I live in Maine. I live in Maine, but I do not hobnob with the Bushes. I honestly do not think anyone who lives in Maine hobnobs with the Bushes. I am pretty sure no one who lives in Maine has ever even seen the Bush Compound out there on that sandy neck of Kennebunkport Beach. Well, excepting all the goons who protect the place 24/7.
In one sense it is odd I don't know the Bushes. But then in another sense, it is probably not so odd, as I am a philosopher, and, I don't think the Bushes to the last one hiding behind those high stone walls out on the sandy neck on the Kennebunkport Beach are very philosophical. It is too bad. I enjoy the ocean when on the rare occasion I can find it here in Maine.
I watched G.W. Bush in his up close interview last night on The News Hour with Jim McNeil. I was quite impressed. I didn't know why I was impressed, until I realized McNeil had the solution to the Iraq problem sitting right in front of him for all of 30 minutes spilling his well-practiced, if insincere guts out to the American people, and as I said, I was very impressed.
The thing that struck me most about what G.W. had to say, the one phrase, was when he said, "They'll follow us here, and get us."
I mulled this over for quite extended period of some time after The News Hour ended. I like to watch Mark Shields and David Brooks because they have come to be such good friends, with such a great amount of respect for each other, they have to be respected by every viewer too.
So, after Brooks and Shields, and long after the advertisements PBS airs nightly for the stock market mafia, I mulled it over a while. "The DOW was up over 26 points and, [...]" was uttered by Jim McNiel in his faithful nightly shill act for those thieves.
Philosophers are famous for mulling things over for a good long time. Twain was famous for mulling things over long enough to turn them into spittle hot enough to melt a the bottom of a spittoon. I'm no Twain, but then I'm no Mark Shields or David Brooks either. So don't expect me to sit here and type words about how everyone seems so civilized when they aren't.
About G.W.'s performance though, he had touched on something of the Arab psychology I had never considered before. Compared to the Vietnamese who are orientally polite to a fault, the Arabs, being much more like Americans, are as different as humans get from the polite oriental people we fought in Vietnam. And it is likely when G.W. said, "They'll follow us here, and get us," he is probably correct. That is what the Bush Administration did to Saddam just for threatening G.W.'s Daddy, isn't it?
I'm not sure the Arabs have the memory of elephants, but, our foreign policy probably hasn't met with their expectations of the civilized nation we profess ourselves to be. And, such as human nature is, it would not surprise me, if a regular feud was declared. Likely they'll come and get us all right, but, they're getting us already, aren't they? No. Not in the sense G.W. is now worried about.
When it dawned on me exactly which "us" G.W. was referring to, I had to laugh to myself, but of course, not until after looking around to see who might be looking. Because, even though I live in Maine, I'm pretty sure the "us" the Arabs are likely going to follow here and get, isn't me. I have been against this thing since before it started, long before it started. It takes two to Tango. But, as history should teach us all, when you deliberately set out to humiliate and kill someone's daddy, and especially when you are successful in that effort, and kill so many others as well; and doubly especially if that "Daddy" is someone with a fair amount of political power, there is indeed a good chance that someone will follow you home and get you too. I think Niccol� Machiavelli wrote that into the dastardly western rules of political cricket in the Fifteenth Century, and it has been followed pretty much to the "T" ever since.
It is almost as sure as when any sucker (male or female) ends up in a New York City bar, or in a Miami bar, and has a few drinks, someone from behind the bar is going to slip them a Mickey, and try and take from them whatever they want. That is human nature in this free Pulp Fiction society we all cherish so much and defend with so much reckless violence. It is also called "freedom" by the burly and bellied bouncers who are often men in blue getting in some outside work time and play, and who also often participate in this theft, buggery and rape that occurs in urban bars all across this wonderfully free country of ours.
So based upon these far less than dubious assumptions about human nature, I sat down last night and devised a philosophical solution to the Iraq problem. It is easier philosophically to get out of Iraq than anyone suspected, until I put the philosophic mind to work, and I suspected it.
1) The U.S. should let everyone know, a week from next Tuesday every American in Iraq is heading home. I think it would be admitting a horrible defeat to try and sneak out like we did in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now.
Such advise will give time for each of the rightful power brokers in that country to line up their well-armed ducks, and begin to police their own areas with their own militias, and their own Iraqi soldiers and their own Iraqi men. This addresses the often stated illusion that there aren't enough trained Iraqi soldiers to defend the country. They seem well enough trained to me, and, Iraq probably has more trained soldiers per square kilometer than any other country on earth right now. The U.S. military simply isn't needed, I concluded on the observable facts, even though as I later realized it is philosophically possible to arrive at the very same conclusion.
2) At the same time as this announcement, the U.S. should also announce we are not abandoning the Iraqis! And forthwith the United States Airforce will be sending our sortees out four times a day until Tuesday after next to dump more than a billion U.S. dollars onto Iraq below. (No bombs here. I am a philosopher and peaceful by my calling.)
3) A following announcement should be made that on that week from next Tuesday, when all the American troops are out of the country, nine or ten more billion U.S. dollars will begin to be issued to the Iraqis in debit cards like F.E.M.A. issued during the Katrina anti-relief program. This will gain the support of VISA/MasterCard which will in turn gain crucial support in Congress, because VISA will reap a 5% profit just as they do in the U.S. from those businesses that accept VISA debit cards. VISA runs a big lobby in Washington and enough of that money will trickle down to our Congressional leaders to grease the bill-passage process, because that is $500 million in profit for VISA, and almost as much as they made on Katrina. But more importantly from our peaceful point of view, in order to obtain said debit cards, it should also be announced the Iraqi people will have to live in a peaceful district where Iraqi VISA credit card company representatives can get about and get applications filled out without being shot; so they can be processed and mailed to every adult Iraqi.
4) And of course the Iraqi government should get something too, like say, $100 million in crisp new coupons worth fifty percent off on coffins, because puppet governments usually end up needing large numbers of coffins when they fall.
5) And for when a new legitimate government is set up, the U.S. should also pledge another 100 billion dollars in aid over the next two years for reparations and reconstruction of the country we destroyed. A perfunctory apology should be issued, because regardless of how any such apology is worded, it will likely sound perfunctory anyway.
So. We have solved the Iraq problem. This puts the U.S. back in the position it was in just after 9-11 when we started making all these mistakes not knowing who did the dastardly deed, who had WMDs, or what was important in U.S. foreign policy. We certainly know better today.
Oh. You are wondering why the title to this commentary is Bush is the Solution?
As we tell the Iraqis of the end to this war, an end they no doubt want; and from which they will likely roll right into a period of adjustment and atonement, we should be philosophical. The Iraqis will likely be philosophical after such an intense period of such utterly stupid bellicosity as well.
The philosophical question seems to be, What about G.W. and all his war criminal buddies?
We should do what is so often done by our men in blue. We should certainly make it clear, that if some despondent and revenge motivated Iraqi follows these people home and does what always seems to happen when someone threatens and kills their daddy, there will be no official attempt at justice or retribution, not even if they clean out all of the criminals in Congress for us at the same time.
This cycle of violence has to stop somewhere, and as world leaders, this would be as good a place to stop it as any other. The lying for it, the voting for it and the appearing on The News Hour for it has to stop too. It is simply in the interest of peace in the world.
I told you I was a philosopher.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
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