The Neanderthal Caesar: George W. Bush's Megalomania
and the Fate of the World
" Why, in the name of reason, does the mad thirst for a new
source of cheap oil - and a new spineless, corrupt Middle Eastern puppet state to dispense
this "black gold" - outweigh rational concern for the future international reputation
of the United States?"
Sunday, December 01 2002 @ 07:46 PM GMT
By Roger H. Lieberman
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Lieberman's article:
" Every Thanksgiving for the last twelve years, I have seen
the same thing on every network's nightly news: holiday greetings from some
American army or navy unit, stationed in some country thousands of miles from
home. There are thousands upon thousands of young American men - many of them from
disenfranchised urban neighborhoods, who enlisted because they saw military
service as the only path away from the streets
- who are spending this holiday season in US military bases from Kosovo to Kuwait,
and from Afghanistan to the Philippines. They ought to be spending this magical
time of year with their families, and they ought to be
working for an honorable wage in healthy civilian sector jobs.
But because our country has been hijacked-
yes, HIJACKED - by a wooden-headed pyromaniac from Crawford, Texas,
our domestic infrastructure is a
basket-case, and our armed forces keep inflating in size,
spinning a web of imperialism around our
long-suffering globe.
This autumn, hundreds of millions of peace-loving human beings, of every
color, religion, and nationality, are praying that some way will be found to
deter the Bush Administration from unleashing its hordes on the nation of Iraq.
So many Americans have tried to convey to their elected officials how wrong,
unjust, and downright mad such a war of aggression would be. Yet it seems
no matter how many protest marches are held, and no matter how many
letters and phone calls are made to Capitol Hill, the White House keeps rattling
sabers, and Congress keeps sheepishly surrendering our hard-won
constitutional rights.
Why? What is more important to the men and women who make and uphold
our nation's laws than the sentiment and well-being of the American people?
Why, in the name of reason, does the mad thirst for a new
source of cheap oil - and a new spineless, corrupt Middle Eastern puppet state to
dispense this "black gold" - outweigh rational concern for the future international
reputation of the United States? And why do virtually
all the know-it-all media celebrities,"......"supinely assume the role of
Bush-Cheney gramophones, telling us for the umpteenth time how "uniquely dangerous"
Saddam Hussein's regime is?
The only answer I find satisfactory is what astronomer Carl Sagan,
in his masterpiece TV series Cosmos, called the "reptilian complex"
buried within the human brain. As the brain evolved over millions of years,
Sagan argued, it acquired successive layers, which were geared
toward the life habits of our various ancestors. Some 250 million years ago,
the ancestor of man was some kind of reptile. Thus, deep in our
brains, we have a region devoted to the mental habits which are
characteristic of living lizards - territoriality, aggressiveness, and a self-centered
drive to be at the top of the social hierarchy. It is these
emotions which drive "President" Bush and his cabinet and congressional
supporters to unleash death from
the skies on the men, women, and children of Baghdad and Basra.
From his desk in the Oval Office, "Dubya" peers out from under his brow-ridges.
He squints his eyes and wrinkles his forehead, as he struggles to comprehend
a planet far too complex, far too rich in history and
culture for his feeble mind, warped by old southwestern prejudices, to soundly
comprehend. In his world view, distant lands and peoples can only be understood
in blanket dualism: "good" and "evil", "with us" or
"against us".
For him, no one could have a legitimate grievance against
American foreign policy - they must
hate us "because we stand for freedom". Were it not for our abysmal media
and education system, a man
would have to be born and raised in an ice cave
on the planet Pluto to believe such tripe.
In an odd way, I do feel a bit sorry for George W. Bush. Unlike his
neo-conservative mentors- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc. - who are
clearly smart enough to know their designs for America's future
world role are truly evil, Bush himself strikes me as totally lost - a man
with little blood-lust of his own, but
too stupid and paralyzed by the bigotry and selfishness instilled
in his childhood to resist the will imposed by
the thorough-going hawks who railroaded him into the Presidency.
Incidentally, I think that was one of the
principal reasons why the GOP hacks were willing to resort
to subverting the electoral process in Florida two
years ago - they wanted a simpleton who would be nothing more than
a cipher to carry out their mad
fantasies. Thus, Bush represents a new phenomenon without
historical precedent - an exceptionally weak
intellect at the head of a huge conquering military. A Neanderthal Caesar,
who is poised to cross the Rubicon
- or, as chance would have it, the Tigris and the Euphrates!
The waves of history have washed over the Middle East since the Stone Age. Sixty
thousand years ago, our prehistoric antecedents made their homes in the
great caves of Mount Carmel in Palestine, and at Shanidar
in northern Iraq. Within a few miles of those Paleolithic campsites, men eventually
learned to grow crops, raise livestock, forge metal, and build cities and towns.
If our species is to enjoy future centuries to discover
and understand the Universe's countless treasures, the humanity of the Middle East,
and the rest of the Earth, must learn tolerance, egalitarianism, and brotherhood.
The reckless drive for hegemony by the United States threatens to keep this hope
for the future a desperate dream. But if a spirit of political unity and
geographical solidarity can take hold among the peoples of the Middle East - Arabs, Jews,
Turks, Kurds, and Iranians - I believe that the partisans of peace will surely emerge triumphant.
The birth of a Union of Middle Eastern States, with equal rights and freedom of movement
for all inhabitants, will mark a great stride toward a world governed by justice, not imperialism.
The reptilian complex will then, at last, be consigned to
the ashcan of prehistory."
palestinechronicle.com
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA). |
