|
Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Bush’s stop in Hawaii could
answer historic questionsWere President George W. Bush still a drinking man, it would be easy to understand why he is coming to Hawaii next week: To drown out questions of Weapons of Mass Destruction with Mai Tais of Mass Distraction.
Hawaii's about as far away from Iraq as you can get and still remain on planet Earth. So it's a pretty cool place to chill out when everyone's on your case about invading Iraq purportedly because Saddam Hussein was about to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on everyone else.
History is a funny thing, especially when you are trying to invent it on the fly. Democratic party stalwarts like Jesse Jackson are still trying to blame the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis on a vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And a vast conspiracy it must have been, considering a couple of million Democrats were in on it, too. If you're going to spin a landslide like the one that ousted Davis and put Ah-nold in, you'd better have Sir Edmund Hilary waiting in the wings with a couple of Sherpas.
Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton campaigned for Davis and wagged disapproving fingers at Ah-nold for his sexual peccadilloes, which is something like Al Capone and Lucky Lucianno lecturing John Gotti against the use of homicide as a management tool. I heard that Jackson and Clinton might have been in Los Angeles to pitch a new sitcom: "Eight Simple Rules for Successfully Fooling Around on Your Wife," which is funny, considering neither of them obviously grasped the concept.
CALIFORNIANS DIDN'T care about Ah-nold's sexual indiscretions because he was an actor and bodybuilder at the time he misbehaved, not a sanctimonious, self-appointed religious leader like Jackson was when he got caught with his morals down or President of the Free World and Ultimate Role Model as the other guy was.
So inventing history is tough to do. You can get away with it in the short run, but eventually the truth catches up. For instance, the true story of Custer's heroic "last stand" against a bunch of bloodthirsty savages at Little Big Horn has caught up with a vengeance. Turns out that Custer was pretty much an egocentric jerk, and not a very smart one at that. And the Indians were a civilized yet thoroughly ticked-off people. Sitting Bull would have made a hell of an NFL head coach.
The history of the Iraqi war currently is being invented. Bush's people have said so many times that he didn't actually say there WERE weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but that the capability was there, that my own recollection is getting kind of hazy about the whole WMD thing. It's kind of like the way a perfectly normal 47-year-old housewife is gradually convinced by her psychiatrist that her parents were members of a satanic cult and she took part in ritual human sacrifice.
I thought Bush said there were WMD, but maybe he said I was raised by wolves. I just don't know anymore. And even if I wasn't raised by wolves and there weren't any WMD, it IS better that Saddam is gone, right? Even if he's just sort of gone? And wasn't it Saddam who groped several women in 1975? And Osama bin Laden who ambushed Custer? Did Ah-nold lead Marines into Baghdad?
I'm glad President Bush is coming to Hawaii next week. I hope we can get this history business sorted out over a couple of Mai Tais.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
