Charley Reese..
The Mists of Falsehoods
I love this administration's ability to remain cloaked in a mist of
falsehoods. If you listen to them, everything is going swimmingly.
Retired Gen. Jay Garner and several of his staff are relieved of their
posts in Iraq but, of course, have done a splendid job. There is still
chaos, looting and a lack of clean water and power, but
reconstruction is proceeding with great progress. America is doing a
worse job than Saddam Hussein in feeding the Iraqi people, but
everyone is so happy to see the tyrant gone — though where he
has gone, we don't know. Perhaps he's with Osama bin Laden and
Mullah Omar. Not to worry, paradise is on the way.
As for al-Qaida, it has been decimated, crippled, rendered
ineffective — except, of course, for those members who
simultaneously blew up three foreign compounds and a business in
Saudi Arabia.
Everything in Afghanistan is peachy-creamy — except, of course,
that it looks remarkably as unstable and undeveloped as it did a
year ago. The president has also committed himself to his "road
map to peace," but never mind that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon refuses to accept it and again embarrasses Secretary of
State Colin Powell by clamping down on Palestinians before the
secretary has even shaken off the dust of Palestine from his shoes.
And, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the American
economy, except the absence of another round of tax cuts. The
ability of this administration to live in a dream world, divorced from
reality, is quite remarkable. Why, the falling value of the dollar is
good for American exports. And the answer to the biggest string of
record trade deficits in history is to have more free-trade
agreements, never mind that they are the cause of the trade
deficits in the first place.
Sometimes I think our whole country is on dope. How nice that
Poland will administer a third of Iraq provided, naturally, that we
foot the bill for the entire operation. But one has to appreciate
faithful allies even if they are dead-broke and we have to pay
through the nose for their support. I'm sure the Poles, with their
vast experience in the Middle East, will be crackerjack
administrators.
A purely advisory role for the United Nations devoid of one ounce of
authority is naturally "a vital role." And while we were impatient with
U.N. weapons inspectors, now that we are hunting these
so-far-mythical tons of weapons of mass destruction, people must
be patient and understand it might even take years. But even if we
don't find them, never mind that everything we said to sell the war
was a lie. After all, we got rid of a tyrant, even though we have
temporarily misplaced him.
We shall, of course, leave no child behind — never mind the federal
cuts in education because of a ballooning federal deficit and the
further cuts in state education because of the state deficits. We
have only to say something and it is so. We say we are going to
improve public education, and bingo, it is improved. After all, a
nation of functional illiterates won't know the difference.
And just look how we have expanded the great North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, right up to the borders of Russia. Of course, the new
members are too broke to buy arms, so we will have to foot the
bill, and then there is the problem of no enemy to fight. Never
mind. We will find something for NATO to do. NATO, like every
other government bureaucracy, shall have eternal life, even though
its reason for existence vanished a long time ago.
Sometimes, following the news, I think I'm having hallucinations,
but I know I'm not, for I am as sober as a Southern Baptist
preacher on Sunday morning. Perhaps there is, "Matrix"- style, a
dual universe. The Bush administration lives in one, and I in
another. I wouldn't mind, except that the Bush Universe is likely to
have dire consequences for the universe I live in, as millions of
unemployed Americans are discovering. Ah, if only words were
magic. Then we could solve all our problems by just saying they are
solved. |
