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Recent
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August
8, 2003
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Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
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M.
Shahid Alam
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Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
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McGovern
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Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
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Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
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August
9, 2003
Bush
and King Henry
Similar Birds, Different
Feathers
By SAUL LANDAU
President Bush has a well-deserved reputation
among the high brows as uncultured. While he may not have the
intellect to distinguish between Shakespeare and Ogden Nash,
he has certainly immersed himself in the culture of power--in
the narrowest sense.
For Bush--after 9/11-- power means simply
command, not responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
Indeed, by waging unprovoked war against Iraq, he discarded decades
of legal culture established by conservatives. He acted radically,
ignoring the wisdom of conservative icon Edmund Burke: "Our
patience will achieve more than our force."
Nor did the unrefined wielder of power
pause to interpret King Henry V's words about the nature of war
before his battle of Agincourt. "I am afear'd there are
few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably
dispose of any thing when blood is their argument?" Henry
and Bush, both fun-loving princes, who hung out with low-lifes
in their youth, fell into their positions as heads of state.
But unlike Bush, Shakespeare's Henry
fought alongside his men and respected his enemy. In contrast,
after the successful invasion of Iraq, when the resistance to
US occupation began, Bush taunted those his army had vanquished.
"Bring 'em on," was his response to the growing US
body count at a July 2 White House press conference, as if he
were John Wayne starring as a US Marshall in Baghdad, Wyoming.
King Henry, however, dealt with consequences.
For example, he could have simply claimed the French Princess
after victory, but instead, thinking of future relations with
France, wooed  her. Bush, the leader of the world's
most prolific military power, after winning against an effectively
disarmed third world nation, did not reestablish the rule of
law.
Quite the contrary, he had already amply
demonstrated his lack of respect for legality. In his first two
years in office he withdrew from more international treaties
than any president in US history. After the 9/11 events, he squandered
vast international good will by taking a military rather than
a judicial path toward "fighting" terrorism. His aggressive
western movie stance, his dissing of the UN and those allies
who disagreed, and his threatening approach to smaller nations
who refused 100% obedience gained him and his government world
wide animosity. He has weakened the UN to a point of near irrelevance.
As US forces illegally invaded and then
occupied Iraq, he continued to shred the fabric of world law
by ordering the assassination of Uday and Qusai Hussein, the
deposed ruler's sons. How much more instructive for the world
to have prosecutors present the evidence against these men in
international court!
Previous presidential graduates of Harvard
and Yale did not elevate assassination to the open and highest
level of policy. They kept it covert, fearing its effect on the
foundations of law. Albeit sneaky and treacherous, Bush's predecessors
understood the repercussions that would result from making coups
and murders as normal instruments of state policy. Under Bush's
culture of power, members of the US army should feel no shame
when their commanders order hundreds of them armed with heavy
fire power to execute two men. One wonders if the Israeli assassination
method has become contagious!
The media, which adapts in a Darwinian
fashion to cultural shifts in the White House, seemed unmoved
by this sea change in US policy whereby hunting down an enemy
without recourse to trial becomes acceptable behavior. Indeed,
the mainstream editorials seemed to accept as legitimate international
practice the Hollywood formula of hunting down the black hats
and killing them.
The Dow Jones average responded to the
murder of Saddam's sons by rising over 100 points. The President
seems unconcerned that his actions might set a precedent. One
of his enemies around the world might well copy him and offer
a bounty for the heads of his twin daughters. Indeed, Texans
especially should understand that. Anyone who has read the "eye
for an eye" passage of the Bible will get the point.
But that's not how Bush thinks. Thinks?
I have used too strong a word. The nature of Bush's knowledge,
his presuppositions and underlying foundations, can be reduced
to one simple word: power. He doesn't understand complicated
or even less than complicated ideas, but he does grasp power
viscerally. He possesses it. Therefore, he commands. "Leaders
lead," he reminded Al Gore during the 2000 presidential
debates.
Conservative columnist William Safire
has yet to write his Sunday New York Times Magazine language
column about Bush's epistemology. I could imagine Safire toasting
the President's virtues, loyalty to friends and donors--the same
people--and certitude about the conduct of his war of terror.
Critics and partisans alike should avoid
certain words to describe Bush's decision-making process. For
example, words like think, study, reflect, calculate, reason
and deduce have little impact on the chief executive. If the
President doesn't engage in what we would ordinarily call "thinking"--as
in undergoing the mental processes of formulating, reflecting
or pondering--we ought not criticize or praise him for such mental
dynamics. For example, who in his right mind would tell Bush
to "think the matter through" before making a decision?
The exceptions that come to mind would involve him "thinking
up a plan to get rich quick" or "thinking himself into
a panic" after the 9/11 events. But rather than exercising
the power of reason, he feels more comfortable exercising raw
power. We have no evidence that Bush conceives actual ideas or
draws inferences or calculates consequences.
But so what? He's not an intellectual
and doesn't pretend to affairs of the mind. An unnamed White
House official told inquiring journalists regarding Bush's apparent
lapse on the yellow cake uranium clause in the State of the Union
speech: "The president is not a fact checker."
When he said in Cincinnati, Ohio, on
October 7, 2002 that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is
reconstituting its nuclear weapons program," did he ask
for facts? When he claimed in his January 28, 2003 State of the
Union Address, that "Our intelligence officials estimate
that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500
tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent," and "The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa," did he ask
any questions of his intelligence specialists?
The unnamed White House official might
have added that the President doesn't check facts because he
doesn't care about them. George W. Bush seems to have a characterological
disinterest in what scientists consider the core of knowledge.
Indeed, Bush seems to view facts as distractions in the face
of what he knows to be good and right. Such a mindset might well
have led him to invade Iraq.
I don't think the President ignored facts
presented by the CIA that cast a dubious light on Bush's weltanschauung.
The facts just whizzed on by. He knows, in his gut, right from
wrong, good from bad. Why listen when you know the answer?
He has surrounded himself with neo con
policy analysts, people who conservative pundit James Pinkerton
said "possessed more books than common sense, let alone
actual military experience. Disregarding prudence, precedent
and honesty, they went off--or, more precisely, sent others off--tilting
at windmills in Iraq, chasing after illusions of Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction and false hope about Iraqi enthusiasm
for Americanism, and hoping that reality would somehow catch
up with their theory. The problem, of course, is that wars are
more about bloodletting than book learning." (Newsday July
19, 2003).
Bush apparently did not understand that
his advisers had exaggerated or perhaps invented facts that would
bolster their arguments for making war against Iraq. They persuaded
the President by appealing to his gut feelings. Since neither
he nor his key Cabinet advisers thought to check facts, they
all went along with the fabrication.
So, I conclude, Bush didn't lie because
he didn't know the truth to begin with. Indeed, he had no interest
in what intellectuals or scholars, lawyers or scientists might
call discernible evidence. He simply ordered the generals to
attack--after his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld micromanaged
and second guessed the Pentagon's plan of action.
Likewise, does Bush realize that he has
spent the U.S. surplus, bankrupted the Treasury and created the
largest annual deficit in US history? Under his watch some 2
plus million Americans have so far lost their jobs.
While Bush praises our troops, his budget
cuts benefits for war veterans. The man who campaigned as a fiscal
conservative has led the nation to the biggest annual spending
increases in US history. The man who attributed 9/11 to "them"
hating "us" because we're free has removed more freedoms
for Americans than any other president--via his Attorney General
John Ashcroft's use of the Patriot Act and his Homeland Security
Secretary Tom Ridge's understanding of security as incompatible
with freedom.
Is he aware of any of these "accomplishments"?
Does he know that his "assertion that the war began because
Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events
leading up to war this spring," as the July 15, 2003 Washington
Post put it. "Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors,"
the Post reminds us "and Bush had opposed extending their
work because he did not believe them effective."
Like the Shakespearean King, Bush assigns
blame for the war on others. Henry sends French King Charles
a message: "Deliver up the crown, and...take mercy / On
the poor souls for whom this hungry war / Opens his vasty jaws;
and on your head / Turns he the widows' tears, the orphans' cries"
(2.4.103-106). As if Charles somehow forced him into aggression!
Similarly, Bush blamed Saddam. Don't
bother him with facts since they do not appear to determine his
judgments. I shall refrain from calling him a liar and table
my idea for a bumper sticker that says "At least he didn't
lie about sex."
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For more of Landau's writing visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, will be published
in September by Pluto Books.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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