Family Feud:
Little Bush Hits Back at Daddy
By Chris Floyd
|
Excerpt:
President Bush formally launched a sweeping
internal review of Iraq policy yesterday,
pulling together studies underway by various
government agencies, according to U.S.
officials. The initiative… parallels the effort
by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to salvage
U.S. policy in Iraq, develop an exit strategy
and protect long-term U.S. interests in the
region…The White House's decision changes the
dynamics of what happens next to U.S. policy
deliberations. The administration will have its
own working document as well as recommendations
from an independent bipartisan commission to
consider as it struggles to prevent further
deterioration in Iraq.
|
11/15/06 "Information
Clearing House"
-- -- When I saw the Newsweek cover featuring Big Daddy Bush
muscling toward the front with a diminished little Dubya
skulking in the background, my first thought was: How is Junior
going to react to this? Bush II's resentment toward his father
is well-known -- a resentment no doubt compounded by his
lifelong, abject dependence on Daddy's financial and political
pull -- and I knew that Little Bush would not simply accept this
media humiliation and move on.
Because for all his
vaunted (and totally mendacious) "unconcern" with opinion polls
and popularity ("Ah just do whut muh gut tells me is right"),
Little Bush is actually one of the most vain and insecure men
ever to sit in the White House; only Nixon can match him in this
regard. Why else would he need to have his authority bolstered
in such ludicrous ways -- such as all those little
"Commander-in-Chief" and "President of the United States" tags
embossed onto his fancy quasi-military jackets and his running
gear and belt-buckles and boots -- and probably his toilet paper
as well? At every turn, he feels the anxious need to remind
others, and himself, that he really is the president, he's the
decider, he's the commander: "See, it says so right here on muh
jacket!" (Meanwhile, the exaggerated swagger he affects -- a
labored caricature of stereotypical masculinity -- bespeaks
other sorts of insecurities prowling in the presidential psyche,
but we won't go into that here.)
Bush has also taken
every opportunity during his tenure to diminish, downplay or
even belittle his father's personal influence and political
record. He evinces far more personal animosity toward his father
than, say, Bill Clinton, his supposed political bête noire. Thus
the Newsweek cover was probably a greater humiliation for Bush
than the election results themselves. Indeed, the latter only
confirmed his contempt for the American people, as he made clear
in his post-election press conference with his casual put-down
of voters: "I thought when it was all said and done, the
American people would understand the importance of taxes and the
importance of security." The not-so-subtle implication here is
that the American people were too stupid to understand how good
they've got it under his glorious reign.
Bush's reaction to
the Newsweek cover –and the whole gamut of high-profile media
stories pushing the line that Daddy's men are moving in to take
over the government and rescue Junior from the mess he's made –
was not long in coming: just a week after the election. The
Washington Post nailed it – then very curiously buried it on
page 16, perhaps because it contradicts the new conventional
wisdom about the return of Bush I (the ditheringly incompetent,
deeply corrupt, sinister covert operator suddenly transformed
into a wise, moderate, accomplished elder statesman) and the
Baker-Gates salvage operation.
What we are seeing
today with Bush II's petulant pushback against the Baker
Commission is part of what was earlier described here as a "war
in Heaven" – an ongoing move by parts of the American
Establishment to rein in the worst excesses of the Bush Faction
before they kill the golden goose that keeps the elite ensconced
in power and privilege. As I noted here in September (in a look
at Bob Woodward's latest book):
His new book,
State of Denial, is a stinging attack on the Bush-Cheney
Faction… and the presence of "Bandar Bush," the Saudi royal,
and Scowcroft, the Bush Senior courtier, among Woodward's
main sources tells us that Daddy Bush has reverted back to
the old-line, white-bread, "Eastern Establishment" in a move
against the Sunbelt oil men, crank pseudo-Christians and
Nixonian diehards like Cheney and Rumsfeld that Junior Bush
has thrown in with….
Bush Junior …is a
true scion of the predatory elite that has served as
America's aristocracy for generations...And that's why it
will never come to impeachment or resignation [as it did
with the lowborn bagman, Richard Nixon]; such things would
reflect too badly on the elite itself, not least on Daddy
Bush, one of its leading lights. But some strong shots
across the bow, some public humiliation, something to get
Bush and Cheney to alter the disastrous course in Iraq –
that's fair game, and that's what we're seeing today from
some of the old-line Establishment factions.
(Note:
is not the destruction of constitutional liberties that
concerns these factions and brings them out against Bush, of
course. They could care less about that – in fact, it's yet
another good argument to them for keeping the Bush Faction
in power, albeit chastened somewhat on the military
aggression front. Not that these elite players don't hold
the same ideal of American domination of global affairs that
drives the Bush Faction; they do, in spades. But they
recognize that after a certain point you get more buck for
less bang. As the Emperor Tiberius used to tell his satraps
when he sent them out to govern the conquered lands: "I want
my sheep shorn, not shaved.")
…For make no
mistake: what we are seeing is a "war in heaven," an
intramural struggle between elites, a falling out among
thieves, and, literally, a family quarrel in the imperial
house. It has nothing to do with the welfare of the American
people, or the restoration of democracy. The "consent of the
governed" will play no part in how the affairs of the state
are finally ordered by the exalted ones.
Little Bush's
suddenly conceived internal Iraq policy review is just another
salvo in this ongoing struggle. The Cheney militarists will
certainly not give up without a fight, even after the "Gray Hawk
Down" disaster of Rumsfeld's resignation. Bush Junior will
certainly not keep swallowing Daddy's cod liver oil without
throwing a fit now and then. American policy will continue to
drift back and forth between Junior's hyper-aggressive
corporatist militarism and Daddy's slightly less aggressive
corporatist militarism (which is pretty much the default
"bipartisan" foreign policy of the past 60 years).
The comforting
storyline that the "grownups" are stepping in to set things to
right is the usual dangerous, reductive nonsense of the
corporate media worldview. Daddy's men and Junior's men are all
part of the same political network (or crime family, if you
prefer). There may be power struggles between them over certain
issues, personality conflicts, policy disagreements, but they
are all ultimately working for the same mutual interest: their
own aggrandizement (in various forms – power, honors, riches,
ideological triumph, etc.).
The "war in heaven"
is real, but there will be no actual losers amongst the
combatants. Loss of face is the worst punishment the vanquished
will endure; even if they're booted from public office, like
Donald Rumsfeld, they simply return to their private world of
vast personal fortunes, corporate directorships, and backroom
sway. Until the political winds shift again, and they're back in
the saddle once more – like Robert Gates, returning to office 14
years after his shadowy service for Reagan and Bush; or indeed,
like Rumsfeld himself, who went a quarter of a century without
official title between his Nixon-Ford tenure and his restoration
by Junior Bush. The profitable, bloodsoaked game goes on,
regardless of elections and internal squabbles.
Where does that leave
the rest of us? Not as citizens in control of our political
fate, but more like Kremlinologists, trying to discern through
opaque and oblique signs what is really going on with our
masters. Or like the "birds i' the cage" of King Lear's vision,
prisoners who:
…hear poor rogues
Talk of court news;
and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who
wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon us the
mystery of things,
As if we were God's
spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison,
packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by
the moon. ***
Copyright Chris
Floyd. Visit his blog
www.chris-floyd.com
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