Sunday 23 March 2003

God Damn You

by Alan Bisbort

...and I mean that sincerely, George W. Bush.

Far be it for me, a sinful man who has backslid more times than Robert Downey Jr., to personally single you and your murderous cohorts out.

I gladly defer to Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama and Jimmy Carter and the Pope, more conversant in things scriptural or theological than I, or any of your unenlightened inner circle, will ever be. I will let them speak the truth, as far as any of us can know it here on this earth. To a person, they condemn your most unholy and unjust of wars in Iraq.

Pope John Paul II, 82 years old and almost too frail to muster the energy needed to combat one such as you, George W. Bush, said this on Tuesday: "Those who decide that all peaceful means that international law makes available are exhausted assume a grave responsibility before God, their conscience and history."

The Pope also said that he will not shut down the Vatican's embassy in Iraq during this war.

So, now you can have at the old men in their vestments and the nuns in their blood-stained habits, and all the huddling, shivering civilians who will, no doubt, try to take refuge at the Vatican's embassy in Baghdad. That is, what will be left of the embassy after your Blitzkrieg has suitably shocked and awed your presumed enemy. It's your God against their God, one on one, for the World Championship. Meanwhile, Osama, who's got a ringside seat, is having an animated and happy discussion with his God. He and his cadre of demented religionists can't wait to take on the winners.

As we have seen in your snubbing and then harassing (through Republican brown shirts) veteran news reporter Helen Thomas, you do not like to face 82-year-old truth tellers, do you, George W. Bush?

You are still the little impetuous and impulsive frat boy, still that D Student from the Skull and Bones Club, still the family Black Sheep, still the shakedown artist and flim-flam man, still the coke hound and party animal, let loose on the ultimate dance floor: worldwide Armageddon, at least as your feeble brain understands these theological matters.

Just as your concept of a Creator bears no resemblance to mine (or to the Pope's or to Tutu's, Carter's, Mandela's, etc.), your fantasy of heaven -- with "good" Americans like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott but not "bad" Americans like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X or Henry D. Thoreau sitting around shooting the breeze for eternity -- is not one I would wish on my worst enemy. And your idea of a "just" and "holy" war has cost all humanity some precious part of their soul. It will, if it hasn't done so already, poison forever America's great tradition of democracy, America's role as a beacon of hope in the world. To use an appropriately twisted metaphor, the virginity of American ideals have been brutally gang-raped by a cadre of unelected ideologues. This coupling will result, nine months hence, in a monstrous offspring that will slouch toward Bethlehem to be emitted from betwixt quivering gams, a black oozing thing that will drip its hate-filled goo for the next hundred years.

So, as the Pope implied, God damns you, George W. Bush.

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