Anton Chekhov, the great Russian dramatist, once said that if you have a gun hanging on the wall in Act I, Scene I, you had better use it by Act I, Scene II.
This is probably not just simple advice to aspiring young dramatists. In the microcosm of the stage, nothing is redundant, especially a deadly weapon. Similarly on the stage of political life: If you carry your veritable or verbal sword unsheathed, you have to use it or keep it sheathed.
President Bush took his ticker tape parade to Africa and came back limping.
Aside from an impromptu mating show mounted for his delectation by unsavory elephants, nothing really happened.
$15 billion tentatively pledged to fight AIDS? Nothing but crumbs to a mass of dying humanity.
For those who have ever wondered why it is more difficult for the rich to achieve salvation than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, look no further.
President Clinton can talk his way in or out of anything. He has a natural talent necessary in a politician. President Bush does not have this talent.
Brought out of his quarantine of delivering speeches to a select audience of military people and their families, his lack of ability in this field glared magnificently.
His caesuras, probably heavily dotted lines in the script, did not go down well in Africa. He waited for applause but got none.
People probably did not understand his diction or accent and did not know that they had to react on cue. They waited for substance, but there was little of it.
Wars in Africa are still financed by the same people who send peacekeepers.
The trade in diamonds mined and sold by the rebels to buy weapons is thriving. You might be wearing one such ring or necklace.
The drug companies still believe the dollar is mightier than the quick of life in a dying AIDS victim.
The CIA is still busy fabricating evidence against Iraq while Mugabe does his vile act in public.
These are but a few examples that leave Bush’s visit without much meaning.
George Bush has unsheathed his Africa campaign, and it is a good one on paper.
But it will not do for him to go back home and be distracted by blaming and defending the CIA just as he goes into high gear for the next campaign.
Africa has been robbed and molested like no other place on earth: Even its people were carried off as commodities. It deserves better and can do with more action and fewer words.
Will it happen? I doubt it.
- Arab News Opinion 17 July 2003
