The Ultimate Insult

ul⋅ti⋅mate  –adjective
1.
last; furthest or farthest; ending a process or series: the ultimate point in a journey;


By "The Ultimate Insult", I mean "ultimate" not in the usual American sense, which implies best, highest, or most extreme (often spelled X-Treme! on snack and toy packaging). But in this context, I mean "ultimate" to mean "last". And at least Mr. Bush's ultimate insult was his last insult.

As the speech began, which I only insisted upon watching to verify not that Mr. Bush was actually leaving, but that Mr. Bush was ever even there at all, and that my entire 3rd decade on this earth wasn't an episode of "Lost".

As Mr. Bush began his speech I empathized with his acknowledgment of his critics followed by a reminder that none of his critics could possibly fathom the burden he bears. And he was right. And for the first time in a long time I wanted to defend Bush. But then he kept talking.

He began to speak of good and evil, and my ears perked up because I KNEW that he had written this segment of the speech, which is as rare from modern presidents as candor or ethics. Mr. Bush acknowledged that he had often spoken of good and evil, which he further acknowledged had offended many folks. I agreed with those points.

Then Mr. Bush firmly insisted "but good and evil DO exist". I agree with that too, which may shock the president, since his preamble about his doubters was clearly meant to imply that any opponent of the invasion of Iraq must be a moral relativist who is incapable of calling even the most heinous thing for what it is, due to the insipid fear of being labeled "judgemental".

But that is a false dichotomy. Many of Mr. Bush's critics are the worst, most intellectually and morally limp of people, overly-educated, but with perpetually clean hands. But there are also people like myself and my compatriots, who are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Mr. Bush continued by saying, again with great force and clarity, "Killing the innocent for reasons of ideology is evil. Anytime. Anywhere." Again, I agree. But here is where Mr. Bush's rhetorical balance beam gave way to a pit of vipers.

In a brilliant insight into Mr. Bush's psyche, he defended himself by laying out in plain view the very worst crime he ever committed and using that crime as evidence that he understood the nature of evil. In much the same way, he used 9/11 as evidence that he was capable of "keeping America safe".

So, some sentence deconstruction is in order:

"Killing the innocent for reasons of ideology is evil."

Let's start with "Killing the innocent". Did Mr. Bush not kill the innocent? He publicly acknowledged years ago that "around 30,000" Iraqi civilians had died in the war that he started.

So, does Mr. Bush think that these people were not innocent? Or does he think that HE didn't kill them? Surely the answer is the latter. And that is the Madness of King George.

King George gave a command to start a war with an aerial bombardment upon a nation of 25 million souls that would, even in the most sparing scenario, "kill the innocent". Secretary of "Defense" Donald Rumsfeld was personally tasked with approving bombing raids that were "estimated" to kill more than 40 civilians. Mr. Rumsfeld signed every request he was given.

As a proposition of the most rudimentary logic and the most common of senses, can we not agree that giving an order to rain bombs upon Baghdad, a city of 5 million souls, with the professed intent of defeating "evil" is not itself an act of dissociative but pre-meditated murder, which is just as "evil" as any other killing?

Mr. Bush knowingly and willingly gave an order that would, among other things, "kill the innocent". If he is to be exonerated by his own logic, it could only be if he did not kill those souls for "reasons of ideology". Which raises the question, does it even MATTER why you kill thousands of souls from the air?

But, in good taste, we should conclude our indictment.

"For reasons of ideology". It is clear that Mr. Bush killed for reasons of ideology, because after the charade of "imminent threat" had disintegrated, Mr. Bush continued the killing for the sake of "democracy" or "freedom" or other things which I may be sympathetic to but are still, at their roots, ideologies.

George W. Bush gave an order that could not possibly have avoided the random killing of innocents. How many of those innocents there are does not matter. What matters is why they died.

They died, despite of their innocence, because George W. Bush personally disapproved of the ideology of their government. And so Bush is evil by Bush's own definition.

But there is the true tragedy of the Madness of King George. We can watch him do and say the most absurd and reckless and selfish things we've ever seen, and we can craft the most inspired and sincere pleas to try to alert him to his folly, but we know all along that we're only tormenting ourselves, because in the end, Bush believes in nothing but Bush.