State of the Kingdom

by Rick Gee

Dissenting opinion of my recent column Where’s Osama? ranged from simple raucous laughter to labeling me a conspiracy-theorist crackpot. 

In that column, I averred that the United States government either couldn’t locate The Evil One, Osama bin Laden, because of ineptitude; or that they let him escape by design. 

While it was only an opinion column, it’s still satisfying to be vindicated, which I believe I was on January 29 during King George Bush II’s State of the Union address to a rapt and bipartisan Congress. The speech was interrupted by sycophantic applause 75 times and lasted 48 minutes. If John Moschitta, Jr. had delivered the address instead of Bush, it would have taken under seven minutes. Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking. 

During those excruciating 48 minutes, Bush uttered the name of Osama bin Laden exactly as many times as the average politician honors his oath to uphold the Constitution: zero, zip, nada. Nary a mention of The Evil One. Bush did say, presumably with a straight face, “(t)he men and women of our Armed Forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States:  even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves -- you will not escape the justice of this nation.” Unless your name is bin Laden. Or unless Hamid Karzai sets you free.

I suppose if you failed to “bring him in, dead or alive,” you might employ the old “out of sight, out of mind” trick yourself. But of course, you didn’t fail; Bush and his deputies did. What Bush did not fail to do was lay out his justification for an enduring and expensive war on terrorism that he now says will likely continue long after the 22nd Amendment forces him to retire to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. 

Citing the need to win the war, protect the homeland and revive the economy, GW proposed a budget that “includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades – because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.” Of course, when Bush uses the term “we,” he means the government, which must take by force every dollar that it “pays.” No matter. Since the cost is never too high, the American taxpayer will continue to toil until government takes 60, 70, 80, 90, even 100% of his paycheck to buy the freedom and security he needs. What a paradise that will be! 

What Bush doesn’t tell you is that the $48 billion hike in defense spending is larger than any other country's entire military budget. He also fails to mention that relatively little of that increase will be spent on fighting the ubiquitous war on terror. Instead, every significant weapons system that was in the pipeline before Rumsfeld and Co. assumed control at the Pentagon – each of them designed to counter the Soviet Union, which ceased to be extant over a decade ago – sailed through the Bush budget. So much for Rummy’s blather about modernizing the armed forces by skipping a generation of technology. 

Perhaps the key theme of the speech was the unveiling of the “Axis of Evil.” Inspired in rhetoric by Reagan’s “Evil Empire” epithet for the Soviet Union and in history-shorthand by the WWII evil troika of Germany, Italy and Japan, Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the modern-day center of evil and terrorism. Never mind that Iran and Iraq are enemies themselves, or that the government has presented no evidence linking any of these regimes to the 9/11 attacks. 

The sophistry of this designation has been widely exposed, so I shall not belabor the point. Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com tabbed Rumsfeld, his deputy in warmongering Paul Wolfowitz, and State of the Union ghostwriter David Frum as the “real axis of evil.” 

I can think of a couple other triads more worthy of the axis of evil label: how about the Republicans, the Democrats and the mainstream American media, who conspire to sell this war as a just, defensive battle. Or perhaps the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch of the federal Leviathan, who far from checking and balancing one other, instead collude to shred what’s left of the Constitution. 

Take your pick: each of these troikas poses a far greater danger to the security of the United States and its people than Bush’s collection of “rogue states.” 

In addition to the sophistry, the president gave us several extra helpings of hypocrisy. Referring to “evidence” collected in Afghanistan, Bush intoned: 

Our cause is just, and it continues.  Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead.  We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life.  

Yet Bush and his colleagues have consistently dismissed or downplayed the loss of innocent lives as a result of the bombing campaign, employing the grotesque euphemism “collateral damage.” Rumsfeld has asserted “I can't imagine there's been a conflict in history in which there has been less collateral damage, less unintended consequences.” This assertion directly contradicts his claim that the fog of war makes it nearly impossible to ascertain the number of civilians killed by the Pentagon’s vaunted “smart bombs.” 

Talking about the terrorists, Dubya declared: 

Thanks to the work of our law enforcement officials and coalition partners, hundreds of terrorists have been arrested.  Yet, tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large.  These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield… 

A strange charge for an imperial power that deploys troops in 141 countries around the world; a curious claim indeed for a government whose Congress granted the president the power “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons …” And they wonder why I call him King George II. 

Bush also railed against “the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.” But doesn’t the US government’s design and possession of those very same weapons constitute, at least by implication, a similar threat? Even the typical government-school student knows that the US is the only nation to employ a nuclear weapon in warfare. 

Particularly hypocritical is GW’s charge that Iraq “has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.” Again, has not Washington already developed and possessed these same weapons for far longer than a decade? And didn’t the anthrax that killed several Americans last fall originate in the United States? 

I suppose I could go on to point out the rest of Bush’s hypocrisy, but why waste the bandwidth? 

Beyond expressing the need for virtually unprecedented increases in Pentagon spending to wage total war, Bush continued the traditional State of the Union “here’s what I will do for you with all the money I confiscated from you in the first place” orgy of social-spending initiatives. One could argue that his self-styled “compassionate conservatism” had morphed into a mushy, leftist nanny-state feel-goodism. 

Among the litany of handouts are extended unemployment benefits, direct assistance for health care coverage and education “reform” that found Bush in bed with Teddy Kennedy. Never underestimate the power of bipartisanship when it comes to plunder. 

Bush also promised to end the recession, put a quality teacher in every classroom, increase energy production at home to lessen dependence on foreign oil, enact a patients’ bill of rights, provide prescription drugs for seniors, continue productive farm policy, ensure a clean environment, promote broader home ownership for minorities, and so yawn. 

Of course, no State of the Union would be complete without the spectacle of parading political pawns for cheap applause. This year was no different as Bush planted “the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan: Chairman Hamid Karzai” and “the new Minister of Women’s Affairs, Doctor Sima Samar” in the crowd to show us that the Days of Wine and Roses have dawned in Afghanistan as a result of our benevolent intervention. 

Bush also used flight attendants Hermis Moutardier and Christina Jones, who foiled suspected shoe bomber Richard Reid, as examples of what alert Americans can do. He surmised that their actions saved the lives on 200 people. Perhaps that is true. But Dubya didn’t broach the subject of allowing qualified passengers of airliners to carry concealed weapons, a policy which, had it been in effect on September 11, would almost surely have saved over 3000 lives. 

Surprisingly, George W. Bush said something in his address with which I agree: 

The last time I spoke here, I expressed the hope that life would return to normal.  In some ways, it has.  In others, it never will.  Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them.  We've come to know truths that we will never question:  evil is real, and it must be opposed.  

Well, I should say I agree with what he said, not necessarily what he meant. Evil is real, but it’s not limited to Bush’s enemies. At some level, it resides in all men who would rule the rest of us. It inhabits those rulers who would revoke our rights in the name of an unwinnable war. And that’s why I shall always and forever oppose the wars of the State.

February 14, 2002  

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