“I understand now. It is not I who am crazy. It is I who am MAD!”
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on Monday ruled out the possibility that President Saddam Hussein would go into exile to avoid war with the United States and its allies.
U.S. President George W. Bush will issue an ultimatum to Saddam in a speech at 0100 GMT Tuesday, demanding the Iraqi president step down and leave the country, U.S. officials said.
Sabri called on Bush to step down instead.
“He should depart. He should go away from the presidency and let the Americans lead an ordinary life with other nations, not a life of aggression, a policy of aggression against other nations,” Sabri said.
“This policy has brought about disasters to the U.S. So for the U.S. to live properly with the world and for the world nations to live in peace, this crazy man should go.”
Sabri called the United Nations’ decision to pull its inspectors out of Iraq regrettable and a violation of the U.N. charter.
“If the U.N. secretary-general withdraws the inspectors from Baghdad … this means that the secretary-general has abandoned its own responsibility in maintaining peace and security in the world,” Sabri said.
It really isn’t fair for the enemy to make sense, is it? After all, they’re the corrupt, arrogant regime with the artificially elevated polls who destroyed their country’s economy, work to suppress dissension in word or deed, and sit upon thousands of weapons of mass destruction. Why, just the other day, they unveiled a horrible new bomb capable of killing hundreds of people, especially if dropped on a populated city.
No, wait. That was us. The Iraqis unveiled a balsa wood plane. The difference, of course, is that our MOAB is an instrument of freedom, while the balsa wood plane is evil, in fact made of balsa wood from a tree where Satan had once copulated with a virgin goat. Or something.
The Real Live Preacher has just written one of the most astute and wonderful passages on the nature of time that I’ve ever read:
I’m interested in memory because memory is all we have. We are unable to perceive the temporal singularity of the present, which is a razor-sharp edge. It cuts our experience into past and future. We understand the division, but cannot comprehend the blade.
And I imagine what it will be like when these years are all history, and we look back and have to ask ourselves if it was never a question of black against white, or good against evil, but a dark period in which two crazy men pitted their wills and the lives of their nation’s citizens against each other in a game of global chicken, while others stood around putting gas in the cars. While others decided to watch and see what happened because what else were you going to do on a Saturday night, and while others still tried to tell them to stop this madness, you’re going to get killed.
And when these people went searching for an Officer Krupke to put a stop to the insanity of these ego-driven daredevils, they discovered that none were around. That the closest thing was sitting at the wheel of the star-spangled sports car, peering over the steering wheel with vicious determination and little else glinting in his eyes.
You never want to believe you’re being led by madmen, especially since history has shown us what comes of it. You could ask the Roman Empire what happened, if there were any Roman Empire left to offer this information. As hard as it might be for a nation under a dictatorship to admit this, at least they have the fail-safe of being able to say that they didn’t choose the madman.
But we’re a democracy. And while most of us didn’t vote the Strategically Shaved Monkey into the position of Allfather, the fact remains that our system helped put him there. All of us are complicit in one way or another, which should be the beauty of democracy–that everyone is accountable.
We don’t want to believe that we’re in some way accountable if we’re led by a madman. We don’t want to believe that we were suckered that badly.
But every pigeon, every mark, has to one day look back on their life and admit that they got had. I’m not sure how long it will take for this nation to come to grips with that.
Current music: MP3 list, Suzanne Vega with DNA, “Tom’s Diner” (Remix)
Creative Control 