PEOPLE & POLITICS

By

Mohammed Haruna

Bush, The Rambler

The first time I read Stupid Whitemen sometimes last year, I thought Michael Moore, its American author, was unduly harsh on George W. Bush as an individual and as President. Bush, Moore suggested, was a “functional illiterate”, an alcoholic and a felon. These were harsh things to say about anyone, most especially the leader of the “free” world. Little wonder then that the book almost didn’t get released by its publishers, the Regan-Books, a subsidiary of Harper-Collins.

According to Moore, the first 50,000 copies of the book came off the presses on the evening of September 10, 2001. However, the tragic events of the following day made it impossible for the books to be shipped out to the book stores that day.

Then, said the author, he asked the publishers to delay their release by a few more weeks because, as a resident of Manhattan, the scene of 9/11, he felt it was inappropriate to go on a book tour at that time. However, several weeks after the books should have been finally released, he heard nothing from his publishers. So he called them to find out what was going on.

“What I heard next,” said Moore, “was not what I expected to hear anywhere inside a free country.” His publishers told him that they simply couldn’t release the book as it was written. “The political climate of the country has changed. We would like you to consider rewriting up to 50 percent of the book…. removing the harsh references to Bush and toning down your dissent,” Moore quoted his publishers as demanding.

Eventually, the book got released without “a single word removed or changed”. But this was not before the attempt to censor Moore had leaked out as a result of which the publishers were harassed by prospective readers.

Regan-Book’s main grouse with Moore was his open letter to Bush in Chapter 2 of the book. Part of the letter read “Because you have your finger on the Button (you know, the one that could blow up the world) and because decisions you make have vast and far-reaching consequences for the stability of said world, I would like to ask you three pointed questions – and I would like you to give me, and the American people, three honest answers.”

Moore then proceeded to ask “Dear George” if he was not a “functional illiterate”, an alcoholic and a felon. Whatever may be the answers to the last two questions, Bush’s interview with the NBC, one of America’s three network television stations, penultimate Sunday, can only lead one to conclude that Moore was not wrong to feel concerned about the literacy level of the leader of the “free” world.

“One thing is clear to everyone – you can’t speak the English language in sentences we can comprehend”, said Moore. “At first, the way you mangled words and sentences seemed cute, almost charming. But after a while it became worrisome.”

Anyone who had read the transcript of Bush’s NBC “Meet the Press” interview as reproduced by the Washington Post of February 8^th, should be worried about his answers to the questions he was asked. Worried because, as leader of the most powerful nation in the world, his grasp or the lack of it, of issues and also his actions, have the gravest consequences for the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the president’s answers during the interview, mostly in incoherent and rambling sentences, could only mean one or two things; either he had little grasp of the issues raised or he was being deliberately unintelligible. Either way Bush, as the president of the most powerful nation in the world, poses a grave danger to the peace and stability of the world.

From the word go Bush, as I have just said, was simply incoherent and rambling in his answers to Tim Russert, the NBC interviewer.

Russert: On Friday, you announced a committee, commission to look into intelligence failures regarding the Iraq war... You have been reluctant to do that for some time. Why?

Bush: Well, first let me kind of step back and talk about intelligence in general, if I might. Intelligence is a vital part of fighting and winning the war against terrorist. It is … because the war against terrorist is a war against individuals who hide in caves in remote parts of the world, individuals who have these kind of shadowy networks, individuals who deal with rogue nations. So we need a good intelligence system. We need really good intelligence.”

Seven disjointed and rambling sentences later, Bush completely avoided answering the simple question about why initially he did not want to set up a commission to find out why the American intelligence on alleged Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proved totally false. Either he had no answer to the question or he simply did not even understand it.

Certainly, it did seem to me that he had no answer to the follow up question which was about why he gave the commission a March 2005 deadline to submit its report, that is, well after the next presidential elections. The commission, he said in effect, can only be of help to future presidents in helping them understand how to fight the war on terror. In other words, in spite of America’s patent inability to win the peace in Iraq, he, George W. Bush, needed no lessons on how to fight the war on terror.

Much later in the interview, when an apparently dissatisfied Russert returned to the question of “intelligence failure” in Iraq, the President merely repeated his mantra about Saddam Hussein being dangerous with WMD. “He had used weapons”, said Bush “which meant he had had weapons…. They could have been destroyed during the war. They could be hidden. They could have been transferred to other country. And we’ll find out”!

This arrogance--or obtuseness, depending on what you think of Bush-- has alarming implications especially for developing nations like Nigeria where the Americans easily force their priorities upon the nation’s leadership.

Listening to Bush repeat his mantra about Saddam as a danger to the world, you would never have guessed that the American search for Iraqi WMD turned out to have been a chase after shadows. You will also never have guessed that his handlers, notably the Vice-President Dick Chenny, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld and Rumfelds deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, had been advocating for the forceful overthrow of Saddam Hussein long before 9/11.

However, of all Bush’s answers to Russerts questions, the three I found most disturbing were (1) his response to the question why Chenny’s optimism about Iraqi reception of American soldier’s turned out to be mere wishful thinking, (2) his reaction to insinuations by John Kerry, the Democratic Party presidential frontrunner, that Bush was an obtuse student in the University and remained obtuse even as president, and (3) his reaction to the question on whether he would accept defeat in the next elections.

On the first question, Bush’s incredible answer was that Iraq was proving messy after the war because of the actions of people who were desperate to stop the advance of freedom and democracy. “See,” he argued, “free societies are societies that don’t develop weapons of mass terror and don’t blackmail the world”. Clearly Bush was totally out of touch with reality for him to say this when his country is the world’s leader in the possession of nuclear weapons and other WMD and indeed is the only country in the world to have used the nuclear bomb once upon a time.

American military power ,says Michael Mann in Incoherent Empire has no rival. “Almost all the world’s military budgets are declining except the American. By 2001, it comprised 36%, the entire world’s - six times the size of the number 2 power, Russia, and seven times the size of the next three, France, the UK and Japan. The U.S. budget for 2003 takes it to over 40 percent of the world’s total. It exceeds the spending of the next 24 states combined, and is 25 times greater than the combined spending of all seven ‘rouge states’ identified by the U.S. as its enemies.”

Right now America is also the only country contemplating the manufacture of battlefield nuclear bombs and, since Ronald Reagan, has been hell-bent on introducing weapon in to space through its star wars project.

Obviously, everyone, with the apparent exception of Bush, knows that America as a “free society,” not only possesses an incredible military monster, it has also never been shy in using it to square or squash its enemies, real and imaginary.

As for his reaction number two, it is frightening that the leader of the “free” world would curtly say that a relatively harmless question about what he did in his student days was off limits for discussion.

Russert: You (meaning Bush and Kerry) were both in Skulls and Bones, the Secret Society.

Bush: It’s so secret, we can’t talk about it.

Strangely enough Russert obliged Bush and didn’t talk about it. Could it be that once a Skull and Bones always a Skull and Bones? Could it, in other words, be that the world’s leading power is under the malevolent influence of a secret society, a malevolence amply dramatized in a popular movie of the same name?

Finally, to Bush’s reaction about the prospects of his losing the next year’s election.

Russert: Are you prepared to lose?

Bush: No. I am not going to lose.

Russert: If you did, what would you do?

Bush: Well I don’t plan on losing. I’ve got a vision for what I want to do for the country. See, I know exactly where I want to lead.

With Bush, Chenny, et al, as high priests of democracy, who needs dictators? And who needs NOT worry about the peace and stability or even the very existence of the world?