A friend said not to worry about George W. Bush ordering an invasion
of Iraq. "He's like a child who wants ice cream," she said. "He'll be
satisfied with something smaller, like a cookie."
My friend has never had children.
I've never had children, but I've taught children. No kid who wants ice
cream gladly takes a cookie, and few adults either. I've got a feeling young
Bush is going to scream "evil" until he gets to lick Saddam Hussein. He won't
take some stinking cookie from U.N. weapons inspectors.
This is not to imply that Bush is childish, although he does call Vladimir
Putin "Pooty-poot." This is to say he's stubborn. He's going to invade Iraq,
and that's that.
The campaign may involve thousands of casualties beyond the handful allowed
in modern American wars, but no doubt the U.S. military can beat So Damn
Insane, as a woman I know calls Hussein. He's so damn insane he frightens many
Iraqi officers, and they could turn on him, if they think Bush will follow
through on his threats.
I sure hope the invasion plan works, whatever the plan is, if there is a
plan, and I doubt it.
The problem is Bush is engaged in too many wars right now to start another
one.
Bush's buddies in business have been waging war on our retirement accounts.
The president has been pretending he never met Ken Lay, while talking about
holding executives accountable. But he still doesn't want more government
regulation of business, and would like to hand Social Security over to Wall
Street.
This is the worst kind of guerrilla combat for Bush. He's in a free-fire zone,
wearing regular-guy camouflage over his pinstriped CEO uniform. It isn't Bush's
fault that the economy has tanked, but sending tanks to Iraq won't help.
Bush is waging war on the environment. He wants more SUVs and fewer trees
in those outdoorsy SUV commercials. He wants to drill for oil in unspoiled
land in Alaska. When the wells of Iraq are burning, he'll have another
argument for that policy.
Naturally, he didn't attend the Earth Summit. As one clerk at my grocery store
said, "I guess you have to be an earthling to attend."
Bush is waging war against the middle and working classes, giving tax cuts
predominantly to the rich. This class war has been going on under quite a few
administrations of both parties. As Kevin Phillips shows in "Wealth and
Democracy," between 1950 and 2000, corporate taxes as a percentage of total
tax receipts fell from 27 percent to 10 percent.
Bush is just the latest president to be driven by huge increases in business
contributions to politicians of both parties. Whatever else their differences,
Bush and Bill Clinton went to Yale and hang out with people whose money hangs
out in the Caymans.
Bush and John Ashcroft are waging war on our civil liberties. Sorry, I've got
to make this quick because the Patriot Act allows them to break into my house
while I'm away.
The most publicized Bush wars lately have been political brushfire wars.
Democrats, heads of friendly nations and some respected Republicans think
we're strong enough to deter Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction.
They don't think pre-emptively invading Iraq is such a great idea. Let us
count the ways it may not be a great idea.
Wars cost lots of money and the country is already in the red.
Every oil-producing country in the world, including Russia, could get mad
and force us to ride bikes.
If threatened with overthrow, Hussein may use germ warfare on our troops.
He's so damn insane he may decide to go down in a toxic cloud of murder-
suicide.
If we win, we own Iraq, but we still haven't figured out what to do with
Afghanistan. Look, running Baghdad-by-the-Bay is hard enough. Who wants
Baghdad?
Oh, yeah, it may not be right to overthrow foreign officials. Sure, it's
been done to Guatemala, Iran and the Florida Supreme Court, but no good ever
came of those interventions.
None of this matters. Bush wants to invade Iraq. He got into Yale. He got
into the Air National Guard. He got a baseball team. He got the Oval Office.
He gets what he wants. He gets to invade Iraq.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
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