George Bush has traded his alcoholism and drug dependencies for a gambling addiction. Unfortunately, he is gambling, not with his own life and considerable fortune, but with other people’s blood and the treasury and future of the United States.
In the course of his presidency, or should I say reign, Bush has squandered 3018 American lives, perhaps 600,000 Iraqi lives, a great and unique American city, and the infrastructure and futures of two countries, not to mention his own legacy. Now, he admits that "mistakes were made" in Iraq; he does not say that he made them. Even though he has been on a three year losing streak in Iraq, he cannot cut his losses and step away from the table. He is obsessed by his pathological need to win, in spite of all evidence that that is no longer possible, and in spite of the fact that he doesn’t even know what winning means. He believes that all he needs to do is play one more hand, throw everything he still has into the center of the table and luck, or God, will at last smile on him. He will then walk away with the pot, the pot, of course, being the untapped oil under the sands of Iraq, which he has IOUed to his neocon co-conspirators and co-dependents.
There is not much left for him to bet with. According to the best military minds we have today, the armed forces of the US are already stretched dangerously thin. Silencing those voices and replacing them with yes-men does not change the facts. The American public has lost all patience with Bush’s blundering and all respect for his word. Our creditors could easily call in the markers issued for a war conducted with IOUs. The court of world opinion has turned against Bush for his hubris and made the United States a pariah in the world community. His own family members have begged him to stop the madness and have sent in their best counselors to try to reach him, to help him save face, to clear a path for him to the exit. Members of his administration are jumping off the Mississippi Belle like rats as his fortunes dwindle, and he is dumping all those who were formerly cheering him on but are now telling him he has to stop. All these imprecations are met with deaf ears, blind eyes and a deficient intellect. He replaces his critics only with sycophants who will tell him that he is on the right course, staying the course, forging a new way forward. He is unable to hear, see or understand anything else.
He wants to send more American troops into the inferno of Iraq’s full-blown civil war. Will nothing get through to this pathetic, sociopathic little man? What will it take? Are Congressional subpoenae enough to open his ears? Are scores of thousands of Americans demonstrating their deep opposition to his war of choice enough to open his eyes? Are the words of his own friends and relations enough to make him wake from his monomaniacal stupor and stop the madness? I fear not. The deaf cannot hear shouted warnings, no matter the volume. The blind do not see semaphores of despair. The congenitally stupid cannot process sensible counsel.
No, Bush is stubbornly convinced that he alone is right, that everyone who disagrees with him is wrong, that he is doing God’s will, that he will be glorified in history as the “hero” who subdued the Middle East, stole its natural resources and bent it to his will, instead of vilified as the President responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths who brought down the United States. What gall, what egotism, what hubris, what sheer unadulterated stupidity! How could this ignorant dilettante, who has destroyed every opportunity that his family ever handed to him, from his university eduction, to his military “service,” to numerous businesses, have fooled even some of the people some of the time? He did not have sufficient intellect to successfully run a baseball team, yet he has been handed the reins of the most powerful country in the world, with its full arsenal of life-annihilating nuclear weapons. To make matters worse, he has no conscience, intelligence or self-control. His instincts have continually misfired. He started a personal war which he cannot finish, enabled by a sycophantic Republican Congress, which, for the last three years, has shamelessly extended his credit, bankrupting the United States and making us indebted to those who wish us ill. He interprets the obvious will of the American people to extricate us from the war in Iraq as a mandate to escalate that war. He refuses to force those who benefit from this war, and they are few but powerful, to pay for it. Read here Halliburton, which is enriching itself with no-bid contracts and incredible waste, and Exxon, which has been granted the right to exploit the oil resources of Iraq.
To Congress:
It is time, it is more than time, for greater minds to save the day, to save the country, to rekindle the good will of the rest of the world. The future of the United States, the very lives of its young people and the treasury of the country are not merely pretty sparkly playthings to be mishandled, destroyed or misspent by a spoiled, dim-witted man-child. Cut off his allowance! Give him a time-out! Take away his privileges! The newly-elected Democratic controlled Congress must step up and guide him, dissuade him, or drag him away from the casino. The country did not elect you to wring your hands and say, ”Oh, my. There is nothing we can do. He is, after all, the President.“ The Republican Congress ham-strung Bill Clinton for the greater part of his presidency, at great public expense, for having a blow job, for God’s sake, in spite of the clear message from the American people that they wanted their elected officials to concentrate on the real business of the country. If lying to Congress, the ostensible reason for impeaching Big Wicked Bill, or engaging in illegal acts, the reason for giving Nixon and Agnew the boot, are impeachable offenses, why are the prevaricating, larcenous, incompetent George Bush and the Machiavellian Dick Cheney, who, with the complicity of family, friends and the Supreme Court, stole an election; who lied us into a war; who enriched their friends with no-bid contracts and by divvying up resources that are not theirs to give, still sitting in the White House, contemplating more mischief and mayhem, proposing to send more of our precious young lives into a sectarian meat-grinder to further enrich their wealthy enablers? Why does this Congress believe that they cannot send Bush back to Texas to permanently clear brush, and Cheney to a lifetime of leisure, hunting his friends? Please carefully reread the fouled and tattered Constitution of the United States and discover precisely what your powers are. You will find that besmirched document hanging on the toilet paper holder in the bathroom of the Oval Office. Then use your Constitutionally mandated powers, forcefully and immediately. There is no room in this highly volatile, polarized world for complacency, self-serving political maneuvering or incompetence. Do not wait for these war criminals to hang themselves. There is no time for dithering. We have had quite enough of all that already.
Raise the minimum wage? You bet! Provide universal health care for the people of the United States? A long time coming! Stop the migration, the flooding, the hemorrhaging of American jobs to countries with slave wages? If you please! Pay as you go? It only makes sense! Roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy? Fair is fair! But first, FIRST, there is a much larger order of business: a huge, lumbering, resource-consuming, defecating elephant in the room: the war in Iraq.
Our country, our people, our treasury, our military, our very freedom, are all at the breaking point and the safety of the entire planet is hanging in the balance. Do the job you were elected for, difficult and unpleasant as it may be. IMPEACH, first Cheney and then Bush, or make them understand that it is in their own interests to resign. Do it now! Your constituents have clearly spoken and will accept no less. If you cannot or will not save this country, you need to make way for those who can and will. Your countrymen and the entire world are watching what you do. Do not let us down.
It is clear that Bush is unable to control his own addictions. Give Bush the intervention that he, and this country, so desperately need.