Bush Gives You The Finger
Millions worldwide rally against
Dubya's oily little war -- not that he
gives a damn
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
sfgate.com Friday, February 21, 2003
And then there's the one about the smirky
war-happy oil-drunk American president who
shrugged off the disdain of pretty much the entire
world and humiliated us all on a global scale and
went ahead and blasted the living hell out of an
otherwise worthless oil-rich nation with no real proof
of serious wrongdoing and for no justifiable reason,
except for the oil and the power and for Daddy and for
the face-saving faux-macho pride, and the oil.
This is the guy. This is the president who cares not a
whit that just last weekend, over a million people
rallied in London -- the largest political gathering of
any kind in British history -- to protest his (and Tony
Blair's) little multibillion-dollar war.
Or that 500,000 gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in
Berlin, chanting slogans against his fearmongering
ego, or that another 500,000 attempted to gather for
a huge protest near the U.N. building in New York
but, lacking a permit, were partially blocked by
police.
This is the smirky Texas executioner-president who
looked on while even in God-thumping pro-family
ultraconservative Colorado Springs, Colo., land of the
Born Agains and the heavily uptight, police fired tear
gas into a crowd of war protesters, even though
children were in an adjacent playground. Isn't that
nice? And Christian? Shrub just shrugs. Damn
hippies. God bless America.
And, really, who cares about the huge protests in
Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Melbourne, Paris,
Rome, Berlin, San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo and at
least 600 other cities all over the world last week?
We've got a bogus war to fabricate here, people. And
an environment to gouge. An economy to gut. Busy,
busy.
And, besides, were any of those horrified protesters
petrochemical CEOs? Military-supply execs?
Members of Bush Sr.'s draconian Carlyle Group?
Colleagues of the ShrubCo cabal of neo-conservative
gangster executives who stand to rake in billions
when we go to war? No they were not. Screw 'em.
Tough numbers to deny, nonetheless. Over 600 cities
across the globe, all staging major anti-war rallies
against America's aggro attitude and insipid war
posture, millions and millions of people -- teachers
and salespeople and politicians and doctors and
students and workers, every creed and gender and
age group and nationality and hairstyle -- and yet
Geedubya simply equates them all with some sort of
negligible "focus group."
And he said he doesn't base his policy decisions on
focus groups, of course, because naturally he uses
Barbie's Super Magic 8 Ball and old secret codes
from his Vietnam draft-dodging days intermixed with
his father's late-night gin-soaked advice and a
cassette of Dick Cheney whispering demon-conjuring
incantations in Latin. I mean, really, how else can
you explain it?
This is the president who "respectfully disagrees"
with just about everyone on the planet, with the
almost universally held and repeatedly proven fact
that Saddam isn't the slightest threat to the U.S. and
never really has been, nor that he had anything to do
with 9/11. Hey, with that sort of respect, who needs a
bloody violent skull bludgeoning? Can I get a
hell-yeah?
This is the president who scowled his super-duper
scariest scowl at Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons
inspector, as Blix calmly and rationally rebuffed
everything a flustered Colin Powell could throw at him
during the U.S. plea before the U.N. Security Council
to please please please let America launch all our
big new bombs and shiny cool expensive Lockheed
Martin planes and then arm up 180,000 of America's
poor and have them go kill a half-million scary Iraqi
people and destabilize an entire continent even
further, please please oh pretty please.
U.N. inspectors, Blix reiterated for the 20th time,
have found next to nothing. All those buildings in
Powell's super-top-secret satellite photos? Empty.
Nuclear factories? Nada. All those terrifying WMDs?
Almost nonexistent.
Can you smell it? This is when all that pro-war
WWII-style jingoism starts to reek, its fumes just a
little sour, a little venomous and toxic and soul
curdling. Or that could just be Rumsfeld's cologne.
Eau du Warhead.
A touching side story: J. Dennis Hastert, the
Speaker of the House and noted hunk of conservative
sweating Muenster cheese, was actually considering
legislation to ban French wine and bottled water -- for
"health reasons," he said, and not because France
has smartly dissed poor Shrub on the whole
bogus-war thing. Isn't that cute? Hastert claimed that
some French wine is clarified using cow blood. Hee.
Oh Dennis. As the kids say, are you high?
Hastert also reportedly claimed that certain
molecules in French fries and French toast and
French ticklers have perhaps been secretly coded by
French porn stars with perverted terrorist messages
designed to drive American babies insane and cause
massive genital warts on teenagers and SUV owners.
Just, you know, something he read. Note to Dennis:
hush now.
But enough with the bit players. Have we seen this
sort of thing before? This kind of protest, on this
scale? Vietnam rings a rather bitter, and
heartbreaking, bell. But that movement had a
decidedly different complexion.
Huge protests, yes, but more localized, organized
largely by doomed students, not quite so many
millions of "normal" citizens rallying from Spain to
Germany to Greece, all on the same day, all holding
up signs featuring giant photos of our smirky squinty
blank-eyed leader with a big red X over his face.
And oh yes, upwards of 50,000 U.S. troops were
killed in Vietnam. In Iraq, we might suffer, say, two
dozen casualties, most from our own mistakes and
"friendly fire" (if Desert Storm is any precedent), while
we can expect to massacre roughly half a million
Iraqis in the first week. Now, that's patriotic. Would
anyone tolerate Shrub's warmongering if we stood to
lose 50,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq? Hardly. Good thing
it's mostly just innocent foreign civilians and children.
Which brings us to the latest phony Orange Alert.
And all the other astoundingly coincidental
announcements of alleged terrorist action threatening
the U.S., shrill alarmist rhetoric that, every single
time, just so happened to be conveniently timed for
just when Shrub was prancing most precariously in
the glaring light of general idiocy and ratings
slippage.
Enron scandal: Time for a terror alert. The economy
is tanking: Look out! Terrorists! Tax cuts for the rich:
Terrorists are in your yard! The U.N. rejects your
plea, the whole damn world is against your little war
and you need to drum up some additional domestic
fear like, pronto, to justify your small-scale
megalomania: Stand back, time for a bogus Orange
Alert! Coincidence? You do the math.
This just in: A federal appeals court just decided that
Arkansas officials can use drugs to render an insane
murderer sane enough to execute. True. Finally,
something Geedubya can cheer about. Just like
Texas, eh, George? When life was easy and killing
them crimnulz was just a flipped switch away? When
all you had to deal with were a few dozen ragtag
protesters outside the prison, decrying your love of
killin' in the name of the state. Shoot. Life sure was
simpler then. Damn hippies. |
