Bad Boys
December 6, 2003
By Sheila Samples

"...don't criticize my children... or you're dead."

- Barbara Bush, Larry King Live, CNN, Oct. 20, 2003

There are few things more bewildering than the possessive - sometimes frightening - love that mothers display for their sons. It appears to be unconditional. To a mother, there's no such thing as a bad boy, especially if that boy is hers.

It must be true. In 1976, when cold-blooded murderer Gary Gilmore marched defiantly toward a firing squad, his griefstricken mother, Bessie, sobbed, "He were a good boy. He were always a good boy..."

And former first lady Barbara Bush told CNN's Larry King on Oct. 20 when discussing her president-son George, "...mothers are allowed to be proud of their sons."

Always one to speak her mind, "Bar" then sneered at the current crop of Democrats hoping to unseat Dubya, calling them a "sorry lot" for daring to criticize him. She even threatened the lives of those who might be tempted to criticize any member of her family. To her, the Democrats are booing and hissing at nothing more important than Dubya's embarrassing performance in his grade-school play after he bullied his way into the lead and then muffed his lines. Bar was indignant as she told an unchallenging Larry King that the Democrats "are running around the country knocking my precious, courageous, brilliant son."

They're not running or knocking nearly hard and fast enough for some of us, and there are millions - not just Democrats and not just in America - who look at the performance of Bar's spawn on the world stage and see siblings whose parents have ensured they face no consequences for their actions; they never owe anybody an apology, and they are not only above - but outside - the law. Bush watchers, however, see nothing precious, courageous or brilliant about undisciplined, over-indulged serial liars who keep making mess after ghastly mess and then waltz breezily away, leaving devastation in their wake for others to clean up. They see bad boys. Very, very bad boys.

Which is what made the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) gang - a cabal of criminally insane neoconservative interventionists - look closely at the Bush boys when they decided the time was ripe to "rebuild America's defenses" and establish the global empire they had been planning for almost a decade. In 2000, the final blueprint for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq was good to go. This plan, written long before 9-11, targeted Saddam Hussein for impeding "the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East." It recommended military intervention to bring about "regime change," not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Syria.

In the run-up to the 2000 presidential campaign, corporate behemoths had already made major strides in disenfranchising the rabble. The courtier press had earned a place at the right-wing table with a relentless eight-year campaign to bring down a constitutionally elected president, and easily could be embedded with the new regime. Poppy Bush and Britain's former prime minister, John Major, had long ago slid invisibly into the inner sanctum of the Carlyle Group and were poised to reap the monetary benefits that worldwide destruction and reconstruction would bring.

PNAC, mostly a crusty, flinty-hearted gaggle of Iran-Contra perps such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol and Lewis Libby, knew they would likely get but one shot at achieving world domination. The only thing lacking was a candidate who was impervious to human pain and suffering, and who viewed most constitutional laws and regulations as ploys of the vulnerable to set road blocks to progress. They needed a candidate whose lust for power and thirst for blood matched their own. When they looked around for an accomplice or, better yet, a puppet, to start the empirical ball rolling, it was only natural to consider the Brothers Bush.

Jeb was plenty bad. As the smartest of the four Bush boys, as well as a co-author of the new world order, Jeb would have been a formidable accomplice. He was Poppy's choice for president, but he had too much Cuban blood, too much Contra blood, on his hands. Besides - not that one would ever be needed in Florida, of course - Jeb had the expertise to orchestrate a coup.

Marvin was too busy handling security systems at the World Trade Center and at D.C.'s Dulles International Airport, United Airlines and Kuwait's KuwAm to worry about being president. You have to have someone you can trust in charge of security in case a bunch of swarthy evildoers come up with the idea of hijacking some airplanes and ramming them into tall buildings in the homeland.

Neil, the weakest link, was likely never even considered. Voters were still paying off the $1.3 billion Neil cost them with his boyish foray into the savings and loan business, and screwing their way to empire didn't appeal to PNAC's warmongering chickenhawks. Who knew in what direction Neil's indiscriminate hormones would compel him to lurch? For those intent on controlling the most powerful man in the world, selecting one who humps anyone in the country who bangs on his door would present a problem. Especially if that country is China where there are so many doors... so little time.

That left George, or Dubya, who was vacuous and disconnected from reality, but clearly the most dangerous of the Bush boys. Crude and brutish, Dubya ruled Texas politics with a mean-spirited, politically-driven crusade for retributive justice. Although Texas governor for only five years and eight months, Dubya revved up "Old Sparky," the Texas death machine, where 144 evil, cold-blooded killers were brought to justice under his merciless eye. It has been widely reported that he took no more than 15 minutes on a case before denying pleas for mercy. Texas justice, under Dubya, was little more than an extension of his favorite childhood game - frogs and firecrackers.

Dubya was the perfect PNAC presidential puppet. A self-admitted former drunk who wasted the first 40 years of his life in an alcoholic stupor, Dubya traded one addiction for another when he was suddenly "born again" and catapulted full-blown atop Mount Hubris and onto a throne at the right hand of God. An added benefit was that he is completely devoid of intellectual curiosity; therefore, easily influenced and manipulated. They played upon the only sense Dubya appeared to have - an overblown sense of his own worth. This was especially important after 9-11, wherein it was a simple matter to convince him that he was chosen by the Almighty, as he said himself, "To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil."

Through Dubya, PNAC's goal of world dominion merged seamlessly with the goal of "dominionism" cherished by millions of religious fundamentalists who pant for the Second Coming and beckon to Dubya from their ringside seats at Armageddon. Convinced that 9-11 was an opportunity to be "seized to achieve great things," Dubya told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation..."

Author Michael Ortiz Hill quotes S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries, who explains Bush's messianic leadership, "Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued...It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed...through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by Him to 'restore the earth to God's control,' a 'chosen vessel,' so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Things."

Such delusions might perhaps explain the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive killing, the mountain of lies and deceit that created the bloody atrocity in the Gulf, his complete disregard for the destruction of innocent life, his lack of an exit strategy in Iraq, his continuing threats against Iran, North Korea and Syria in spite of growing insurgency throughout the region. As PNAC's bad boys and attendant media gear up for yet another Bush election, it is the deja vu of Good versus Evil, all over again.

They tell us Dubya is a wise and courageous leader whose only fault is that he reads too much John Locke and Adam Smith. Dubya is Good, they say, and they have the photos to prove it. Only terrorist supporters and evildoers would suggest otherwise.

However, those of us who read too much Aristotle recognize wisdom and courage when we see it, and have a passing acquaintance with virtue and what comprises a "just" society.

Those of us attempting to pull back from the brink of apocolypse know that Dubya is a tyrant who indiscriminately uses coercive measures such as fear, threats, violence and propaganda in an effort to force an entire nation to fall silent and accept its own demise. A leader is neither wise nor courageous when he demands that his people support murder - even genocide.

I hate to be critical, but Barbara Bush's boy is not a good boy.

He's bad. Bad to the bone.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer, a former US Army Public Information Officer and www.axisoflogic.com contributing editor.