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George Bush Hosts a Tea Party
A TvNewsLIES Commentary - Jan - 2006
What is the use of repeating all that stuff, if you don't explain it as you go on? - Mock Turtle: Alice in Wonderland
And what a party it was! It actually made page ten of the NY Times, and that’s pretty impressive nowadays for anything involving George Bush’s war. Did you happen to see the guest list? Wow! Really wow!
The folks on the guest list were the most powerful and possibly the best and the brightest ever to work alongside American presidents going back nearly half a century. These dignified men and women were 13 former secretaries of state and defense, all of whom undeniably had a vast range of experience and knowledge about war and peace. They came to share what they knew. But they came to Wonderland.
Oh, what a lovely photo op it turned out to be: The Hatter, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice surrounded by history. The names were so terribly impressive: Powell, Cohen, Albright, McNamara, Schlesinger, Schultz, Haig, Carlucci, Perry, Brown, Eagleburger and Baker. They had served presidents from JFK to their present host. These were the real heavyweights of government. They came to pass on their wisdom and their expertise in a time of terrible chaos.
They came for tea, but they got baloney.
It was an all inclusive bipartisan bash. The Mad Hatter had run into really big trouble in Iraq and things were getting worse. He needed applause from all sides amid the chaos. He needed approval from people of stature amid the bloodshed. So he threw a party, and the big wigs came. How important he must have felt. Wow!
The Hatter might actually have consulted with his guests. He might actually have asked them for advice and direction. He might have actually benefited from their combined expertise, but he didn’t. Being mad, he brought them to his party to con them for nearly forty minutes. He touted his policies and his stay-the-course philosophy and entertained his guests with an upbeat assessment of his disastrous and failed war. It was truly tasteless baloney. And they refused to applaud.
Horror of horrors, Colin Powell played the Dormouse. He sat quietly, never uttering a single word. More brazenly, Madeline Albright played Alice and dared to question the Hatter about his foreign policy! Not the way to go, Alice. The Hatter was not pleased.
In fact, after his forty minute fairy tale about Iraq, the Hatter allowed less than ten minutes of questions. TEN MINUTES! Surrounded by the most experienced members of presidential cabinets in recent history, the Hatter listened to less than ten minutes of their questions and then walked out!
“We take to heart the advice,” said the Mad Hatter to those at his gathering. “We appreciate your experience,” he told them. All that was missing was a recitation of Jabberwocky, had the Hatter been more literate. Instead, he added, “We appreciate you taking the time out of your day.” For what, pray sir, for what?
A guest at the party who wanted to remain anonymous saw his host for what he was. “It would be a stretch,” he told a reporter from the NY Times, “to say he was really interested in many thoughts from around the table.” To that we add a resounding “DUH!
Even Lewis Carroll would not have dreamed up this scenario. This gathering surpassed the most bizarre moment in Alice’s Wonderland, and has consequences that will be with us for a long, long time to come. The party may have ended, but the missed opportunity will haunt this country and the world for generations.
Nothing was accomplished at this insane event, and eventually the guests went home. Men and women who had dealt with international crises ranging from the Cold War and Vietnam to Iraq itself, were sent back into their individual lives of retirement. We’ll never know what they might have said to enlighten the Hatter or to make him reconsider his Pollyanna view of death and destruction.
We’ll never know because there were no editorials in the NY Times or the Washington Post this morning about the madness of the meeting. This morning, the faux cable news networks were hyping the Hatter’s latest speech on the economy, and giving only cursory lip service to the 11 American soldiers and scores of Iraqis who died in the Mad Hatter’s senseless war yesterday. They never bothered to cover the Tea Party of the year at all.
Most Americans will never know that the Mad Hatter had less than ten minutes to listen to his invited guests about a matter as crucial as the war in Iraq. They probably will never know there was a party at all.
At any rate, the party’s over and done with. The photo of the President surrounded by his notable guests will forever be a memento for the ages.
And the Mad Hatter, secure in his world of fantasy, will continue to reign supreme.
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