Today in Riga, Latvia the President of the United States gave a news conference, and two reporters had entirely different takes on what he said; that is, they disagreed on the lede, what the news was.
To Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press, this was the point: “Bush says U.S. won’t pull out of Iraq.”
That was fairly remarkable, coming after the midterm elections and at the very moment the Iraq Study Group and Jim Baker are searching desperately for ways the U.S. can pull out of Iraq.
But to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, the news was “Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Wave of Iraq Violence.” Oh, now we’re going back to the Al Qaeda ploy, when Osama bin Laden is 2000 miles away in Pakistan?
The two reports did overlap somewhat, as you’d expect, and I’m not impugning either account. Reporters often disagree about the meaning of an event, which is why it’s good to get news from a variety of media. But in this case I get the feeling Riechmann and Stolberg are like the committee of blind people studying an elephant: it’s so big, and their own perception of it is so limited, that they completely disagree on what they’re examining. I don’t fault them for that; political reporters don’t have much experience exploring presidential psychosis.
The practical questions in psychiatric emergency rooms are these: “Do you see things that other people don’t see? Do you hear voices that other people can’t hear?” A yes to either one tells you that you’re dealing with a crazy person, and a psychiatrist will have to sort out the details after we get you started on medication.
Riechmann quotes the president:
“There's one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”
Well, let’s see, George; what mission would that be? Establishing parliamentary democracy inside a pretty building while 300 people a day get blown up a few miles away? How will we know when this mission is complete?
Now let’s talk about this “victory” thing. What would victory be? Is victory what happens when an American walks down the street in Baghdad or Fallujah, is greeted by strangers as a liberator and handed a bouquet of flowers? Is that the victory you’re waiting for?
Stolberg reported in her second graf a Bush quote, directed to Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, that Riechmann also used much later (but they both had it, so they both did their jobs):
“My questions to him will be: What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?” said Mr. Bush.
Or Reichmann’s take on the same thing:
Bush said he will ask al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence.
“The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so," the president said. "It's in our interest that we succeed.”
Maliki’s strategy for dealing with the violence? Oh, it’s on him now? What’s his strategy? His plan? Maliki doesn’t have a strategy for getting to work in the morning—and neither does anyone else in Iraq. Bush is asking him what the strategy is, so then they’ll both know?
George, can you spell pass-the-buck? You caused all this havoc and now you’re asking someone else what his strategy is?
If it weren’t so tragic it’d be comical. No wonder Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are having such a field day.
So let’s return to our functional definition of psychosis. What are these voices Bush is hearing, that you don’t hear and I don’t either? What are these hallucinations he’s getting from his eyeballs?
There’s often a follow-up question in the psych ER: How long has this been going on?
Mr. Bush’s psychiatric problems first came to most Americans’ attention within days after Hurricane Katrina: “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” I forget which TV reporter later confronted Brownie, “Doesn’t anybody at FEMA watch television?”
Since Bush is the leader of our country, his symptoms can spread easily, like a virus. Until the vote three weeks ago, it seemed like everyone in Washington had gone mental—including the media.
Half the American people had symptoms in 2004, but then the medicine of reality kicked in and people’s minds began to clear. Two years later we started being a functional democracy again. Not a single Democrat in the House, the Senate or a governor’s mansion lost the election, and 42 new ones were voted in.
Now I know, we should have realized we were dealing with a delusional president a long time ago, when he publicly rejected “the reality-based community.” Apparently it was interfering with that pipeline to God that he has.
As a veteran of the psych ER, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met Jesus Christ. Sometimes he’s a middle-aged woman; sometimes he’s a teenage boy. Apparently he’s quite a shape-changer. And George has gotten it into his head that Jesus has anointed him to remake the Middle East and plant democracy there to replace Satan/Al Qaeda—which by the way lives in Pakistan.
So what do we do when the President turns out to be a nutcase? —The same thing you do when Jesus shows up in the ER. You make him secure (that is, you don’t let him run away, hurt himself or others), you consult with the doctor, you fill out a bunch of paperwork; and once that’s ready, you try to gain his cooperation. Often you do this by appealing to authority: “The doctor says you need to be admitted.” Most of the time the patient agrees; after all, he hasn’t been feeling too well lately and doctors are still considered experts. If that doesn’t work, you explain the law: “Yes, the doctor does have the power to decide this for you. The law says he can admit you for 72 hours’ observation, so you can rest. If you and he agree afterwards that you’re all right, he’ll let you go home.” If the patient gets intransigent, you call for backup; that’s usually enough to change someone’s mind. But if need be, you restrain the person in a non-violent way that respects his dignity and personhood—and you haul his ass upstairs, where a nurse is waiting with a needle.
Then you heave a sigh and go on about your business, waiting for the next Christ to show up.
In Mr. Bush’s case the 72-hour hold is called impeachment. It should be done without rancor or bitterness; the man’s just a victim of some bad brain chemistry. He can’t help himself; he’s seeing things no one else sees. While Baker and Hamilton are opening diplomatic channels to Iraq’s neighbors, Stolberg reports this:
Mr. Bush also had harsh words for Syria and Iran, and reiterated his stance that he does not intend to negotiate directly with them to enlist their help in ending the violence in Iraq. He said he would leave such talks to the government of Iraq, “a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy.”
One of the things about mental patients is that you can’t believe a word they say. These words are coming from the same guy who promised to keep Rumsfeld and Cheney for the duration.
We have to overlook Riechmann and Stolberg’s habit of attending to every word a President says. That rule only applies if the Current Occupant is rational, and this one is not.
So let’s review: Iraq isn’t sovereign; it’s nominally held by an occupying force. It isn’t a nation. It hasn’t a foreign policy or a domestic policy. Iraq doesn’t have a government; competing militias control large parts of the army and the police. Maliki doesn’t even have a strategy for getting to work in the morning.
Forget the “civil war” debate, that’s just semantics. Iraq is in chaos. This is the bloodbath stage.
When a person represents a danger to himself or others, as Bush surely does to every nation in the Middle East and to every soldier in the U.S. military, he must be stopped. The psychiatric emergency room we call Congress cannot be staffed by cowards afraid of their patient, no matter how much of a threat he poses. The ER workers have to call in their backup—voters and politicians of both parties—present a united front, and calmly, politely escort Mr. Bush upstairs.
Call it high crimes and misdemeanors, call it anything you want; the man needs his shot.++