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Impeach George Bush
A Beginning of Evil
The deep of winter is, perhaps, the best time to curl up under a throw and read. Molly Ivins, my favorite author, recommends three books. Let those that enter, BEWARE!!!
Source: Molly Ivins, 2004-01-19
Candidate: TheTIP
My long-reigning favorite Bushism has been edged out.
The old fave goes back to Oct. 4, 2001, when Bush, still trying to reassure a shaky nation, said, "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates."
I didn't think he could top that, but there is something winningly confused about my new No. 1.
This is from Paul O'Neill's report of the large meeting in November 2002 about a second round of tax cuts. O'Neill argued against it, noting that after 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing and the nation faced urgent problems.
Everyone expected Bush to rubber stamp the plan, but he surprised them by asking: "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Why are we going to do it again?"
Now, it is true that Karl Rove promptly quashed this unseemly fit of populism by jumping in with: "Stick to principle. Stick to principle." Dick Cheney further elucidated the matter for the president by explaining: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the midterm elections, this is our due."
During Watergate, people used to hold readings from the transcripts of the Nixon tapes. Friends would take different parts -- H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman or Richard Nixon -- and render their pals helpless with laughter just reading what our leaders had actually said.
Although one sees the script possibilities in the O'Neill report immediately, I still find that one plaintive question quite touching: "Haven't we already given money to rich people?"
For a truly surreal experience, as someone at The New York Times editorial page has already noted, try reading Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill along with In an Uncertain World by Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's secretary of the Treasury.
A chapter from one book, then a chapter from the other. That is an educational experience.
The trouble with the O'Neill book is that it raises the "George W. Bush is a nincompoop" debate again, which is wholly unproductive. Given Bush's obviously bored and disengaged performance in Mexico, I'd say the larger problem is that Bush is just rude. I don't think we should send him anywhere to represent the country if he can't behave better than that.
The news that Bush & Co. wanted to invade Iraq from Day One does not surprise. It is the "So what?" reaction that needs to be addressed.
We learn that there are no weapons of mass destruction, and the Bushies reply, "So what?" We learn there never was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and the Bushies say, "So what?"
It matters because we need to understand how we got into the mess we're in, so we won't get ourselves into another one.
There has to be some recognition of how seriously we were misled. If one then wants to argue that invading Iraq was worth doing anyway, fine -- but it must be acknowledged that it was done on false premises.
And as an excellent article in the current issue of Mother Jones called the "The Lie Factory" shows, the false premises were carefully manufactured in the Pentagon. Conservatives cannot possibly be comfortable with that, no matter how repellent Saddam is.
Perhaps more unnerving still is a third book (which I have not yet finished): An End to Evil by Richard Perle and David Frum. It might more aptly be titled The Beginning of Evil, since it is a plan for unlimited, unprovoked war in which we overthrow the governments of Iran, Syria, North Korea and, apparently, China.
One would dismiss this as mere crackpottery if Frum had not written the "Axis of Evil" speech for Bush and if Perle were not a leading neo-con.
Perle is a longtime advocate of invading Iraq and still on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board despite numerous conflicts of interest. Interesting exercise to triangulate these three books -- like the old "compare and contrast" blue-book essay.
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