Bush in Dubya-Dubya-Too

Bush in Dubya-Dubya-Too
Tom Marsland
Monday, Dec. 9, 2002

On Dec. 5, our wise and esteemed president artfully praised the great intellectual, philanthropic and ethereal properties of Islam ... yes, I said Islam! What? Cat got your tongue? Me, too, but perhaps our president didn't even go far enough.

'Dubya' praised Islam, saying it has inspired (and I quote) "countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity and morality." He followed that nugget with "Islam is a hopeful religion of mercy and tolerance."

And who could forget "Islam affirms God's justice and insists on man's moral responsibility," and as if to outdo himself, the president jubilantly pronounced, "Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind."

The director of Washington's Islamic Center, Abdullah Khouj, praised the president, telling him that his words demonstrated "the value of human tolerance, a virtue taught by Islam and practiced here in America."

These words from our president and Islam's Imam in D.C. must be hard to swallow and even harder to digest by the surviving family members of the 9/11 victims.

The enlightenment derived from this study in presidential moral clarity has fine-tuned in me a near visionary sense of wonderment: What if Dubya had been our president during WW II ("Dubya-Dubya-Too," as they call it in God's favorite state, Texas)?

You think Dubya could have swayed the Axis powers into a 21st century New Age trance? Maybe it would have spared a lot of hurt in those terrible and dark days ...

To vanquish the Italians, Dubya could have lunched with the Tuscan ambassador at a ristorante in Little Italy, sipping Chianti with his favorite fascists, all the while praising their ideology and reaching out to Benito Mussolini with 'love language – Dubya style.' After all, it stands to reason that Benito was certainly a misunderstood bloke.

Then later on, while standing under the "Hi-no-maru" (Japan's 'Rising Sun' flag), Dubya could've praised Adm. Yamamoto for his brilliant attack on Pearl Harbor, while embracing Hirohito, the God-Man-Emperor of the Imperial government of Nippon. Certainly the world had misunderstood his intentions too! Dubya's blessing might have increased their "self-esteem," a very important humanist value, as our children are now taught in America's government schools.

Notice I saved the mother of all despots till last; Adolf Hitler. Well, that's because, given enough time and effort, Dubya would've eventually won even him over! You see, the jolly old Führer was stuck on this hard-to-grasp concept of National Socialism. For whatever reason, your ordinary man on the street thought more about the next Oktoberfest than National Socialism. The German people were said in general to never really grasp Uncle Adolf's vision.

Had they only heard one of Dubya's pep rallies on behalf of 'people that act really bad and ideas that kill' ... well, hey, perhaps that vision would've finally sunk in. Then we would have had "peace in our time," to quote Neville Chamberlain as he signed away the freedom of our democratic ally Czechoslovakia to Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference.

Oh, the opportunities that are lost!

Bush's address to the Bundestag might have sounded something like this; National Socialism has inspired "countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, Integrity and morality." Followed by "National Socialism is a hopeful ideology of mercy and tolerance." Or "Nazis affirm God's justice and insist on man's moral responsibility," and finally, "The Nazis have given birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind."

And I wonder, too (or is it 'Und I vunder tu'), if Hitler would've reciprocated, praising our president, telling him that he demonstrated "the value of human tolerance, a virtue taught by Nazis and practiced here in the Fatherland."

In reality, I am perhaps less cynical than the above 'tongue in cheek' manner would indicate. Nevertheless, I yearn for a time when our leaders will give it to us straight. Are we or aren't we at war with the extreme end of a religious culture that wants us all to convert or die? While 'either' is probably OK with them, 'neither' is not an option.

Believe it or not, I still like Dubya overall and am very fond of the many peaceful Muslims in my own life, such as my personal physician, my wonderful neighbors who have live across the street from us for 17 years, and others. But these fine folks have little in common with the extremists of Islam, who are not multiculturally diverse, or tolerant, or pro-Western, or pro-human, or peaceful.

Dubya needs our prayers ... seriously. He is either exceedingly clever in his winning ways, or he utterly lacks moral clarity. I sense our president and our people need those prayers now, as much as at any moment in human history.

Ecclesiastes 10:2: "The heart of the wise inclines to the right,
but the heart of the fool to the left."

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