George’s New ‘Occupation’

My fellow Americans, I’d like to kick things off by wishing everybody a ‘Happy New Year’. I’m writing this essay in a new environment, a new continent as a matter of fact, and as I consider myself more of an ‘Earthling’ rather than simply an ‘American’, my wishes go out to anybody who happens to read these words.

At the moment, I’m in North-Eastern Australia in a town called the Gold Coast. It’s about an hour south of Brisbane, and very close to another city known as Surfers Paradise. As you can imagine (or ‘Google’ some images of these places), it’s quite a striking place in terms of natural-visual-appeal. Unfortunately, since I’d landed here, the weather has been in somewhat of a tropical rage, with unpredictable massive rainfall coming and going all-day every-day. Anyway, yes… new environment, new continent, a new vibe (mostly positive for the time being), and at the starting-point of a new year.

With that said, there is a good reason as to why I began this post with the phrase ‘My fellow Americans’ and not ‘My fellow Australians’ or ‘My fellow Earthling’ for that matter. Firstly, if you choose to read-on, you will come to grips with the obvious topic of this essay - The ‘U.S of A.’ & ‘The Occupation in Iraq’. Secondly, the aforementioned phrase is regularly used by George W. Bush, whom I personally consider the main villain of my political consciousness for the past 5-6 years.

So, here we are now, the present, one more year to go and George is out… We’ve (almost) finally made it! 2008 is an election year, ‘Happy New Year’ - Halleluiah! My intentions are to constantly write in the months ahead, for the most part ‘In-Shallow’ essays concerning the upcoming American elections and primaries (which are very concerning!). I won’t dig my toes into that topic now… It’s too much to handle in this essay, especially as I’m writing on ‘New Years day’. It’s like mixing too many alcoholic beverages in one drinking binge. Ironically, this is something that happens quite often on ‘New Years Eve’.

“Yes Sir Mr. Bartender, I’ll have another Whiskey on the rocks… Shit, make it a double, why not? All I’ve had up to now would be umm… *Burp… four shots of Vodka, two pints of Carlsberg, and a few Margaritas… *Burp… oh, and those three bottles of red wine we had for dinner… yeah… did I mention the rum?!?... *Barf…”

Ah… Mother of God, enough of this strange banter. This was supposed to be a serious essay on George W. Bush… Seriously! In the last few days I’ve been framing my thoughts around this subject, and here I am going off on some kind of nonsensical jabbering about the effects of irresponsible drinking binges and vomit. Enough said!

As I was framing my thoughts (seriously), I tried to look back and figure out precisely when the ‘Last-Straw’ was drawn between me and George, but it was difficult to pin-point the exact date or event that changed my feelings from ‘We probably would have been better off with Al Gore’ to ‘I hate that lying hypocrite’.

I was amazed to hear that even now, with George’s approval ratings comparable to fat percentages in ‘Lite’ Cream-cheese, he is still the ‘Most admired man in the World’ - at least according to the USA Today/Gallup annual survey. Of course, since the polls are completely open, asking Americans which man and woman “living today in any part of the world do you admire most?” it’s not much of a surprise that the U.S President keeps winning this title year-after-year. When you can vote for absolutely anybody from Toby McGuire to Osama Bin-Laden, it’s no coincidence that the ‘Leader of the Free-World’ keeps finding his name on top (this year with only 10% of the votes, the lowest in his six year winning streak).

When your job description includes being ‘The Most Powerful Man in The World’, people tend to (a) know who you are, and (b) respect you even if they don’t agree with a single thing that you’ve done. But even Toby knows that with ‘Great Power’ comes ‘Great Responsibility’ (as do all you Spider-Man geeks out there). When you have the most powerful armed forces in the world, combined with the largest number of the most destructive weapons known to mankind at your disposal, responsibility is crucial.

This talk of ‘Last-Straws’ and ‘Responsibility’ takes me back a few years, May 1st, 2003 to be exact, the day that George made the (now) infamous speech on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln, somewhere in the Persian Gulf. George was in a celebratory mood on this day as he declared an end to major combat in Iraq, with his memorable quote - “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed“. I remember being somewhat happy on that day as well, the thought that ‘The War’ was finally over and that at last we can exhale as our fellow Americans return to their homes. As the speech went on, George mentioned that - “Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home and that is your direction tonight. After service in the Afghan and Iraqi theatres of war… you are homeward bound”. As we all know, reality had a different idea, and now, almost four years later, it’s quite likely that the next American President will inherit this war.

Of course since ‘The War’ is officially over, we must redefine the terminology used in reference to Iraq. Let us not be duped by semantics. The main goals, used to justify the Iraqi invasion, were to oust Saddam Hussein and free the Iraqi people from his totalitarian regime, and to eliminate the threat of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ falling into the wrong hands and/or being used against us. Now, both George and I agree that we have already accomplished these goals. Saddam is long gone, and the ‘Weapons…’ - Well… Let’s just say that they’re no longer a threat.

If it would help in any way, I would begin to point out similarities between ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ and ‘The Vietnam War’. I could also list a few ‘Other’ reasons for the initial Iraqi invasion, but I don’t want to go to great lengths on this matter. There’s really no point. By now you are either with me or against me. What I wanted to point out is that it was Richard Milhous Nixon who eventually brought our troops back home from Vietnam, and when Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968, ‘Ending the War’ was the central issue in those elections. History teaches us that indeed it was he who brought our troops back home, and ended the war. It took him about five years to deliver on this promise, but that’s another story altogether. By the way, I’m not much of a ‘Nixon Fan’, but now is erm… Definitely not the time to go to any length about that one… (Remember the correlation between irresponsible drinking and writing?)

In the upcoming 2008 elections, there are many other important issues besides ‘Iraq’, but none of them are quite as important in my mind. It’s a question of approval, and whether or not the American people really want ‘Change’. With that said, depending on which individual will become the next American President, there’s still no telling when this atrocious occupation will end.

And when will this atrocious essay end? When indeed! I’ll just finish it off on a personal high note; no-matter who will win the elections in 2008, it won’t be George ‘Occupying’ the ‘Oval Office’ in January 2009.
Halleluiah!