Prediction: Bush will lose, and it won't be close

I feel more sure now than ever before that Bush will tank by election day ’04 – in the end, it won’t even be close. Economic spluttering, disappearing healthcare, oil prices, deficits, overwhelming evidence that our middle east/antiterror/you-break-Iraq,-you-own-it policy has gone off a cliff, a few more mini-scandals to come (more prisoner abuse; Halliburton, etc), and the Farenheit 911 effect (enough Americans seeing the emperor with no clothes) will combine to ensure his ouster.

Here’s why: the anti-Bush voters are already totally locked in; more undecideds will break to Kerry when they add up all the bad news; and here’s the decisive part: there’s a slice of the Bush voters who are NOT rock-solid – their Reagan-Republican loyalty is being stretched to the breaking point by Shrubbie’s assininity, and once the momentum moves just far enough against W, that wobbling slice will let him down. Some will abstain; some might even vote for Kerry. Count on it.

Yes, we can expect the terror card to be played with increasing intensity up til election day, and that will pin down the great majority of Bush’s supporters, but it won’t be enough to give him the numbers he needs.

The ONLY way Bush can win is if Kerry asses up his campaign as badly as Gore did four years ago. Well, I shouldn’t put it past him – just yesterday, he out-Bushed Bush by parroting Bush’s dumb certainty: singing in harmony with the outrageous comments Bush made a few days ago, Kerry said that even knowing what he knows now, he still would have voted to authorize the pre-emptive war. This when the Washington Post and New York Times have both issued grand mea culpas, admitting that they should have taken a harder look at the war sales pitch. So, Kerry can be a worm, but still I think he has just enough moxie to use the opportunity before him.

Anyway, I’m on an effort to limit my political obsession: it’s a broken world, and I can’t fix it by dwelling on it. I’m trying to limit my news intake to only those things I don’t already know – and you’d be surprised how that shrinks the field. And I find that news intake is best counterbalanced by some daily form of peace-inducing meditation, to prevent a buildup of excessive bile. I WILL attend the RNC protests in NYC, and I WILL do some voter registration work, but I’m trying not to carry this stuff around with me. Not easy, I admit – but let’s be sure to have fun with our outrage, cuz we’re gonna win.

No terrorism in Haiti, right?

Any Democrat presidential candidate worthy of my support will immediately be denouncing from the rooftops the recent US chess moves in Haiti. How is this not terrorism? Heavily armed bands pounce on defenseless city populations and attack the police stations. Thuggish, shadowy, unaccountable actors announce that they will topple the duly elected democratic government.

I’ll make a deal with the Bushsters: you get me footage, within 24 hours of the summation of this “war,” of a falling statue of President Aristide in Port au Prince. Then I’ll have to admit this is not actually a victory for Bush’s preferred face of terrorism, but rather a glorious liberation of the Haitian people from evil. Somehow I think that statute will be hard to find, given that Aristide is a normally elected president with just two years until his term ends and he leaves office for good.

How is this not terrorism? To at least show some legitimacy for the project of ousting Aristide, I’d like somebody to explain to me specifically what laws he has broken, how the constitution has been violated, or even what norms recognized in international law he might have contravened, making him unfit for office. I know a few things about the flaws of Aristide, but I’ve never yet seen legal specifics of his apparently assumed illegitimacy addressed in the mainstream American media.

This is terrorism, yet with it, the US and France have finally found something to agree upon: Haitian democracy is not worth defending.

To Haiti, France has 400-plus years of villainy to answer for. But the transgressions of the US are immediate, and should obviously be condemned right now by the leading Democrat in such devastating terms that Bush cannot defend himself. The leading Democrat should going in for the kill now, attempting to turn this into Bush’s policy-hypocrisy Waterloo.

Aristide is a broken figure. Once he was a man who raised a hopeful grassroots democratic ferment in Haiti, on the back of which he was legitimately elected by a landslide. But he was a decade ago illegally ejected from the presidency by thuggish armed forces. He was only returned to office after his will was broken during exile in the US. Aristide re-entered the presidency (he was duly elected again by the people) willing to sign Haiti up for a new round of economically catastrophic debt deals with the global financiers from the G-7 and its arm, the IMF – something he never would have done before. The economy has since grown more dismal than ever. Lacking an army, he brought with him new methods of repressing people with paramilitary gangs. He learned a few things during his exile in the US, corruption among them, but one thing he didn’t learn was how to be lovable.

So with his support withered, perhaps now’s a better time to make a move than later, when the people get closer to the next election and begin to envision the possibility of a peaceful electoral transfer of power to somebody unknown, somebody who might do things differently, might not accept the IMF’s terms. So it’s time to pull the plug. Too bad for Jean-Bertrand Aristide – now he’s become another of the US’s presidential-assets-gone-bad – another in the line of ex-presidents – Noriega, Saddam...

Could it be that Bush is sending a signal flare in February that will land in President Hugo Chavez’s oil-rich Venezuela by, oh, say September? Or maybe December? Maybe that’s crazy – but we’re certainly sending “hate me” messages to the world outside again.

Where’s my Democrat, the guy who forcefully pulls the rug out from under such naked duplicitousness?

Yes! Found!

For several months, I’ve been looking for an assessment that I wrote before the American-Iraq War of 2003 commenced, because I knew that in it I’d anticipated what was to come. That’s no great achievement: only dolts could have failed to expect the things I mention here. I wrote it in the early part of this year, before the attack, perhaps in January or February.

I’d like to give another reason why ‘regime change’ in Iraq is a bad idea.

Let’s assume there are very nasty weapons hidden away deep in the hinterlands of Iraq. At the moment when the US military topples the Iraqi regime – when the US becomes the Iraqi regime and begins to set up its client state – control over those hidden weapons will tumble further away from the US or UN gaze than ever before.

Captured regime leaders will be less forthcoming on the subject of weapons of mass destruction than any other. Meanwhile, field commanders in control of the weapons will suddenly be answerable to no higher authority, and will have little incentive to reveal their deeply hidden secrets.

Most likely, at least some of them will seek a profit by offering their weapons to a newly forming rebel insurgency or to the highest bidder.

I favor containment of Iraq. We contained the Soviet Union for over 40 years, so Iraq should not be a problem. One ‘relic of the cold war’ that I preferred – at least weapons that should not exist at all were held by governments, however despicable they may be, and not passed into private terrorist hands.

Rules of Puctuation

I was taught the formal American “Rules of Puctuation.” But now I find the Brits and some internet journalists using things like “The Period outside of the Quotations”. And I note that when I was first taught “The Comma Inside,” I thought, “Logically, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” The punctuation mark sets the package, which is the “quotation”. So it should be outside!

So I like this trend. Along with it, the European wordification of acronyms like aids and Unicef. I wonder, though, whether everyone who reads the new American rules understands the shift, or whether some see its use as sloppiness? Any thoughts, “let me know”.

My blue haiku
October, 2003

Oh, Red Sox, curses
color my days and keep me
awake in the night.


My "seeing red" haiku
(contributed by B.C)

Full house. Of fifty
thousand souls, just one doesn't know
his pitcher is spent.


untitled
(contributed by T.B.)

In a cynical land
the Sox and Cubs restore our faith
in the metaphysical.

"Twin Towers Bombing," written Sept. 12, 2001

Another anniversary of September 11th has now come and gone. This is what I wrote on the day after the event, September 12, 2001.

Discussing security strategy, tactics and response misses the main point that yesterday showed: ultimately, there is no way of keeping an event such as this from happening except by making the people of the world love us more.

I know it sounds absurd. But in the end, there is no other prevention.

We think we are good and right almost always. Maybe that's so. But we are unable to understand the deeper motivations of the perpetrators.

We are people of the highest privilege; and yet it surprises us to find that others in the world are unimpressed by our statements that we are the world's beacon of freedom. That is not impressive to them? Why not?

Let me suggest that when we walk away from international treaties, when we hold nations captive to debt, and with a thousand other acts less noticed by us, we are causing resentments.

What comes foremost to my mind is that we need to be sweet and highly generous - to a fault. Not to these perpetrators, obviously, but generally to the world at large.

Prior to this event, I've joked that if you take a poverty-wracked enemy of the United States like, say North Korea or Cuba (now add Afghanistan), we'd be better off strategically and financially if we paid every citizen there a personal check for $5,000 from the US taxpayers, rather than spending our money on the perpetual war machine. We'd save so much effort, stress and cash if we just bought the friendship of the populace!

Obviously, I was being facetious. But think about it, ask yourself -- what did we spend yesterday? What will it cost us to remain so long aloof and oblivious to the wretched of the world outside? Trillions?

++++++++


I have not released this writing before now because frankly it lacks sophistication in the matter of explaining the alchemy of how our conduct in relation to the Arab-Muslim world contributed to the atmosphere of fear and desperation that brought fundamentalist-extremist terrorists into being there. That is, I had felt that what I wrote then was too easily susceptible to the fearmongering charge that the author is justifying the terrorists’ actions or “blaming America first.” A fine rendering of this relationship was recently given by Karen Armstrong (“Our Role in the Terror”, Guardian/UK, September 18, 2003) and I feel that, backed by the reader’s understanding that I am entirely in agreement with the view she expresses, I no longer need to worry that my position is not well-represented.

What matters most to me now is the central point that mattered most to me then: not what our government did or didn’t do previously that might make us “responsible”, nor what the hell was/is going on in the minds of the terrorists. The thing that matters is the heart’s measure of what our nation is doing today and tomorrow. Are we serving love?

I’ve seen scant national progress by that measure from September 12, 2001 to today - the national policy is more about fear and dreams of domination. Coming from an unloved, unloving place. Yet if America would bring love, we would get love, and though I suppose it would be better if we were not so selfishly motivated for reciprocity, still that would be a great step forward from the quality of our actions over the past two years. Maybe money can’t buy us love, but love can; would that our only fault were to be that understandably and forgivably self-serving.

The only way to create a safer world is to ensure that it is more just." - Karen Armstrong

The Art of "Strategery"

I would like to share with you a timely bit of Sun Tsu's ancient classic The Art of War, so that we might more richly consider the recent chess moves of our leader, Geo. W. Bush (text excerpted/adapted from a wonderful translation, The Art of Strategy by R.L. Wing).

Leadership is intelligence, credibility, humanity, courage, and discipline.

Foretelling triumph: Much computation prior to a challenge brings triumph. Little computation brings defeat.

Knowing the costs: To raise a corps of a hundred thousand, a thousand pieces of gold will be spent each day.

Those who have supreme skill use strategy to bend others without coming to conflict. Attacking a fortified area is an art of last resort.

Swift strategies: If the force's operations in the field are prolonged, the support of the organization will be insufficient. Those who are not entirely aware of strategies that are advantageous cannot be entirely aware of strategies that are disadvantageous.

Skilled executors do not return again and again to levy taxes or transport provisions. They bring what is useful from the organization, and let their opponents show them the way to provisions. One container of the opponent's food is the same as twenty containers of their own.

Generally, those who occupy the place of conflict early can face their opponent in comfort. Those who occupy the place of conflict late must hasten into conflict troubled. Therefore, when opponents are satisfied, they should be starved; when calm, they should be moved.

Know the other and know yourself, one hundred challenges without danger; know not the other and know yourself, one triumph for one defeat; know not the other and know not yourself, every challenge is certain peril.

Those who destroy the opponent are enraged. Those who take hold of the opponent can take advantage of their resources. This is using a triumph over the opponent to enhance one’s own strength.

In a conflict, the straightforward will lead to engagement and the surprising will lead to triumph. Thus, those who are skilled at producing surprises are as infinitely varied as heaven and earth.

The ultimate positioned strategy is to be without apparent position. Without position even the deepest intelligence is unable to spy. The days may appear long or short; the moon may wax or wane.

Subtle! Intangible! Seemingly without shape. Mysterious! Miraculous! Seemingly without sound. Those who are skilled in conflict master the destiny of their opponents. If we want to challenge an opponent, challenge so the opponent cannot help but engage: attack a location the opponent is compelled to rescue. If we do not want a challenge, challenge so the opponent unable to engage: distort the opponent’s sense of location.

Leaders are those who protect an organization. A ruler brings adversity by calling for an advance when the force is not able; by calling for a retreat when the force is unable; and by not understanding the natural authority and work of the force, and aligning it politically or with officials which make the force doubtful.

Calculating fundamentals: Which view, which leader can affect Nature and the Situation? Which Art, which strategy, has numerous strengths? Retain leaders who heed these calculations.

Those who are skilled in conflict put themselves beyond defeat and await their opponent’s reach for triumph. To secure against defeat depends on oneself; the opportunity for triumph depends on one’s opponent.