Absolutely, we’re winning,” US President George W. Bush said this week of the war in Iraq.
Democrats claim he’s “in denial.”
That’s a short-hand way of saying he’s crazy. In the South, we’d say “He’s in la la land.” That’s because we Southerners traditionally keep our doddering relatives at home, rather than farming them out to nursing homes and mental hospitals. So it’s neither uncommon nor scary to see deranged people, especially our own ancient Great Aunt Helen, wandering the neighborhood singing “La la la!”
La la land. Out to lunch. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Except in the Bush White House, the lights are on, and everybody’s definitely home. That’s the scary part. And they’re all singing, “La la la!”
Bush is not so much “in denial” as he is “in” a movie.
Like I-Poders starring in their own fantasy music videos as they jog in the park, Bush stars in the Republicans’ new “Iraq Adventure,” a neocon re-make of “The Poseidon Adventure,” that famous 70s flick rated PG-13 for “intense, prolonged sequences of disaster and peril.” — just like the real American experience of the war in Iraq.
But is the real Iraq experience the same as the neocon movie?
In the original “Poseidon Adventure” film, a luxury ocean liner capsizes on New Year’s Eve after being swamped by a rogue tidal wave. Almost all aboard instantly die, but a handful of plucky survivors dramatically ascend a towering Christmas tree and fight freak flash fires, deadly arcing electricity, fatal falling debris, lethal boiling-hot steam sprays and water, water, everywhere to reach the thinnest part of the upside-down hull still above the surface where their screams are heard and they are miraculously rescued.
Bush’s “Iraq Adventure” differs from the original movie in several important aspects. For one thing, Bush and his band of plucky survivors spend the first hour of the film denying that their ship has even flipped upside down.
Despite the flooding port holes, chandeliers that suddenly sprout from ceilings that are now floors, and shrieking fire alarms, Bush encourages his band to continue their New Year’s Eve celebrations, ignoring the surreal scenery of doomish mayhem surrounding them. “Whoah, Nellie! That was some wave that hit us!” Bush admits in his calculated, down-home folksiness manner.
He’s man of action, though, so he dons a flight suit and shouts to his first mate: “Full speed ahead, Dickey! Let’s chase that rogue wave! It can run, but it can’t hide! “
Dickey snaps out a salute, clicks his heels, says, “Aye aye, Commander,” then winks at Donnie, the ship’s steward. Donnie winks back. “Yes, sir! Full speed ahead!” Dickie and Donnie reply in unison.
Suddenly, a few pluckish survivors timidly step forward. “Uhm, Commander Bush,” one stammers, “How can we go ‘full speed ahead’ when the Iraq is upside down and we’re sinking here?”
Bush quickly squints his best beady-eyed, “how dare you” squint likely acquired from innumerable painful family vacations at Kennebunkport, Maine with the clan and its demanding matriarch, and determinedly shouts to Dickie and Donnie, “Stay the course!” Then, he glares at those daring to question his command: “You owe our brave crew members an immediate apology!” Bush thunders.
The plucky survivors do feel pity for the remaining crew, who try, impossibly, to bail water from the sinking, upside-down ship even as they perish. But what does Bush want the survivors to apologize for, except for telling the truth to power?
In movie drama lingo, that’s what they call “denouement.”
Bush then shouts to his doomed crew, “Mission accomplished!” Donnie and Dickie unfurl a banner saying the same. No torturous journey toward extrication from doom is necessary, Bush declares, even while his ship shudders, explodes, collapses, and water gushes in from all directions.
With elections three days away, Bush seeks to convince American voters that Iraq can be righted not by taking decisive and robust new actions, but simply by doing things that seem like action, like jumping up and down or rocking back and forth — getting that big momentum rolling again.
Bush steadfastly refuses to do things that really could right his sinking ship, like jettisoning lethal ballast like Donnie and Dickie, who this week ingratiatingly admitted on conservative talk radio that using a type of water torture allegedly performed by US forces in Iraq to interrogate Muslim terrorist suspects but prohibited by international human rights laws was permissible. Actually, Dickie’s best line to date was that torture was a “no-brainer for” him.
Zoom the camera in on Dickie’s head, which obviously lacks a brain, and the audience gasps: “He’s a zombie!”
Bush’s jumping and pushing and shuffling does look different, at first glance.
But it’s just like Aunt Helen running around the block in her curlers and housecoat, singing “La la la!”
Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has the best line, even though she ad-libbed it: “We’ve made thousands of tactical errors in Iraq.” Iraq. It’s a horror flick that’s beyond scary. It’s evil.And if things don’t change in America, it could be coming to a neighborhood theater near you soon.
