Heartbreak Hotel - (or the Russian view)
"You must learn to leave the table when love's no longer being served." --
Charles Aznavour
And it looks like amour is off the menu in the affair between the Bushes and
the bin Ladens, the London Times reports. The Saudi Binladin Group --
owned by the family of a certain rogue financier currently being sought for
questioning (or quartering, as the case may be) in Afghanistan -- is
withdrawing its multi-million dollar investments from the Carlyle Group, the
shadowy firm of wheeler-dealers run by former Reagan-Bush operatives --
including that smoothest of operators, George Herbert Daddy Warbucks
Bush.
Carlyle, a many-headed corporate hydra, is one of America's largest defense
contractors; thus every bomb that goes ka-boom in Kabul means more
ka-ching in Bush family coffers. In the old days, this kind of thing was
frowned upon as unseemly war profiteering -- but of course, as Sonny Boy
never ceases to remind us, this is "a different kind of war."
The kind of war, for example, where a putative president nobly demands
"great sacrifices" from the American people -- such as the lives of their sons
and daughters -- while he goes pimping for yet another massive tax cut
skewed overwhelmingly in favor of his fellow aristos in the nation's wealthiest
1 percent. That's the real "Bush Doctrine" in action: "Let someone else go fight
and die; we'll stay home and slice the pie" -- as he and his fellow chicken
hawk, Dick "Deferment" Cheney, did during the Vietnam War.
But we digress. Naturally, big-time international players like the bin Ladens
found Carlyle an attractive prospect -- especially after Daddy Warbucks
himself came a-courting to the family's Saudi digs. There followed much
corporate canoodling, and the ritual crossing of palms with silver: a marriage
made in heaven, it seemed.
But Carlyle is apparently beginning to feel a bit of heat from the connection,
which is now being dissolved by the usual face-saving "mutual consent."
Perhaps Charlotte Beers, the PR honcho that Sonny recently appointed
assistant secretary of state for media manipulation -- sorry, for "public
diplomacy" -- told them it wasn't such a hot idea to have the names "Bush"
and "bin Laden" bouncing around together on the company's bottom line.
That doesn't play well out in the "Heartland." It reminds people of Sonny's
prissy elitist roots and his family's intimate connection with foreign financiers,
rogue or otherwise. This in turn interferes with the elegant simplicity of the
administration's propaganda line: "The Noble American Cowboy vs. the Alien
Evildoers." Or as Beers herself describes the White House psy-ops campaign:
"It's the battle for the 11-year-old mind."
At any rate, the bin Ladens are out. But perhaps they can console themselves
by turning to another well-connected corporate hydra that's not only making a
killing out of this war, but is even now spreading its tentacles throughout the
Central Asian oil fields, where "the fire next time" is sure to come. That would
be Dick Cheney's old popsicle stand -- the Halliburton Corporation.
Or as the White House bagmen used to sing back in Warren Harding's day:
"My God, how the money rolls in!"
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