Peter Awa
4 December 2008
opinion
So much praise has been heaped, so much credit given to various quarters, for Barrack Obama's historic victory - to his campaign team; to the ordinary American people who rallied behind him; to Obama's personal brilliance, charisma, vision and avowed audacity; to the wind of change blowing across the world - that I feel duty-bound to mention one of the architects of that victory who has so far gone largely unsung. Guess who: George W. Bush.
Want to take issue with that? Then, consider the evidence:This is a man whose tenure was exceptional. Under him, terrorism scored its greatest victory yet - hundreds of people killed in three coordinated strikes coming in quick succession, with all key symbols of the US might and arrogance struck or threatened: the twin towers - symbol of America's economic might, the Pentagon - symbol of its vaunted military might, the White house ( a near miss) - symbol of political might...
In the aftermath of these horrific events he (Bush) plunged the country into a war of attrition in Irak, unleashing a bloodbath unprecedented after World War II. As I write, the exit strategy remains the riddle of the sphinx. And yet, this war has already cost America a whooping three trillion dollars! We hope Obama plays the mythological Oedipus and finds the answer to this riddle.
Of course, while stopping short of committing the abomination of marrying his own mother as did Oedipus! The Iraqi quagmire is not alone. Take Afghanistan, the Middle East (By the way, any news of Ariel Sharon?)...
Under Bush America became a laughing-stock, with North Korea's Kim Il Sung teasing this giant with feet of clay repeatedly as talks with North Korea tottered. Iran's Ahmejinedan, kinglet of a country where top government officials forge papers to award themselves doctoral degrees from Oxford, has called his bluff time and again.
He courted even natural disasters, bringing home the likes of Hurricane Katrina, then deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with its toxic trailers made of formaldehyde-laden materials, which are reaping a harvest of pestilence today - cancer, bronchitis and other respiratory infections.
Under him the dollar slipped; the economy melted down like the steel of the Twin Towers. He is almost beating the 1929- 1930 recession record. And he isn't done yet! We don't yet know just where we'll end.
Like some hapless driver in a truck whose brakes have failed, he swooped down dizzying ravines with the economy, and just before crashing into the dark depths of recession, he turned to the Treasury's Paulson in a tone reminiscent of that of the tired and drowning Caesar in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as he called Cassius to the rescue "Help me Paulson, or I sink." Poor chap!
The global financial crisis and the credit crunch he triggered are a telling indictment on his government. If credit, as we know, is the bedrock of the American economy, then the failure of the credit system can only trigger the demise of economy itself.
Still under him, politics became a lackluster game, at least in Republican circles, and that is how non-starters like the pathetic Mc Cain were projected to centre stage in the top presidential race in the world. Poor Mc Cain, whose only major achievement is having been shot down. Nothing but pity would drive somebody in their right mind to vote for Mc Cain.
Unfortunately, it takes a bit more than pathos to hold the office of President. Let's forgive Bush his grammatical trespasses. It's no secret in America that English is not Bush's forte. But who cares? The president of the greatest nation on earth should not concern himself with trifles such as grammar.
Don't we say the law does not concern itself with trifles? De minimis non curat lex! But what do you make of this latest trophy on his shelf? He is credited (or shall we say debited?) with asking an Australian official who referred to the G20 in conversation shortly after the group was formed just what this G20 is. And yet the G20 is touted as an initiative of his. This, surely, is more than grammar!
Now when a man has behaved in this manner, when he has piled up this catalogue of failures, when he has become this kind of pauvre type, when his reign turns out to be nothing but a regnum horribilis, leaving people with nothing but "Bush fatigue", what happens to him or anyone else in his camp if an election were to come up? The French say " On n'a pas besoin d'avoir fait HEC pour deviner ".
Translated directly that means you don't need to be a graduate from business school to guess what the outcome would be, which is roughly equivalent to our "This is not rocket science!" Little wonder then that when Al Gore, in support of Obama, asked the Americans "Do you want change or more of the same?" the answer was a thunderous "Enough is enough, "echoing the "Namoore of this" of the pilgrims of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as they screamed out their ras-le-bol after being bored stiff with the catalogue of failures the Monk had been churning out to them.
So, based on the evidence before this court, what is your verdict? Wasn't Bush a hero in the Obama odyssey? I know you may have an issue with the word hero, which has a positive connotation. Literary tradition does indeed have a character called anti-hero, the central character in a play, book or film, who lacks the traditional heroic attributes and qualities such as bravery and vision, and instead possesses character traits that are antithetical to heroism, a negative hero, as it were, who is admired instead for what society generally considers to be a weakness of character.
Take Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jonathan or James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. So be it.
Then maybe we should be referring to Bush not as hero but as anti-hero, and, for good measure, instead of describing him as "unsung" we should be talking of "unshamed", which collocates better with the register of anti-hero. Are we saying that our title should be modified to read "George W. Bush: Unashamed Anti-hero of the Obama Victory?" As the court pleases.
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