapiens...knew he had to get George in the White House, where he could be near him and adore him. Thus it happened, aided and abetted by advantages found along the way, such as those voters in the Jewish Riviera who had to figure out the butterfly ballot or risk voting for Pat Buchanan, and then the huge tactical error by everybody's favorite legal genius, David Boies, in not demanding a state-wide recount, as he could have...it seems almost as if it were meant to be.

So George, admittedly, had to accept a presidency handed to him by a Supreme Court willing to overlook enormous conflicts of interest, principally those of Antonin ("Antonio," as Bush calls him) Scalia and Coke-Can Thomas. But that was it. From then on, powered by the first really secure income in his life (a cool $400 K a year as prez...suh-weet!), he would do it on his own. And the first order of business was to demonstrate that those faded Levis, and the worn circle in the back pocket from his snuff tin (which had brought Karl to a state of permanent priapism), were not just stage props. L'il Georgie, unlike that wussy Poppy, was a real Texan, and real Texans fight to the death in the Alamo and win wars. They don't quit at the Iraq-Kuwait border and leave their nemesis Saddam free to fight another day. Okay, the symbols and totems are mixed up, but then so is GWB. The point is, he was gonna show 'em. Show 'em all, all the doubters, all those who called him a career fuck-up who had to be bailed out every single time out. His Iraqi plan, the one Rumsfeld and Cheney always wanted but Poppy was too girly to handle, would topple Saddam, seize the Iraqi oil fields, neutralize Iran, neuter OPEC, ensure cheap gasoline for the U.S. for as far as the eye could see, placate Israeli hawks...and make George into the most heroic and providential president in history. It was a bold gamble, but you don't achieve great things through timidity. George had never achieved anything great, but he read that somewhere. If it was necessary to lie like hell to get the Congress and the stupid American public to go along with this visionary project, so be it. George knew what was good for us.

L'il George did topple Saddam, and later the Shiite theocrats hung him. Check that box off. For the rest of it, the oil fields went to hell, the cost of the war went through the roof, American soldiers died in droves, Iraq descended into a hellish internecine war, Iran became the dominant colossus in the Persian Gulf, the Israeli hawks reached the conclusion they would have to deal with Iran their own way, just as they'd feared, the price of gasoline doubled, the American military was broken, Republican dominance was destroyed, and America's international reputation was obliterated. An amazing set of accomplishments in only four bungling years of running the war. Into the ground. Things got so bad that Poppy finally put together a rescue team headed by James Baker, The Fixer, to bail Junior out. It had come to that. Where it always came to.

L'il Georgie ran upstairs and threw himself face down on his bed, stuck his fingers in his ears and began humming the "Mighty Mouse" theme as loud as he could. Why, why, why? he sobbed. Why does all of this keep happening to me? I'm not a fuck-up, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!

Well, George....how can we put this?
Link

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to pressure Bush to sign the legislation. 'We believe he must search his soul, his conscience and find out what is the right thing for the American people,' Reid said, standing outside the White House. 'I believe signing this bill will do that.'" McClatchy News Service, April 18, 2007.

This is another indication that Mr. Mumbles is unclear on the concept. All that Bush does is search his soul and conscience to find out "what is the right thing for the American people" (ugh, what lousy syntax). That has been the pattern since before the beginning. Reid might say instead, for example, Bush needs to read a book, or consult that Lancet study on Iraqi deaths. At this point, there are many books available, autopsies on the failed American mission in Iraq. I've read most of them; why can't Bush? Harry Reid is encouraging the worst tendencies in American public life, this resort to hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo instead of doing the homework. The answers don't lie in "Bush's soul." The origin of the war lies in Bush's soul.

Indeed, if I were to posit the single best reason for an orderly and quick exit from Iraq, it would take this form: if we cannot, with at least semi-scientific precision, reach a reasonable consensus and agreement on the fundamental facts of the situation in Iraq, then we cannot "in good conscience" continue to dedicate lives and enormous amounts of money to the mission. I never hear La Diva and Mr. Mumbles say anything like this. All of their criticism takes the "soft social science" approach of liberal dissent. The war is "lost." The President must be held "accountable" for the war. (The word "accountable" must, by general acclamation, be held accountable and retired from public use at the end of the Bush Presidency. What's wrong with "held responsible?" Is everyone in America now a C.P.A.?)

Anyone who has ever witnessed first-hand an actual newsworthy event knows that the press descriptions often vary substantially from our direct observations. What happens when a war is so violent and dangerous that no accurate reporting is even possible? Thus, at this twice-removed distance from reality, I think most of us, including Bush, cannot actually describe, or conceive of, the true situation in Iraq. That is why I think the scientific efforts to spell out the demographics of murder and mayhem in Iraq are indispensable.

It is astounding that so little is said about this study, by Johns Hopkins and an Iraqi university as peer-reviewed and published in the Lancet, by anyone in public office. I think the Democrats never say anything about it because the number is so big. It seems incredible. It's also true the sun is 93 million miles away and yet its light reaches us in about 8 minutes. That seems incredible too. But it's still true. So: 650,000 deaths over and above baseline expectations, as the high-end estimate, since the invasion of March, 2003, as of July, 2006, with about 200,000 Iraqi deaths directly attributable to American forces. Let us say that these estimates cover a period of 40 months. The average monthly death rate (above baseline) for Iraqis, therefore, may be as high as 16,250, with a daily rate of 540. Extrapolating these averages through the 49 months of the Iraqi war yields total deaths of 796,250 above normal mortality, with approximately 249,000 deaths attributable to U.S. forces. Is it reasonable to extrapolate thusly? Consider this latest report from the New York Times:

"Over the past six months, American troops have died in Iraq at the highest rate since the war began, an indication that the conflict is becoming increasingly dangerous for U.S. forces even after more than four years of fighting."

The violence is increasing. Therefore, the figure for Iraqi deaths may be understated, although it approaches 800,000 (as the high estimate) at this point through straight extrapolation. Note that this is not a fanciful number useful only for polemics-by-exaggeration. It is the best scientific estimate available. Therefore, one way to "complete" the mission might be to kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, or at least in Baghdad and the Sunni strongholds in the "Triangle," where most of the violence occurs. We're well on our way. The current figure equals about 16% of Baghdad's total population before the war, and that's before we consider the huge migrations of Iraqis to Syria, Jordan and Iran, estimated at another 800,000. Extinction or flight of the indigenous population was essentially the end game in Viet Nam and Cambodia. It is the usual end game in wars which descend into mindless carnage with no clear and achievable goals. Is that what we want to keep doing?

Virginia Tech, the latest national Rohrschach test

Around 1921 Hermann Rohrschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, devised a method of emotional and mental evaluation by asking his patients what they saw in a series of ten "pictures" which he had created by dribbling ink on pieces of paper and folding them over. Along with the Minnesota Multiphasic, the Rohrschach is still the most widely used test to figure out when someone has seriously slipped a cog.

Media-event tragedies in the United States, such as the recent horrific mass killing at Virginia Tech, seem to have a Rohrschach quality for America's legions of talking-head pundits. The one thing infotainment and the expert & analyst industry can never do is simply leave something to its grim basics. True, that would be dignified, respectful, humble and appropriate. You know, all those things America never is anymore. Even while the barrel of the gun is still smoking, we've got people blaming the Virginia Tech administration for not extrapolating from one morning homicide to a nut case on a rampage killing 32 more. This gives the news a "narrative," a dramatic structure which produces someone to "hold responsible." Besides the gunman, that is, but he's useless because he's dead. If this produces pain and distress for people in the school's administration, if it's grossly unfair to impute after-the-fact clarity to an ambiguous reality which preexisted the horror, tough luck. We need an angle and we're going with it.

So that was the hook, and the networks and cable news can thank the homicidal wacko for spacing things out the way he did and providing a story line. Otherwise, the thing is simply what it is: another mentally disturbed, quiet loner who fantasizes about massive revenge on the world, and then makes it all come terribly true. And because America makes it easy for civilians to get their hands on guns which fire off rounds at a rapid clip and can be reloaded quickly, the quiet loner can do a lot of damage in a hurry.

The NRA and President George Bush were quick to reassure the deceased killer that he was exercising a Constitutional right in bearing arms. In what should have been an amazing display of insensitivity and obtuseness, that was almost the first thing Bush had his spokeswoman Dana Perino say. The President believes in the right to bear arms. It was not amazing, although it was grossly insensitive and obtuse, because we're completely used to his style by now. Bush just has a genius for being on the wrong side of everything.

Other viewpoints reflected the post-Columbine sensibility that we live in an alienated and lonely society; that we have become so inured to daily death tolls by the Iraq war that we no longer react as we once did to reports of mass killing; and that America is a uniquely violent culture. While these are "correct" readings of the blots, which in this case are the oozing blood stains of dead students, there was no need to say any of it now. Except as a way of avoiding a genuine emotional reaction, if indeed we're capable of that anymore.

I think it's very sad that all of us, including the networks, the cable shows, and the reporters, don't take the time simply to reflect on the real tragedy, to connect as humans to what happened before rushing in with a media story line. Thirty-two people, mostly young men and women but including one Holocaust survivor who died trying to protect others, had their lives cut short by a mentally ill person. That could happen anywhere. If there is a narrative, it is simply that life is a gift precariously bestowed upon us. We would do more to retain our tattered humanity if we left it at that.

Blooging Past Bush-Bashing

A remarkable feature of the blogging world is the unprecedented (as far as I'm aware) marriage of modern pop psychology to political analysis, particularly as it applies to that singular creature in the White House, George Walker Bush. I don't argue with the trend, and I've done it myself, though I'm careful to cite my betters such as the learned psychoanalyst (and Bush-Basher extraordinaire) Justin Frank, M.D. In essence, these analyses, or diatribes, or screaming rants usually conclude with a summary description of Bush that makes him psychologically indistinguishable from a serial killer. His ascribed attributes almost always include sadism and a more-or-less complete lack of empathy. For recent example, I offer Robert Foster Altschul, an instructor in literature at Stanford, who blogged on the Huffpost under the subtle title, "You're a Monster, Mr. President" (which a lit major would term "foreshadowing"): "[i]t is now undeniable that our country is being led by a soulless, self-adoring crook who cares nothing about average citizens, American history, or the rule of law."

The "soulless" part is the key. Mr. Altschul is a novelist and probably wanted to avoid clunkers like "empathy-deprived," but that's the drift. The idea is that Bush doesn't feel any sympathy whatsoever for the consequences of his actions, including pain and suffering. By now I think everyone but the The Thirty Percent (by the way, I think that's a better name for Pat Robertson's TV show than "The 700 Club," which, while very End-Days and everything, is a little obscure) would agree with that. The Thirty Percent are Bush's hard core, the True Believers, the Evangelicals, who don't care about the consequences of Bush's actions here on Earth because Earth doesn't matter. In fact, many of them probably believe that Bush is empathy-deficient (certainly not "soulless," however; Mr. Altschul, please: everyone has a soul). One of the great ironies is that our soulless leader is empowered here at home by the same kind of religious zealot who straps on C-4 and walks into a Baghdad market and self-detonates. Maybe it's not a giant leap from self-adoration to self-detonation. I'm just boogeying here, while blogging. Maybe that could be called "blooging." I hereby claim copyright, trademark and exclusive use for the term "blooging," although anyone may use it from now on through a free license, granted by me in perpetuity.

Why do bloggers keep hammering away at this? It's the result of complete frustration, I think, but here's the thing: it is in the nature of empathy-deficiency that a psychopath cannot be dissuaded from his sadistic actions, or whatever, through any kind of emotional appeal. La Diva Pelosi keeps talking about extending the "hand of friendship" and cooperation to Bush in defiance of this psychological truth. You are not going to cajole, or shame, L'il Georgie into anything. It doesn't work that way. Tomorrow there will be another meeting in the Oval Office where Bush tells La Diva and Mr. Mumbles the way it's going to be - fund my war or else. And the Dynamic Duo will keep hoping, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Bush will offer them some sort of compromise that will give them a way to escape the awful burden of a difficult decision. He will never, ever do that, because he has the ultimate leverage in negotiations. He just flat-out doesn't give a fuck. That's the big upside of a complete lack of empathy, shame, remorse or ordinary human emotion. La Diva and Mr. Mumbles actually care if the U.S. Army and Marines are placed in yet more jeopardy. Bush doesn't, not at all. If they die, they die. That's how he looks at it. Maybe 650,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of the invasion (scientifically speaking, that's the probable number). Bush doesn't care enough about them to figure out if it's true.

Interesting, isn't it, in a macabre, blood-curdling way? So you see, it's not that I disagree with the Bush-Bashing Amateur Psychologists. I think they're exactly right. I've just blooged beyond it. If they want to stop some of the worst effects of Bushitis, they can, but it's never going to happen by appeal to a better nature that simply isn't there.

While we contemplate our Iraqi navel: where are the bees?

One possible solution to global warming, viewed on a more cosmic scale and less anthropocentrically, is the massive die-off of the human race. Honeybees are currently demonstrating how this is done. About 70% of the bees have disappeared from their hives on the East Coast and about 60% on the West Coast. It is a global phenomenon, especially in advanced technological countries. Three-fourths of all the world's flowering plants and trees depend upon the honeybee for pollination. Among those who appreciated the hard and necessary work that bees do was Albert Einstein, who had this to say about them:

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

So here's the current deal: the bee is disappearing off the surface of the globe. The upside of this apian phenomenon is that it solves such long-term problems as the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, the national debt and whether you've got enough in your 401(k). The key question, in another year or two, might be whether you've got too much money to get rid of in the four years we all have left. To be very clear, there is absolutely no substitute for the honeybee. None whatsoever. This is not one of those situations where you convert your internal combustion engine from gasoline to ethanol. Bees own the patent for plant pollination as surely as Monsanto owns the genetic composition of most of agricultural nature.

No one is sure why it's happening, but we can reliably suspect we've got something to do with it. Whenever something delicate, natural, and essential gets completely fucked up, the usual culprit is homo sapiens and his endless, stupid-ass tinkering with ecological cycles and balances. By now you'd think we would have learned the perilous lessons of unintended consequences. We barge into some enormously complicated latticework of natural interrelationships, dangerously armed with our half-wit ideas and cocky arrogance about how it all works, and completely screw it up. No matter how many times we do it, we remain convinced we're on top of the situation.

Maybe the bees can't find the hives because their intricate navigation systems are messed up by all the proliferating radiation from all the damn cell phones we're all addicted to (one theory). Maybe it's a resurgence of mite infestation secondary to global warming (another theory). Maybe it has something to do with genetically engineering plants to withstand herbicides that used to kill weeds until the weeds genetically modified themselves (using a controversial theory called "Evolution") to thrive alongside the GM plants owned, created and trademarked by Monsanto (yet another theory). Maybe the bees said, fuck these guys, let's die off for now and get rid of these assholes (my theory).

So having maybe five or six years left might seems like a big deal, except don't forget the critical importance of the fate of one Arab country where a bunch of religious zealots are hunkered down in a four mile square bunker working on ways to kill us while they spend our money. The 100% die-off thing, hey: these things happen. But Iraq...

Imus in his mourning

When you're at a wedding reception, or cocktail party, or bar mitzvah, you experienced the phenomenon. You find yourself gradually raising your voice to be heard, until you begin to strain your vocal cords with the effort. If you are, like your humble essayist, someone who relies primarily on irony and subtle nuance for his conversational contributions, you find yourself out of your element, and the latter stages of the soiree are given over to silent gestures: nods of the head, a smile frozen on your face like the rictus of death, shrugs. Trying to be heard over the din is aggravating, even pointless.

Those who study such things, social psychologists, audiologists, whoever, conclude that what's going on is a positive feedback loop of volume escalation. As each person raises his or her voice to be heard, others do likewise, until everyone in the room is shouting like a lunatic on the wrong medication. If we were more interested in intelligible conversation, we would probably occasionally shout out "reset!" and everyone would lower their voices to half-volume, from which position on the dial it would again begin to rise. But then, that would spoil the party; the idea is not to have conversations in the first place.

In the Big Conversational Pit of America, the world of talk radio, simulcast TV-radio (such as Imus's erstwhile show), talking head cable "news" shows, et cetera, the conversation has gotten very loud indeed. The proliferation of venues brought on by FM and satellite radio, cable TV channels, in addition to the preexisting world of AM talk radio, means that anyone interested in talk formats about current events, including the shenanigans of "celebrity" culture, has many choices. Reasonable, measured voices tend not to attract attention or to hold an audience; witness the decline and disappearance of Aaron Brown from CNN. To attract a following, those inclined to be the loudest, "edgiest," and most outrageous gradually increase their volume and their offensiveness until they become prominent and can command a following of American listeners who like this sort of thing, and, by and large, they are most of the listening public. Thus, we have the mutant evolution of the "shock jocks" like Howard Stern, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly and, of course, Don Imus, as well as the cadres of cutthroat "commentators" like Ann Coulter. Their shtick is that they will say anything, particularly something very offensive and deeply personal about anyone who gets lined up in their crosshairs. Their audiences expect this; it's why they tune in. The best known radio psychologist was Dr. Laura, who perfected a kind of non-therapeutic attack psychology.

Inevitably, the pressure to maintain this kind of outrageous imbalance leads these weird individuals, who by a process of self-selection were never very stable to begin with (despite the money, who would want to live like that?), over a line of "acceptability." It isn't what Imus said, after all, that did him in. The problem was his choice of target. He was cheered on when he was merely being anti-Semitic or generally unfair; that's why, to repeat, people were interested in listening in the first place. But he picked on a group of dedicated women athletes, African-Americans, who had done nothing to earn his scorn or ridicule. Psychologically, I think what happens at a moment like that is that the American audience feels deeply ashamed that they made such an asshole famous and rich in the first place. They're appalled at their own vulgarity, at their role in elevating such a jerk to a position of power and influence. So, as Freud would instruct us, they "displace" their anger on to the shock jock in an orgy of sanctimonious bullshit. How dare he? Doesn't he know what's fair?

Of course he doesn't. Or does, but that's not the point. Imus was deeply confused by the reaction to words he considered part of his modus operandi. His bread and butter. How could people turn on him like that?

Ultimately, these stories have little to do with the "content" of what these people say, and everything to do with a steady coarsening and debasement of American public discourse. There is a declining market for civil, respectful and thoughtful conversation. The barbarians have crashed the party, and the only ones we can hear are those shouting the loudest.

So long, Kurt

I came to Kurt Vonnegut's writing later in life. It's a self-defeating habit at times, my resistance to reading a popular writer because of a contempt for popularity. At other times, it's served me well; for example, I delayed reading John Irving for a long time, and then about 50 pages of "The World According to Garp" convinced me I'd been "right" all along.

But I wish I'd read Kurt Vonnegut when he first made a splash back in the late 60's. "Slaughterhouse Five" was a mesmerizing book. It's amazing what a talented writer who endured World War II can come up with. Think of them, James Jones, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. All brilliant writers. Their youths had been seared by the most cataclysmic drama of modern times, and it colored everything they wrote.

Kurt had a style that was instantly recognizable and sui generis. A sort of fantasy realism. Stories and characters that were both familiar and essentially alien. They were a vehicle for his desire to express his disappointment with the unsatisfactory character of the human race, its penchant for cruelty and selfishness, its essential short-sightedness. It would have been difficult for him to have a different view. A depressive who, as a young POW, was on corpse patrol after the firebombing of Dresden. That would do it.

Kurt, in his later years, became as bitter as the aging and raging Mark Twain, to whom he often referred. He called the human race a disease of Mother Earth, and archly suggested that global warming was her "fever," by which she meant to burn us out of existence. I think that's the depression talking. Humans are what they are, and if we say we're flawed, a "disease," it's because we're mammals with the capacity to imagine ourselves otherwise. Kurt also knew, like the Dalai Lama, that the only true palliative for all that war, destruction, disappointment, sadness and death was human kindness, which he promoted as his only true religious impulse. Another thing I like about him.

Prescient artists, part 2

In his comic anti-war classic, Catch-22, Joseph Heller painted a soul-lacerating picture of a group of American flyboys trapped on a Mediterranean Island in the middle of World War II by the career ambitions of a dimwitted commanding officer. Colonel Cathcart, who kept an actual ledger of "feathers in his cap" and "black eyes" in his office, routinely raised the number of missions required before transfer to non-combat status, so the crews in his squadron watched hopelessly as the horizon of safety retreated forever before them, from 25 to 35 to 45 to 55, etc., ad infinitum. John Yossarian, the anti-hero of the anti-war novel, rationally concluded that Colonel Cathcart was as much an enemy to him as the German batteries trying to blast him out of the sky. Anyone trying to kill him, he said, was his enemy.

Cathcart was from a privileged background and had sawdust for brains. He overrated himself massively, but his stupidity was mitigated by the crafty behind-the-scenes manipulations of Colonel Korn, the bald, efficient, ruthless aide who used Cathcart to promote his own ambitions. Yossarian, up against this pair, resorts to increasingly dangerous and insubordinate strategems to break free of certain death in the sky. One can't be sure at the end whether he succeeds, but no one who reads this book can fail to appreciate the ways that lower echelon soldiers are used by higher-ups for self-aggrandizement, even when it means that men will die for the sake of vanity.

In today's news we see that the "lack of funding" (and a lack of replacement troops) for the Iraq war may "lead" to extension of the tours of duty for all 145,000 troops in theatre. Nothing much has changed since those harrowing days on the Isle of Pianosa in 1943. Soldiers are still being used by higher-ups for political ends, even when it means they will die. By this point, even Cathcart-Bush would have to conclude, after talking it through with Cheney-Korn, that the question of "winning" in Iraq has been answered. By analogy, Yossarian knew the Allies had defeated the Germans even as Cathcart kept asking him to risk his life by flying missions. In Iraq, the American soldiers know that no matter how long they stay, Iraq is not going to stabilize into a secure democracy with its three principal factions living in joyous harmony, able to "defend itself," holding regular "elections," sharing power and revenue and all the rest. They're in Iraq not because success is near but because they're not allowed to come home, and Bush will ratchet up the pressure on them, sacrifice their lives, so he does not have to back down before a hostile Congress. The soldiers in Iraq know they face two enemies, the murky cadres of insurgents who detonate bombs and fire RPG rounds at them while they patrol the streets, and George W. Bush, who will wear them out and get them killed so that his colossal failure can remain a "work in progress" instead of a fait accompli. I doubt that literary analogies will be much comfort to American grunts in Iraq. With or without funding, they will remain in Iraq so that Bush does not have to make yet another, final entry in the black-eye column of the ledger.

Prescient artists

Colonel Turgidson (reading):
"...My boys will give you the best kind of start, fourteen hundred megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now. So let's get going. There's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all." Then he hung up. We're still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.

Muffley:
There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.

Turgidson:
Well, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.

The above is one of many brilliant snatches of dialogue from Stanley Kubrick's black humor masterpiece, "Dr. Strangelove." Till the very end, Kubrick indulges our hope the world can be saved from nuclear annihilation. The foolproof safety features of mutually assured destruction, however, are undone by one crazy commanding officer in the state of Washington, who is motivated to start World War III by a single incident of sexual impotence, which he attributes to a Commie plot to poison the water supply with flouride. He games the system, initiating "Plan R," which permits a lower echelon officer to give the go-code on nuclear retaliation. It looks hopeless until Captain Mandrake, the British adjutant to the mad General Jack Ripper, deciphers the recall code and the B-52s are turned back. Except for one, piloted by the dedicated and extremely competent Major Kong, who gets through and delivers his fatal payload. The world ends to the strains of "We'll Meet Again."

"Dr. Strangelove" was set in the most frigid period of the Cold War. The plot devices are simple, in a way; General Ripper's scheme is based upon a thorough understanding of Air Force procedures. He figures out a loophole, Plan R, that will allow him to seize the initiative from the civilians who have neither "the time, nor the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought."

The peculiar dynamics of the USA-USSR standoff do not exist in their original form today. The nuclear threat, however, is more dangerous than ever because the variables have been multiplied, and unlike the clash of secular ideologies involved in the old Cold War, the conflicts today are fueled by the inherent irrationality of religious zealotry. When I heard George Bush liken the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to a new "crusade," I thought we had entered a new phase of world history that would make the mad logic of Dr. Strangelove look simple by comparison. Like General Ripper's explanation for ending the world, George Bush's rationale for invading Iraq, at bottom, is that it was "the right thing to do." When he has been pressed in the few lengthy interviews he has ever given on the subject, that is where he returns. He isn't going to explain it because he doesn't think he needs to. He becomes agitated and impatient with anyone who could think otherwise. He shares General Ripper's complacent self-satisfaction. With just the right arrangement of power, we're always at the mercy of such people.

Thus, we have stirred up regional instability and antagonism in the most unstable and antagonistic region in the world today. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and is willing to share, and has shared, nuclear technology with countries such as Iran and North Korea. Iran is embarked on a program to enrich uranium to 97% U-235 with "thousands of centrifuges" (or so its demented, Holocaust-denying leader claims). Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt want the bomb. Israel is armed to the teeth with hundreds of atom bombs and probably thermonuclear bombs. Israel has the missiles, land- and submarine-based, to deliver them to Damascus, Cairo, Riyadh and Tehran. Also to Natanz, where Iran is enriching uranium. Iran wants to enrich uranium to a weapons-grade isotope because U-235, unlike plutonium, can be used to build "gun-type" A-bombs, the Little Man model used on Hiroshima. It's the simplest design, far less complicated than the Fat Man implosion device dropped on Nagasaki. Little Boy was so reliable it was never tested before deployment.

By invading Iraq, Bush both empowered and atagonized Iran. He encouraged Iran to become bellicose and to accelerate its "self-defensive" nuclear program, just as Bush did with North Korea. One of the great ironies is that to the extent the invasion of Iraq was designed to protect Israel, to "pacify" the region by democratizing it, the invasion has had more the effect of swatting a hornets' nest with a Louisville Slugger.

I think ultimately Israel will "pacify" the region along lines General Ripper would have approved. But let us not forget that General Ripper's scheme was finally undone because of an X-factor he knew nothing about: the Soviet Doomsday Machine, which kicked into retaliation automatically, and inexorably, upon the American attack. And Bush's strategy was undone by the simpler fact that he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

Monday, Monday, can't trust that day

I live in a nice neighborhood, which in the typical American sense means a zone of well-maintained private residences, upscale shops and places to eat, suburban office parks and malls, and abundant greenery. Public schools, for the most part, look like medium-security prisons, inside and out, and all public amenities are indifferently maintained, again in the quintessential American style. I buy coffee out at the local boutique grocery store every morning, and as I drive home I use my outstretched arm holding the cup as a shock absorber to keep from spilling the rich, oily brew (again, it's how we do it in America now). The beverage holders won't work because the streets are seamed, rutted and potholed. If you pay attention as you drive, it can get to you, the rhythmic lurches and bone-jarring bumps of your car's suspension as you crash along the road.

I was watching Jeff Sessions, Republican Senator from Alabama, on C-SPAN the other day extolling the sense of "private enterprise" in the U.S.A. versus the socialist approaches of the Western European nations. He pointed out that we take care of the "truly needy" in America, but do not provide the "coddling" welfare state of the Nordic nations, or even France and Germany. The spirit of individual initiative is alive and well in America, Jeff proudly asserted to an empty Senate chamber, and it's why our economy is the envy of the world. Sessions sees himself as a kind of bipartisan fence-mender, I think, and laments the lack of cooperation in Congress, by which I think he means the unwillingness of liberals to see things in his practical, common sense way.

What Sessions leaves out, I think, is that the United States does operate a welfare state as surely as the Netherlands or Sweden. It just has different beneficiaries. It's true the effective taxation rates are higher in Western Europe, but we have to remember that taxation provides such essentials as comprehensive medical coverage, which in the United States has to be purchased individually, at higher and higher costs. The Europeans ride around on serviceable public transportation, such as commuter and long-haul passenger trains, and on highly useful metro and subway systems, and when they drive, it's on roads that are smooth and well-built. Entering a train station or airport in Europe is not an exercise in soul-killing depression, as it often is in the USA, because value is placed on public spaces, and such places are often bright and cheery.

So the Europeans receive a bang for the tax buck. Americans pay taxes too, but it's for the sake of the military establishment. That's the forest which Jeff Sessions cannot see because of his American boosterism. As Chalmers Johnson describes in his "blowback" trilogy (particularly Nemesis), if you add it all up, the U.S.A. spends three-fourths of a trillion dollars every year on defense, including the military and intelligence, and taking into account the budgets of the Department of Energy and State, for example, for nuclear weapons and diplomatic spying, respectively. This is one-half of the discretionary budget of the federal government. $1.5 trillion is the cash-in, cash-out system of Social Security and Medicare. Social Security runs a slight "surplus" which the federal government "borrows" and spends on "general" expenses, such as defense. The social entitlements, in effect, have their own tax system which the federal government administers and undermines by stealing its necessary reserves.

European nations have tiny budgets for defense compared to the American colossus. That's why they can afford nice trains, smooth roads and well-maintained parks, and can make sure their citizens don't have to die prematurely because they have to choose between going to the doctor or becoming homeless. Servicing the military-industrial complex with American tax dollars has become so ingrained in the minds of solons like Jeff Sessions that they no longer see it for what it obviously is. Spending money on war and materiel is the American emphasis, and has been ever since the early 1940's. As a publicly-supported enterprise, the military is socialist to its core, but it is socialism of the kind the late, not-so-great U.S.S.R. practiced. The Congress is so locked into the inexorable logic of military spending, with its positive feedback loops of defense contractors and bought-and-paid-for legislators, that no internal force can now dislodge its stranglehold on American priorities. As Johnson describes, external forces will, in time, break the system apart, but it will be a disintegration no smoother than that ride home from the boutique coffee bar.

The desperate search for silver linings

In a conversation recently, I remarked that Bush's 8 years in office constituted 1/9th of what we used to think of as a typical American life span of 72 years. It was a depressing thought: for many Americans, about 11% of their entire lives will have been spent enduring the consequences of this terrible mistake. For those who don't reach even this modest milestone, for those whose lives are cut tragically short (say by a roadside bomb in Anbar province), the fraction is larger. For thousands of those soldiers, in fact, the ratio might be one year of Bush for every three years spent on Earth. The lesson is stark: electing someone this bad as President has a tremendously powerful impact on the course of your life. The effects are not something you shoo away with a flick of the hand. We live with them, and we'll live with them a long time after (finally, mercifully) he gets the hell out of the White House.

Can any good come out of it? I remember that practically the very day he seemed to have been "elected" in 2000, my very first thought was that the world had just lost its last opportunity to deal effectively with global warming. I've written before that my familiarity with the subject of CO2 concentrations in the troposphere began with reading I did in Hawaii in the late 1960's. It struck me then as it strikes me now that of all the environmental imperatives, climate change because of CO2 build-up was the most inexorable, the most dangerous, the least impossible to ignore safely. Yet Bush ignored it, in favor of temporal, venal considerations, with a myopic (and evil) callousness that exceeded even the pessimistic predictions of how indifferent he would be. So any hope has to be tempered by the realization the window of opportunity may have closed. When the largest polluter (and "moral" leader) on Earth increases its CO2 production for eight years, and fights tooth and nail against international cooperation as a reflection of the anti-social tendencies of one small man in charge of that polluting machine, it's hard to be sanguine. You can't just keep throwing away long stretches of time where you do nothing. The IPCC report yesterday was devastating. It should make you sick to read it. The living world is in mortal peril, and the danger zone keeps getting advanced as the evidence around us keeps popping into sudden view.

Yin and yang. After eight years of Bush, maybe the United States will become a constructive force again simply because his presence forced us to take honestly into account the "shadow side" of our national personality. You can't really miss it now, unless you're an empathy-deprived jerk like the guy in the Oval Office. Jung would counsel us to perform a countrywide integration. We don't have a good-intentioned, freedom-loving democracy to "export" anymore. Get serious. We invaded a country and set in motion 650,000 deaths by violence, and then fought all serious attempts to count the number so the damage could be assessed. We take innocent people from countries we happen to be invading, peasants sold to us by bounty hunters, and deliberately lock them up at the eastern end of Cuba so they'll have no Constitutional rights. We torture them and drive them crazy, for no reason at all. We tell their lawyers the people we've tortured confessions out of can't testify about the torture because it's a "state secret." We lock up Americans in American military dungeons and hold them without charges on the basis of Presidential fiat. The central government spies on Americans without warrants. We pull people off the streets and send them to foreign countries because we know they'll be tortured and abused. We piss on the Kyoto protocol and every other decent international attempt to save life on Earth, then lie about substituting something else in its place.

If we honestly come to terms with all of this, we may start getting over ourselves. That could be the silver lining. Bush will go on forever with his particularly rancid form of megalomania, but we don't have to do that, too. Instead of spending $2 trillion on a war that is not only not necessary but will result in massive blowback, all under the delusion of "doing something good," we can find the $1.5 trillion deemed necessary to rebuild the American infrastructure of roads, public transportation, bridges and schools. We can cooperate with the international community and ask for its help with rogue terrorist elements. We can submit ourselves to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (sorry Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld - if you want to read some history, try the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution). We can dispense with the deranging notion of American Exceptionalism and accept ourselves for what we really are -- humans like other humans, with good and bad parts, who must examine their intentions to discover their true purpose, and proceed with the humility appropriate to the precariousness of life.

Einstein's Joke

Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe was that it was so comprehensible. I would not presume to think I could get inside Einstein's brain, even for a moment, and figure out what he meant. There is simply too much room in there, and I would quickly get lost. Maybe something that is incomprehensible is the idea there have been human beings so smart they could imagine new rules governing all of reality, while holding down an unrelated day job, and then proceed to prove, mathematically and rigorously, that the rules are right. Such minds, so very few in number, exist at the far, far, far right extreme of the bell curve of human intelligence. I have been amused at times by the efforts of others to explain to me how smart Einstein was. I think such efforts simply demonstrate that we're uncomfortable with the incomprehensible; the only person who could even approximately explain how smart Einstein was is Einstein himself. Because everyone else must explain Einstein's intelligence in terms which they understand, and their explanations are subsumed in the greater set of Einstein's own understandings, which include subtleties and connections which only he could comprehend. After Einstein, physics veered increasingly toward the heuristic, into quantum physics, for example, which presents many fun paradoxes without actually describing phenomena that humans can understand or explain convincingly. A fortiori the quasi-mystical formulations of string theory.

This is only a hunch, but I think Einstein intended his comment as a cosmic joke. I have never heard anyone else say that, although his comment is widely quoted. It's taken at face value, and usually in terms that suggest humans should congratulate themselves on their mastery of the basic laws that govern all physical phenomena, at least at the macro- (larger than subatomic) scale. A mastery adumbrated by Richard Feynman's very subtle observation that it is remarkable that the real world can be expressed in the abstract symbolism of mathematics: why can we quantify reality?

It's overused, the idea that there is a deep and subtle connection between "Western" physics and Eastern mysticism, particularly Zen subjectivity. But I think that's the heuristic (the word is handy today) approach best suited to getting Einstein's joke. We think there is an essential congruence between the reality conveyed to us by our sensory apparatus and the rules for comprehension we have devised because we mistake our perceptions for reality. Einstein was saying, if you ask me, that it is impossible for humans to surmount this essential limitation in our conception of the universe; thus, our comprehension is itself the main obstacle. We cannot get beyond that comprehension. Of course our highly-developed ideas about the workings of the universe strike us a complete understanding of everything; those ideas simply reduce to mathematical formulations what we're able to see, which isn't the same as reality at all. Einstein was not saying humans should congratulate themselves on their epic discovery of the true nature of reality. He was hinting that we're the eternal prisoners of illusion.

Einstein's Joke: no setup, no premise, no punch line. I guess he was a genius comedian, too.

A lesson from the Bard

"who steals my purse steals trash, . . . But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him, / And makes me poor indeed." Shakespeare, Othello.

Thinking way back, most of us can probably remember Bush in his 2000 campaign, wherein he presented himself as an honest cowpoke on his way to Washington to restore honesty and decency, a kind of prep school Matt Dillon who would make short work of all this Clinton-era lying and politicking. A mere six years and two months after his inauguration, the charlatan disgracing the Oval Office is barely recognizable as that simulacrum of common decency created by Rove's PR machine. Such startling reversals ought to make us deeply distrust a couple of things.

One is that bane of the McLuhan Age, the media artifact constructed from sound bites and imagery. For many Americans (though never for me), Bush's affected pose as a no-nonsense executive with a constructive agenda, and a low tolerance for partisan bullshit, closed the sale. Even his inability to speak grammatically correct English was seen in endearingly positive terms.

The second thing to worry about is not so technology-dependent. The Shakespeare quote above is from Iago, the arch-villain of Shakespeare's great tragic meditation on the nature of duplicity and jealousy. Iago - the liar, the manipulator, the wounded narcissist, the false friend, the betrayer - goes so far as to defend his "reputation" for integrity as his most valuable personal asset. Thus, to further his evil designs, Iago dons the cloak of the righteous as part of his scheme of ingratiation and betrayal, and the vain (and vulnerable) Othello buys it hook, line and sinker.

I suppose humans are simply genetically programmed to accept, at the conscious level, the superficial portrayal of probity and noble purpose. We want to believe it, and the pathological personality relies upon this human gullibility for the success of his schemes, which depend upon the manipulations of emotion where other, normal people use the honest attachments of emotion to fulfill their own needs. Good people do not want to live their lives in a state of guarded anticipation that some new acquaintance, a man seemingly so honest, so forthright, so well-intentioned, is actually a mendacious, cold, merciless, soul-dead conniver, with an anti-human and anti-Earth agenda, who takes pleasure in the infliction of torturous pain on humiliated enemies, who loves the sulfurous stench and bloody carnage of battle. How could half the American people get this guy so wrong? How could 30% of the American people continue to do so?

Well, it really did happen, right here in the United States. There's a line from another exceptional piece of art that's brought to mind as the end of the Bush nightmare hoves into view. In "The Lives of Others," the German film about the Stasi of pre-Glasnost East Germany, the persecuted playwright Georg Dreyer can at last confront, after the fall of the Wall, a Stasi minister who ruined Dreyer's relationship with the love of his life. After the minister callously brags about the power he once enjoyed, Dreyer walks away with the line, "And to think that a man like you once ruled a country."

Veto This, L'il Georgie!

President Bush and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin appear to be on a collision course that seemed always fated to be, ever since Feingold's commendable attempt to censure Bush for his systematic violation of the Fourth Amendment (and for Bush's routine commission of felonies connected therewith) arising from the warrantless spying conducted by the National Security Agency. Senator Russ was able to corral only three other senators to take this principled stand along with him (Leahy, Harkin and Boxer). With the success of the 2006 elections, certainly other senators would join him now, such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont and probably Sherrod Brown of Ohio. It is in the nature of principled leadership to await the arrival of stragglers who take principled stands as soon as it seems safe to do so. Thus, Hillary Clinton, et alia, will be along as soon as the public opinion polls tell them it's time to be a hero.

Not so Russ. He has always done things his own quirky way, a way which would have appealed to other troublemakers like John Adams, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It would be difficult to find someone with a past history more different from our spoiled, petulant, lazy President. The grandson of Jewish Russian immigrants, Feingold grew up in Wisconsin, attended public high school, earned a B.A. at UW-Madison along with admission to Phi Beta Kappa and a Rhodes Scholarship, earned a second bachelor's degree at Oxford, and then graduated from Harvard Law School. While Bush pretends, in his usual fraudulent way, to be an American success story, Feingold is the real thing. Feingold has always played by the rules, and then some. His successful legislative campaigns have, in the main, been supported only by individual contributions from Wisconsin residents. It must disturb him profoundly to watch a man like Bush, who casually disgraces the Constitution, the rule of law, and America's good name, carry on as if he were a real President.

Bush is now threatening to veto the Iraq bill-in-waiting from Congress. Full of his customary bombast and tempestuous bullshit, Bush pretends that his concern is for the troops he has stranded in Iraq, on a suicide mission, for the last 4+ years. Without funding, he storms, the troops will have to remain in Iraq on longer tours, with substandard armor, etc. This is Rove & Cheney whispering in his ear, of course. Bush must never, never, never say the obvious thing, which is that running out of money means his new job is to get all the troops home safely with the cash on hand.

Enter Senator Feingold, who is ready with new legislation to help Bush focus on the obvious. His follow-on bill to the one Bush says he will veto is a model of elegant concision:

(c) Prohibition on Use of Funds - No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces after March 31, 2008.

There you have it, Georgie. The end of the line. You argue that the American people will know "who to blame" for the predicament of the U.S. soldier in Iraq, in that steely manner that represents your best impersonation of a tough guy. Part of your shtick, maybe, is to be intentionally ungrammatical, just to sound tougher. Although with you, how would we know?

Eventually, Robert Gates, General Petraeus, other military leaders with their heads screwed on a lot straighter are going to break ranks with W and begin to utter the obvious. No money means no war. It doesn't mean the soldiers are "stranded." It means the stupid misadventure in Iraq comes to an end, and Bush's presidency with it. Harry Reid has signed on with Feingold, as have Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders. This is the real deal; if they see it through, they'll stuff this punk once and for all.

Santo, Ma Non Troppo

I'm concerned about the alacrity with which the Vatican is pursuing the canonization of John Paul II. It appears that Benedict and the Cardinals are falling prey to that modern malaise of cheapening time-honored awards of distinction by succumbing to society's inability to delay gratification. You see it everywhere these days, from the habit of awarding Oscars for life-time achievement to directors still in the active phase of their careers to the recent spectacle of the near-canonization of Ronald Reagan, where his celebrants counted on a mass collective amnesia to make us forget Reagan had wood chips where the human brain is supposed to be. People just can't wait anymore. Everything is rushed, even in something as timeless as religion, thus robbing even sainthood of its divine luster.

"Santo subito!" the delirious crowds outside St. Peter's Basilica shout. JP2 needs sainthood, right now, say his Catholic fans. The Vatican hastens to comply. They're putting the finishing touches on an "investigation" of his life, something you think they might have worked on, you know, before he became Pope. But you can't be too careful when you're talking about making someone a saint, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as "a person officially recognized, esp. by canonization, as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on Earth." They don't want JP2 up there in the Sanctified Hall of Fame and then discover some bastard son living in the suburbs of Krakow, or maybe a previously overlooked letter from JP2 to an SS commandant letting him know where the local shul is meeting. That would never do. But when they take extraordinary steps like waiving the "five-year requirement" (that's where it does sound like a Hall of Fame) and beating the bushes for miracles, they invite this kind of disaster. They've got one miracle in the hopper already. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre of France (really now: Sister Mary Simon Peter - was that ordered up from central casting or what?) claims her Parkinson's cleared up two months after John Paul II, also a Parkinson's sufferer, expired. They need one more, since there can hardly be any doubt about that first one. I mean, come on: Sister Marie's Parkinson's clears up two months after JP2, who just happened to have the same disease, died? If you've got a problem with that, I don't want to hear about it, and neither do the Cardinals.

Although: maybe they've done enough to fast-track JP's installation and ought to take their time. Delve into this Sister Marie thing a little more penetratingly, and make sure she's on the level. Publicity seekers are everywhere, and surely if the last decade or so has taught us anything, it's that Catholics sometimes yield to the most human of vices. Cynical as it may seem, a thorough investigation could reveal some alternative interpretations, such as: Sister Marie never had Parkinson's; it's a notoriously difficult disease to diagnose and is often confused with other motor neuron maladies. Or: maybe the L-Dopa kicked in. Or: maybe the idea of JP2 interceding on her behalf gave her a temporary dopamine rush that got her motor neurons working again. Uncharitably, this last might be called a placebo effect. Maybe her disease, blessedly, is in a state of remission. Sticking with the five-year rule would allow us to make sure, and not have to go through the embarrassing process of canceling the miracle and opening up the application process again.

But I must admit it: JP2, as one of his first gigs on the Other Side, may have put in a good word for Marie Soeur. I mean, why the hell not? In which case, His Holiness is halfway home. Given the standards of rigorous proof required, the Cardinals will soon shake another miracle out of those voluminous sleeves. I still think, all things considered, that the honor would mean more, the canonization would be more Canonical, if they waited the five years and looked for miracles with a little more star power. You know, as they say in the Biz, "legs." I'm dubious, of course, that such a salutary course will be followed, that the Cardinals will set the tempo at allegro, ma non troppo. Santo, molto prestissimo, it is. A world hungry for heroes, even mythological ones, demands no less.