What Could Have Been

"Of all the words of mice and men,

The saddest are . . . ."

George W. Bush's greatest accomplishment, without a doubt, could have been the historic invasion, conquest, and reconstruction of Israel as a democratic society.

We all recall how proud Bush was on 11 September 2003, when he declared an end to hostilities after five months of fierce fighting against fundamentalist factions of the Israeli military, radical militias formed by Orthodox rabbis, and die-hard settlers from Brooklyn and Russia. Yes, there was a terrible cost in American lives; nearly 20,000 US soldiers, sailors and airmen died following the amphibious Marine landings on Easter Sunday, 11 April 2003. And yes, sadly, hundreds of thousands of Israelis perished in the devastating carpet bombings of Tel Aviv, and other major Israeli cities, in what was the greatest "Shock and Awe" campaign since the German blitzkriegs of the Second World War.

But it was all worthwhile. It was worth the price of admission just to see the photo of Bush and Blair standing with the first Palestinian members of the interim Israeli cabinet. There they were, shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli communists and Labor Party leaders, almost all disciples of Yitzhak Rabin, the man Ariel Sharon had assassinated, in what was the first step in his diabolical scheme to launch the worst assault on human rights the world has ever seen.

For months the US government secretly planned the war on Israel, which came as a tremendous surprise to the general public. But in 2002, the CIA acquired from its spies documented proof that Israel had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, which it was using to blackmail its Arab neighbors.

It goes without saying that popular support for the war gained momentum immediately following the 16 March 2003 murder of American activist Rachel Corrie, an event that sparked international outrage and calls for justice. But the turning point in public opinion was the horrific news, released a month later by the 9/11 Commission, on Palm Sunday 2003, that the Israeli MOSSAD was behind the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.

Jews Flock To The Defense of America

Traditionally, American Jews have felt a greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States, which they rightfully consider inherently anti-Semitic. But then came the divine revelation on 22 March 2003, that the MOSSAD had recruited, in a traditional false-flag operation, the Saudi Arabian stooges who, thinking they were working for al Qaeda, carried out the MOSSAD-planned and executed attacks on the World Trade Center (and maybe the Pentagon--the 9/11 Commission still isn't clear on that.)

The response from American Jews was unprecedented. While thousands of US military personnel were dying in the invasion of Israel that quickly ensued, a noticeable percentage of Jewish students dropped out of law school and medical school to enlist in the military. At the expense of their own cherished financially rewarding careers, they accepted pauper's pay to fight and die for their adopted country, the United States of America.

The spectacle of Jewish American princes and princesses fighting alongside poor White trash and disenfranchised Afro-Americans generated an outpouring of patriotism from Jewish pundits like Michael Ledeen, William Safire, Alan Dershowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and even Larry King. Hollywood filmmakers Jerry Bruckheimer and Steven Speilberg donated substantial tax-deductible portions of their billion-dollar estates to produce propaganda films extolling the virtues of public service. For once, their movies featured villainous Israelis and oppressed Arabs.

No one could believe it at first, but this spirit of fellowship soon spread throughout the land. "No more divided loyalties" became the catch phrase offered up by Henry Kissinger.

Furthermore, Bush, as he has often said, could not have won the war against Israel without the full support of Jews within his administration. People like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Elliot Abrams deserve special credit for putting their personal agendas aside and, for once, doing the right thing. When the FBI discovered that the MOSSAD had recruited hundreds of thousands of naive Jews across America as spies (including many students, members of the JDL and Anti-Defamation League, as well as many elderly female members of seemingly innocuous mahjong clubs), it was these upright Administration officials who organized the massive Homeland Security effort to roll up the MOSSAD cells and place the traitors in secret detention centers. To this day, no one knows how many hundreds of thousands were incarcerated, though statisticians make estimates based on the drop in the online purchase of Angora-Rabbit thermal underwear and other Israeli-made products.

Without the help of a vast majority of Jewish Americans, a resistance movement could never have been formed within Israel, either. Bush would never have won his great victory without the help of the secular Israeli peace movement, which, at the request of American Jews, graciously stepped aside and allowed the US military to slice and dice the Likud-led military. They also helped the CIA's death squads locate (without any bounty being offered) Ariel Sharon's inner circle of corrupt and murderous thugs.

Reconstructing Israel

Finally, on 11 September 2003, freedom and equality were granted to three million Palestinians. Bush's triumph was sealed by the dismantling of the settlements, the restoration of ancestral homes, the replanting of ancestral groves, and a monetary payment of $1 million to each Palestinian. It was the only way of setting right 55 years of massive human rights violations by successive Israeli regimes that denied health care, education, and all other basic human rights to the most oppressed people on earth. Bush's moral courage and political sacrifice gained the US gained so much goodwill within the global community that the United Nations voted unanimously to write off all of its outstanding dues.

The pacification of Israel extended into early 2004, with CIA paramilitary teams mopping up pockets of Likud-led resistance. Israelis on the CIA payroll helped hunt down, capture and kill the top members of the brutal Sharon regime, whose ugly mugs were displayed on a deck of 52 death cards that featured war criminals and war profiteers like Benjamin Netanyahu.

US Special Forces commanders announced the end of pacification operations in April 2004, with the capture of Ariel Sharon in a brothel in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dressed in one of his six hundred Gucci suits (Bush proudly keeps a salmon pink suit at the White House, on a wax figure of the despised Israeli dictator), Sharon, like Imelda Marcos, was unrepentant. He felt he had every right to profit from the exploitation of the Palestinians, because "They are all sub-human terrorists who should be treated like the dogs they are."

The tears finally came to his eyes, however, when Attorney General John "The Baptist" Ashcroft announced that billions of dollars of Sharon's hidden assets had been seized in Swiss and other banks around the world, and would be used to finance the reconstruction of Israel. All the property Sharon had seized for himself and his cronies was returned to grateful Palestinians. His war crimes trial promised to be the climax of the entire campaign to free Israel from its fundamentalist, corporate rulers. But then the axe fell.

Hersh Again

There is no one George W. Bush despises more than Seymour Hersh. Bush was sitting on top of the world, and then the CIA passed to Hersh audio and video tapes of what US interrogators and prison guards were doing to Jewish detainees in Israel and America. It was Hersh's biggest story since the My Lai Massacre, and once again, Americans were sickened and disgusted with their leaders, especially Bush.

The first tapes, released on the internet, were awful, but by no means the worst. The very first had been taken inside a MOSSAD safe house, formally used to torture Palestinians. The photo showed an Afro-American female soldier astride a radical, Orthodox rabbi. She was whipping his bare naked butt with a gold cross (leaving awful red marks in his skin) and making him repeat the Lord's Prayer. Such ghastly forms of degradation were found to have been approved by Bush after his legal counsel, Mr. Gonzalez, advised him that "the administration or application of procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the personality" were perfectly legal.

There were dozens of Israelis being treated in this religiously debasing manner in the basement of the safehouse: Some, while ridden by civilian interrogators, were being made to bray like donkeys or oink like pigs. One of the contractors was wearing a cowboy hat and was overheard saying, in a Texas drawl, "Bush wants us to corral all you little (obscenity deleted) and head you into the last round-up."

The horror!

Subsequent videotapes showed Arab-American interrogators committing other ghastly atrocities on Jews, such as forcing non-kosher food down their throats. The half-starved, agonizing victims often gagged and died. One poor woman was heard to scream, "My cabana! My cabana! My cabana on the Joisy coast for a Nathan's hotdog!"

One poor man was shown laying on his back with his yarmulke covering his private parts; a smiling CIA officer was pulling it back and snapping it. "Oy!" the man shouted in pain and humiliation.

You have all, by now, seen on the internet the other damning audio and video tapes that came pouring out. And as we all know now, it was Bush himself, on the advice of Gonzalez and Supreme Court Justice Scalia who ordered the cultural-religious torture of Jewish detainees, to the horror of the civilized world.

The degradation was profound, both to the torturers and the tortured. But was it necessary? Of the tens of thousands of Jewish detainees, most were common criminals. Only a few had connections to the insurgents.

Reversal of Fortune

Such divergent political personage as Pat Buchanan and Jesse Jackson tried to minimize what had been done, describing it as "nicer than what Hitler did," or "they had it coming," respectively. Others said the use of torture was necessary for national security.

But when Hersh revealed that Bush had a personal grudge against Sharon (for having cheated his father in a real estate deal back in 1990) and the Jews in general (a legacy of his grandfather having lost huge investments in Nazi Germany), and had pushed the country into war for personal reasons, there was no stopping the backlash. Riots erupted in Brooklyn and Florida, and Henry Waxman, while urging Congress to impeach the once popular unpresident, called for calm.

Reminded of their persecution of Clinton, the Senate Republicans balked at first. But when their re-election campaign coffers started drying up, they abandoned Bush too. But it did them no good. They would have to answer to the American people.

The political damage spread like wildfire. Having supported the war, John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, withdrew from the election. Then Hersh revealed that VP Dick Cheney had secretly arranged kickbacks to almost every senator and Congressman (Dem and Rep alike), through sweetheart deals with his company, Halliburton. Six of the nine Supreme Court justices were caught with their greasy fingers in the cookie jar. Scalia was shown to be the Papist ringleader.

Having witnessed the decline and fall of his family's dynasty, George W. Bush called a national press conference and, in his last official act, confessed his sins and executed himself on national TV with a lethal injection of Texas crude.

The federal government having collapsed, the Pentagon joined with the governors of every state and agreed on a national referendum in which Ralph Nader, a Lebanese American, was voted President of the United States. Nader nationalized all the major oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, and television networks. He broke up all the defense monopolies, like Halliburton, and enforced environmental laws. In short, he sank the ship of state.

The blighted nation rejoiced once again, as people of all religions, classes and sexual proclivities joined hands in peace. At least, that's what could have been.