You know what, it’s hard to get your head around what they are really trying to get your head around these days.
Who, for example, is Jeb Bush? What was he doing in Indonesia, walking around in sloppy trousers behind Colin Powell?
Who, indeed, is Colin Powell? Isn’t he the guy who spent days at the United Nations building in New York, arguing that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and therefore a United States/British/Australian invasion was necessary? Is it not true that these sincerely argued weapons were never found?
Is he not the same cat that authorised the slaying of thousands of Iraqi conscripted soldiers in 1991 in the Arabian desert as they attempted to retreat, under the Geneva Convention, back into their own country? That’s right, conscripts. Involuntary forces of Saddam Hussein’s army, initially bankrolled by the CIA.
So, anyway, as I say, who is Jeb Bush? They are telling me he is the governor of Florida.
I used to have a brother-in-law who lived in Miami, Florida. I used to know a schoolteacher from Cameroon who tried to ply her trade in Florida. Jeb Bush never made a ripple (pardon the expression) that this ex-brother-in-law or the schoolteacher I am referring to would have been aware of. Both of them have asked me to leave their names out of this story, for personal reasons.
So in the midst of the festive season, when all hatchets would have been expected to have been buried, our televisions are filled with tidal waves — not just of disaster situations (of which there are plenty, believe me) but of Jeb (sic) Bush and Powell flying into Indonesia and Thailand and other unfortunate countries to give succour and sympathy in a situation that has nothing to do with them. Tony Blair too. And his henchperson-in-chief, Jack (“is-that-the-pub-on-Hampstead Hill?”) Straw.
The West has strategically got its haunches deeply embedded in the tsunami. Ready or not, here we come. We are wide enough to deal with it.
So, philosophically, how wide is Jeb Bush? Who is Jeb Bush? If Powell is getting ready to jump the Dubya ship at the end of the month, as he says he is, why does he need Jeb at his elbow as he strides out and pronounces amazement and fascination at the power of the legendary, non-man-made Asian tsunami? If he’s out of there, why is he still deep in? What is he doing on our televisions?
These, I know, are tough and difficult questions — even dangerous ones. Nobody asks us to question the presence of Jeb in Indonesia, Thailand, or other parts of the unsuspecting Indian Ocean Basin, at the shoulder of latter-day buffalo soldier Colin Powell. He, like his brother in the White House, is a fact. That’s how it is. Get used to it.
But I have to try to explain these things to myself. I put it like this. Powell has staged a strategic retreat — he’s a soldier after all — and is bound to come bouncing back in the not too distant future as a credible presidential candidate for the Republican Party. That’s what soldiers do, when the chips are down — or even when they aren’t. Shoot, and then, if necessary, retreat.
The incredible tsunami that swept more than 150&nsbp;000 people to their deaths across countries bordering on the Indian Ocean in the space of a few hours came, if you’ll pardon the expression, like a godsend to the strategically retreating Powell and his doppelganger George.
One almost felt a frog of sympathy leaping into the throat when Powell climbed out of a helicopter, having flown over devastated Aceh in Indonesia, and announced that he had never seen anything like it in his life (who had, anyway?).
Jeb was climbing out of the helicopter right behind him, trying to keep a pious frown in place. “Great God almighty,” was the collective sentiment tumbling out of the flying machine, surrounded by bodyguards who couldn’t give a damn about anything, staring dangerously into the middle distance with dark glasses and wired ears in place, hidden machine guns ever at the ready. “God sure showed these people something down there. We hope to heck we can help them sometime, somehow.”
It was a godsend because, given the world media’s sycophantic devotion to following superstars into disaster areas, it allowed the beleaguered, media-challenged Washington regime to look like the good guys for a change. For once the devastation could not be laid at their door.
Forget a million civilian Filipinos killed in a US invasion at the dawn of the 20th century. Forget a similar number of civilian Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and others killed in the 1960s and 1970s with napalm, bullets and bombs. Forget Angola. Forget the tsunami-scale civilian cost of recent invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq (“I’m a war-time president,” says George defiantly) with its shocking cost in lives, broken minds and permanent disabilities of other kinds. Half of these casualties, as ever, are the children. In fact, forget a lot of other covert stuff that happens across the Third World.
So we sit back in wonder as we watch Colin and Jeb reclaim the moral high ground on behalf of George in the wake of a natural catastrophe. For once they are able to say that God did it, not us.
I think we were almost fooled. But not quite. In one swift Boxing Day blow, the unexpected wrath of the gods embedded deep beneath the skin of the Indian Ocean washed them clean — like the blood of the lamb.