Lunacy

Imagine the President of the United States of America jamming a big finger into each ear and squealing “Eeeeeeeeeeee – I can’t HEAR you! --- Eeeeeeeeeeeee!” while making ugly faces.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that’s what George Walker Bush is doing. We are locked in the sway of a 60-year-old child, who, told he can’t have what he wants and facing a long, long time-out in his room, refuses to listen to reason. Can’t you just see his face turning red as he stamps his feet? “Eeeeeeeeeeee! I can’t HEAR you! Eeeeeeeeeeee!”

Here he is, in his weekly radio address to America: "We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical," he said regarding his already-underway plan (“Already did it, ha ha ha! You can’t stop me!) to escalate the war in Iraq. "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully (“We’re taking names, assholes! You’ll be sorry!”). But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."

I don’t know about you, but I think Bush is off his rocker — and has been since he was a young man, stuffing firecrackers into frogs to see them blow up and later, challenging his father to go “mano á mano” and riding his bike as slowly as he could in front of his mother’s car because he was mad at them.

I think he’s a raving lunatic, a maniac. Unhinged, unzipped, and whacko. And what's worse, he’s out of control and the adults in the room are scared to death of him.

The “alternative” to escalating the war in Iraq by sending yet more soldiers into the abattoir is right there, across the room where he threw it against the wall in a fit of temper: The Iraq Study Group report. But it’s full of responsible “alternatives” that Bush won’t accept. Redeployment and eventual drawdown of troops. Diplomacy. Grim but grown-up alternatives.

Escalating and broadening the war is discarded by the study as a really, really bad idea.

And ISG report hasn’t been the only alternative offered by the adults around him, either. Democrat and Republican members of Congress have also offered reasoned solutions. But all of them contain the word “redeployment.” To Bush, that means failure. And he’s just not going to accept that.

“Eeeeeeeeeeee – I can’t HEAR you! --- Eeeeeeeeeeeee!”

If Bush was the spoiled, tantrum-throwing child he resembles, an adult would scoop him up and carry him off to his room, kicking and screaming. And there he’d stay until he was ready to listen to reason. This would have happened long ago – prosecuting war in Iraq, which most level-headed adults knew was nothing but bravado backed up by tremendous whoppers from the start – would never have been allowed.

But he was allowed. And instead of taking him to task and ending it the moment it was clear that he had no fucking idea what sort of mess and chaos and needless death he was causing with his play-war, the irresponsible adults around him just let him go on with it, allowing and allowing until an entire country was a bloody, sucking wound. The spoiled little man was allowed his vicious play-time, and now ...

Now.

I wonder if members of Congress can force a psychological evaluation on George W. Bush. I don’t know if such a thing is possible, but it seems to me that the Founders never intended for America to be led by a childish, violent, malevolent lunatic. Seems to me that if Bush could be shown to be mentally incompetent, even insane, there’d be no block to removing him from office and putting him away in a rubber room somewhere. Preferably for the rest of his life.

And then, we could get to the sad, grim, decades-long business of cleaning up the horrific mess he’s made.