- Recent political events resemble nothing so much as re-runs
of movies that should never have been released the first time.
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- Bush has gone to Europe to "ease tensions"
in the NATO alliance. Of course, those very tensions were his work entirely,
but a sense of the ridiculous never discourages a Jehovah's Witness with
a long list of house calls to make.
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- If you read the fine print under the marketing blurbs
for Bush's trip - much like the microscopically-printed disclaimer for
a new prescription drug that hasn't undergone adequate testing - you will
see that Bush's effort is directed at nothing more than securing European
help in the mess he has made of Iraq. This is just a new, more subdued
episode of previous Bush whining about being "either with us or against
us." He wants a shred of legitimacy for what he's done, and he wants
other people to help pay his enormous bills. Fortunately, it appears at
this writing that Europe, while listening politely and offering a cookie
to soothe Bush's whining, is not about to alter its sensible course.
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- In another dreary re-run, America's Republicans have
focused their vicious rage against Kofi Anan, now attacking his son to
get at him. This might seem bizarre coming from the friends of Enron, WorldCom,
and Halliburton, people whose President made his first dollar in an oil-stock
deal that should have seen the SEC sending him to jail, but hypocrisy has
become almost a point of pride with Republicans, particularly the Sequined
Christian Warrior Wing of the party.
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- The personal attacks against Anan and his son recall
the attacks on former President Clinton and his wife. When it wasn't about
real estate, it was about sex, and when it wasn't about sex, it was about
a friend's suicide. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with governing
the country or policy differences. The noise went on for eight mind-numbing
years, revealing an immense store of hatred and the finances to promote
it.
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- Anan was actually America's compromise to replace Boutros
Boutros Ghali, a distinguished intellectual and diplomat, hated and pushed
from his post by Americans. His crime was being too cosmopolitan and not
pro-American enough, Americans so often blurring the initials U.N. into
U.S. Well, since Ghali's departure, the standard of adequate pro-Americanism
has swelled like a malignant brain tumor. The soft-spoken, urbane Anan
is just not good enough now, having quietly said during Bush's re-election
campaign that the American invasion of Iraq was illegal, which it clearly
was. Anyway, urbanity alone can get you into serious trouble with the Grand
Ole Opry crowd running Washington.
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- A pathetic re-run was the election in Iraq. We saw it
in Vietnam and in other places, the claim that some great change had come
through forced, much-photographed (and rigged) elections. All those light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel
columns and press releases when all that was at the end of the tunnel was
a stupendous pile of burnt Vietnamese corpses, mainly civilians. Well,
that part too is being repeated in Iraq. Dead civilians. Piles of them
every week.
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- It is reported on the Internet that the Shiite coalition
actually received a much larger vote than the figure set to headlines by
America's Office of Auxiliary Propaganda, usually only known by names such
as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CBS. The vote apparently
was shaved behind the scenes from around 60% to 48%, so that the new Iraqi
government wouldn't come in feeling its oats. After all, they have a lot
to swallow, including indefinite occupation, the establishment of permanent
American airbases, and a new embassy big and well-equipped enough to provide
a Middle East White House and Spa for the convenience and comfort of future
visiting American dignitaries.
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- Ah, such faith in democracy! But that is how the game
of democracy is played in America itself. The man with the never-explained
electronic hump on his back during television debates was "elected"
twice using just such methods or variants. Bush holds office with about
the same sense of legitimacy as the White House press credentials of a
Karl Rove operative with nude pictures on the Internet.
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- Palestine's new President, Mahmoud Abbas, is working
extremely hard to satisfy every demand of Israel. It is hard to avoid the
unpleasant impression of a new maid polishing every spoon and fork late
into the night. What is not apparent right now is that Sharon and Abbas
have very different ideas of what it is that Abbas is working towards.
Abbas certainly has in mind the end of occupation and a genuinely independent
Palestinian state. Sharon has in mind the privilege of Abbas continuing
through an endless maze called the peace process.
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- The word "process" should be retired from the
English language for a while. Everything has become a process. We have
education processes instead of education, political processes instead of
politics, and peace processes instead of peace. Sticking "process"
onto other words represents an effort to make whatever is happening seem
bigger and more impressive than it actually is. I could be convinced to
exclude "peace process" from the proposed ban, the inflated nothingness
of the phrase pretty much fitting reality in this one instance.
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- It's all a re-run because, despite many failings, no
one worked harder for an extended period to build the foundations of a
Palestinian state and peace with Israel than Arafat. He turned his back
on the written reason for his party's founding, fought a fierce battle
with other Palestinian parties, and worked hard for the Oslo Accords. It
was all for nothing. At Camp David he was offered the statehood-equivalent
of a set of empty barracks at several abandoned Israeli military bases
surrounded by barbed wire. Sharon, assisted by the Electronic Hunchback
of Washington, grotesquely shoved Arafat into a corner with no permission
to speak or travel. Sharon publicly threatened Arafat several times with
murder, and of course the circumstances of Arafat's death remain quite
unclear.
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- And it will prove the same for Abbas. A huge and crushing
disillusion lies ahead. Israel's idea of a "peace process" is
endless delays and excuses while establishing "new facts on the ground"
(a.k.a. seizing other peoples' homes, orchards, and water supplies) with
the regularity of around-the-clock operations at an automobile stamping
plant.
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