Scoop’s Views

Depending on how you look at the situation, Bush is half-gone or half-wasted.

Wait a minute, I guess I better clarify that. Not half-wasted as in half-drunk (he could be — he does have a history of boozing and drugging it up), but half-wasted as in his of his second term in office is officially gone.

Celebrate good times, c’mon! Just don’t celebrate too much. We still have just under half of his second term in office to deal with before we celebrate.

Forward thinking …

Once Bush is gone, though, what’s that going to bring? When I met my ex-wife, something else that’s now gone — thank God — I met her in the workplace. She and others would gripe and moan and groan and complain like a bunch of spoiled children about the Nursing supervisor. They would often say, “There’s no one that could be as bad as her.”

The one thing my ex-wife and her complaining cohorts didn’t like about the then-leaving supervisor was that she was strict. She liked things to be done in a certain way. She wanted everything neat, tidy, done properly the first time, and no slacking. Yep, she was cruel.

I got along with her fine, except when we butted heads over a few things — and they were always things that medical literature could solve, and did.

History will tell about Bush

With Bush, though, the only thing that’s going to show how bad he is, ultimately, is the history books that are still to be written about his terms in office. The books that will be written in five or 10 years.

The ones that will ultimately be published immediately after he leaves office will be suspect in my eyes, no matter what what the book says about him and his administration.

In many books, Bush will be criticized too harshly in some areas by authors wanting to bash him because their favorite programs didn’t get approved or funded to the levels they wanted. In others he will be praised too highly by authors who were rewarded or reaped benefits as a result of association with him, his administration, or something veiled.

The books that come out after the papers in his presidential library are publicly released, citing his secret and still-to-be-created secret documents, are the books that will be the ones that give a true picture of him and his administration. Sure, even then, even years after Bush is out of office, some will still want to make him and his administration look like the proverbial knight on a white horse for the country.

Many of the books published, based on his papers that will be released years from now, from his presidential library, though, are the ones where we will learn more about him, his thinking (yes, I am using that term very loosely), his reliance on opinions from Cheney, his, um, leadership (excuse me while I gag), and his game playing.

Let’s not forget his lying to the American public, lying to Congress, and lying to the troops. Lying to other countries is something every president has done, so I won’t even consider mentioning that one.

Tick, tock …

So now, with less than half of his term to go, what’s Dubya going to do?

Is he going to screw up things even more than they are? Is he going to get our military forces out of Iraq, a place where they aren’t wanted, and leave that country in a real mess?

Is he going to leave the military in Iraq, a place where they aren’t wanted, but a place that he screwed up by his wanton lies, and now, thanks to all his lies, heaped with lies, with no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), heaped with more lies, and with scores of al Quida elements and jihadists, insurgents, Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, Sunnis, and God only knows what other influencing factors are involved?

Is he going to be impeached by Congress for treason and high crimes? Nah, Congress doesn’t care about his lies, him being the reason more than 3,000 American servicemen and women are dead, or anything else. They only care when there’s oral sex involved, and the person performing it is at least 20 years your junior — and no one in Congress got any of the action. That’s what causes impeachments now. The lies that go with the oral sex are just tossed into the impeachment for good measure, it seems. Maybe Congress won’t impeach Bush because most representatives in Congress supported Bush’s plans to invade and seize Iraq, and, surprisingly, many still do. That’s simply disgusting. Supporting the troops is one thing. Supporting a lie is quite a different thing.

Is he going to resign? Nah, that would put Cheney in charge, and Cheney would go around accidentally shooting everyone!

Is he going to turn over a new leaf and become the president many hoped he would be back in 2001? Yeah, and the Pope is taking classes to become a Jew.

Twenty years ago

Twenty years ago, and yes, I think back and wonder where the years went, but twenty years ago, when his dear father was about to seize power as president of the United States, people didn’t imagine things in the U.S. declining. Actually, even though Reagan was doing a lot of stuff people talked bad about, even though there were fantasy programs being developed that most people argued against, things were fairly good.

One of those fantasy programs, known as Star Wars, for the Strategic Space Initiative, was a program launched by the late President Ronald Reagan. People said it was all fluff.

When news reports yesterday told how China had successfully, after three failed attempts, shot down one of its old weather satellites orbiting over 500 miles above the Earth, you want to know when Star Wars technology will be deployed.

Twenty years ago, you didn’t think about the garbage that was yet to come, especially from the likes of George W. Bush. No one back then would have conceived a president demoralizing the U.S. military in one term, lying to the people on countless occasions, and getting the country into conflicts in so many places that people simply do not want to enlist in the military.

Looking ahead

I don’t want to be, and I won’t be like my ex-wife and the people she sat with, cackling like a bunch of geese. Instead, I will sit here and ponder what could, what may come with the next president.

Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, it seems the universe goes out of its way to prove you wrong. Just when you think things can only get better, someone comes along and shows you the opposite.

Instead of affording opportunities for negative, let’s all work together for positive change. For positive change, though, people have to work toward that goal. People have to commit to bring about a positive change, despite the challenges they may face in bringing the change.

At the end of World War II, the Japanese were fighting strong. They were committed to their cause. Intelligence reports from many of the Allied countries summed up one rule about the Japanese: that the country would never surrender, as that was a dishonor. At least one report, prepared for President Franklin D. Roosevelt by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), said the Japanese would sooner die, as a nation, than surrender.

The ultimate end of World War II came following a second bombing by the United States after the word, mokusatsu, was used by the Cabinet of Japan, issued by Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki, in response to the Allies’ demand for Japan’s surrender.

The official demand, the Potsdam Declaration, was replied to officially by Suzuki, saying that the “Cabinet had taken a stance of mokusatsu” which could be translated as either “making no comment on” or “ignoring” something.

Sadly, especially for the Japanese populace, it’s one of those words with more than one meaning, so it was truly a very poorly chosen word at a most inopportune time.

When the Suzuki issued the Cabinet’s statement, it was Japan’s media that misconstrued the meaning, telling the Japanese, and ultimately, the world, the Cabinet was ignoring the ultimatum.

It was later learned the intended message was that “official comment was being withheld pending an announcement.”

For those interested, check out The Great Mokusatsu Mistake: Was This the Deadliest Error of Our Time?^*, by William J. Coughlin, and From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War.

According to a summary, Japan attempted to get the Soviet Union to mediate a peace, but there was also great internal debate within the Japanese government over surrender. In the end, though, the intent of the Cabinet’s message was unclear to many, include native Japanese in the media, and it was Suzuki’s ambiguous wording choice the article’s author asserts, that directly led to the U.S.’ subsequent use of the atomic bomb against Japan.

That was the first time, and so far, the only time, that an atomic weapon — a weapon of mass destruction — had been used in such great caliber — to kill masses of people. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are small compared to the small weapons in the U.S. arsenal today. Though compact in size, the delivery is estimated, on the low side, to be at least 1,000 times the destruction of either of the Japanese cities with our smallest weapons today.

Taking time with those roses

As I said, I prefer to look for the nicer side of things. I prefer to try to find the good, not the bad, whether in people, animals, or society.

Looking at history, it’s easy to jump up and down, saying, nay, stating, emphatically, if you want, that things are only getting worse. Perhaps. Perhaps it’s what you are looking at or looking for, that colors skews what you see.

Go outside, find a neighbor with flowers, with roses, and take some time to smell the flowers. Check out the plants, too. Then ponder tomorrow.

In the meantime, let’s toast (I have my coffee) … Bush will be gone in less than two years! Salut!

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* The Great Mokusatsu Mistake: Was This the Deadliest Error of Our Time? (reference only) Harper’s Magazine, 1953, Vol. 206, Issue 1234, Pp. 31-40, ISSN: 0017-789X

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