It’s not just Dubya who’s nuts

It’s 2003 and globalization is at its zenith. We have an expanding European Union and a new African Union. The nuclear threat, other than with Kim ‘Daffy One’ in North Korea, and the Indians and Pakistanis occasionally getting up each other’s noses, is all but gone. The big bear of the USSR is dead. Digital communication permits us to leapfrog, live, in a TV newscast, from city to city and politician to politician, around the world. Yet the USA has chosen to wage war in Iraq. This is an indictment of the planet. Not just the United Nations, but humankind, has failed the basic communications exam.

There’s going to be huge residual fallout from the Iraq war. Not just for the USA. The Americans will have earned the instability that will dog them, as a result of cocking so arrogant a snook at overwhelming international opinion.

The Indonesians, Africans, Germans, French, Japanese and many other nations are going to find themselves on the receiving end of George Dubya (as in ‘w’) Bush’s embittered spleen, on economic aid or trade-partner issues. If you want to probe the (shallow) psyche of this man, read two biographies. One is entitled ‘First Son.’ It’s frank, insightful, no holds barred - but it’s also balanced and not a gratuitous hatchet job. The take-away? Dubya’s obsessed with loyalty. You can be as incompetent as you wish, but if you’re loyal, you’re granted the coveted appellation of being ‘a good man’ (sic) and you become royal game on the metaphoric presidential pheasant farm.

Go read, ‘The Right Man’ (now you know where the title comes from) by David Frumm, erstwhile Dubya speechwriter, who was implicated in crafting the phrase, “Axis of Evil.” His book on Bush is a hagiography. To save you looking up the word, it means Frumm makes like he’s a traditional African imbongi or praise-singer. Every little Bushism is back-rationalized, polished, justified and made to look like some strategic meisterstuck.

Frumm says of Dubya, “Even when he’s smiling at you, his eyes are watching you.” Bush bears grudges. There have been some telling public encounters with people who’ve insulted his pappy, George Herbert Walker Bush. Saddam Hussein of course, is alleged to have committed the cardinal sin of attempting to assassinate pappy Bush in Saudi Arabia. One wonders what percentage of the present Iraqi ‘liberation’ effort is based on a vengeful desire to ‘hunt him down and smoke him out’?

Dubya is a man who opportunistically embraced Bible Belt style Christianity because it was expedient to his political cause. He’s demonstrated not only a lack of compassion on capital punishment issues, but has been heard to mock those who appealed directly to him for clemency. Parodying their voices and enacting ‘amdram’ versions of what he thought their behaviour might have been in the moment. He dusted off and trotted out pappy’s moribund presidential campaign positioning of ‘compassionate conservative.’ Compassionate Dubya ain’t, but conservative he certainly is.

The UN has been reduced in status to being an emasculated origami tiger. What Dubya’s total disregard of international will demonstrates, is that he who pays the piper (or has the biggest piggy bank) gets to call the tune. His British lapdog, Blair, wilted visibly under the ire of the Commons and his own party backbenchers. Just one politico had the courage of his convictions to ditch his fancy salary and ministerial seat, and resign in protest. He must have a Japanese sense-of-honour chromosome lurking somewhere in his system.

The anti-American genie is irretrievably out of the bottle. A precedent has been set, for utter disregard for the rule of international law, or the weight of international opinion. One wonders what future American generations will say when they’re burdened with the enormous debt certain to be incurred by their shoot-from-the-lip president?  No convenient 20/80 split with the international community on this one. He’s gonna make ‘danged sure’ that there’s no money wafting around as a Medicaid reserve, with his first $75bn ‘down payment’ on this war. He’s hopefully, like pappy, going to be a presidential one-termer, and he’ll leave a fat federal deficit in his wake. The Americans may rally around the flag and exhibit their customary fullsome patriotism when the Prez beats war tom toms. But there’s a price to their hubris. They don’t like economic hardship and they’ll have that. With it comes a new, terrorism-driven, insecure lifestyle that will be the fulfilment of the Osama Bin Laden curse, that they’ll never know peace again, wherever they may be.

Brainless debate

To paraphrase Charles Caleb Colton, we have two ears and one mouth and the ratio should tell us something. Foot-in-mouth disease is presently running riot through polarized communities, over global politics – for which read, the Iraq war. The problem with most people is that the brain is simply not engaged before the mouth opens.

I’ve been left amazed in the last week at the lack of intellectual function manifested by many people engaged in any form of ‘debate’ on the Iraq situation. The most basic erroneous assumption on the part of those who rant and rave (quite legitimately of course) against Saddam Hussein, is that those who (equally legitimately) criticize Bush, are pro Hussein. That’s a leap of illogic. How in heaven’s name does criticizing me mean that you’re automatically cozying up to my adversaries?

The Citizen newspaper ran, on the editorial page, a reaction to my commentary on SABC TV. I’d been talking about the non-verbal communication of Bush et al. In response to which, appeared what might euphemistically be called an intemperate piece, by one linguistically and logic-challenged, Andre Kruis. He didn’t even have the guts to mention me by name. The height of his verbal finesse and imagination was captured in the phrase ‘dung-heap’ from which both he and his impoverished thinking (if that’s not too generous a word) seemed incapable of escape. He’s daft enough to postulate that I’m the mouthpiece of some third force seeking to discredit the ‘coalition forces.’ Was this guy reared in Disneyland? However, like a laboratory rat, he proves useful as an example pointing to a greater malaise.

Responses to what columnists or commentators write or say are always great. Whether negative or positive – because it means you’re being read or heard. It sure as heck beats broadcasting or writing ‘into a vacuum.’ But it’s the poor quality of most responses that is disappointing. There are few rapiers and many medieval clubs.

There’s a lesson here. When considering an issue like the present shift in global alliances and power balances, ask yourself a few questions.  Think it through. Consider the extent to which the media might have painted your lopsided picture of the situation. Perhaps your politically conservative family did. Or was it your ethnically biased and bigoted group of friends? Then talk about it. The distinction between humans and animals is that we’re able to exercise intellectual discrimination, make choices and respond accordingly. Sadly, I see little evidence of that faculty being exercised in exploration, dissection or debate on issues of significance.

Too many white South Africans argue from the gut. I know that well from my radio days. Argumentation is largely irrational, angry and poorly formulated. The preponderance of letters or e-mails inundating many publications are rabid fulminations devoid of either intellectual refinement or literary merit. The Internet has spawned yet another beast. They who hide behind the skirts of cyber-anonymity to snipe at all and sundry. A strong case for insisting that forum users give a legit and verifiable e-mail address.

It says a great deal about the intelligence (or lack of), the sincerity and the integrity of an individual when they can’t put their name to what they write. They either lack the courage of their convictions, or they’re doing what many Brits did last year in a survey on racial issues. They’ll say one thing in public and what they really think, in private.

The paradox is that many of these people will boast some or other religious affiliation. They will be found with pious expressions and regularity, in churches, mosques, temples or shuls. They’d be affronted if you called them liars. But duplicitous, non-congruent behaviour is a lie. In an era when corporate governance is under really close scrutiny, it would be a good time for many people to examine their ‘personal governance’ and integrity.

It was the wise Swami Shivapadananda who said, “God will not forgive you if you are bluffing. He is the One who hears the heartbeat of the ant. Do you mean to say he does not know what you are saying and doing?” A sobering thought, indeed.