President Bush is so predictable! He needs a war, he desperately needs an enemy, and he wants to refurbish his vociferous threats against Evil. Who is Evil? It doesn’t matter. Once upon a time it was Saddam Hussein and his unseen stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Today it is necessary to replace the headless Saddam, and nobody is a better choice than the president of Iran.
Bush is a weakening leader, a lame duck, as they say in the U.S. Each day is one day less in power. The best way to deal with Vanishing Power Syndrome is to manufacture a new Evil. Who is better than Ahmadinejad? He looks like a perfect stereotype of a Washington-made Evil: he is from the Middle East, he is Muslim, his country has oil, he leads a nuclear program and he displays an aggressive rhetoric.
There is no better strategy for renewing power and rejuvenating the anemic Republican Party’s 2008 campaign than to remake old Western movies. The plot is the same: a gun-toting cowboy endangers a whole city trying to kill the bad guy, Evil. But after the shootout, the city can breathe easy because it has become a safer place to live.
We have to wait fourteen more months for the final chapter of this mournful period in Washington. Maybe the winds of change will blow over the White House in the next Administration, bringing more truth about the real threats for humankind: ethnic conflicts, deprivation, violence against women, racism, hunger, and, above all, global warming.
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