Fight Back

Nice work, Bush. Always good to piss off your host country just before you visit. Another cosy lecture on democracy, this time directed at China, where I hear you're due to visit in a couple of days. I'll bet they were thrilled to hear from you, and valued your wisdom on their favorite topic.

For today, though: I've noticed how your mind grabs on to a particular word, from time to time, and keeps repeating it, with emphasis, at every opportunity. Maybe they've been telling you that's the way to make the idea stick in the American consciousness: repeat it often enough and everyone believes you. The latest word is "irresponsible." I must have heard it twenty times in the past few days, from you and your chorus line. "It's irresponsible," you said yesterday, "to say I've misled the American people." Irresponsbile? Come on, Bush: it's the simple truth!

That's the new Bush administration strategy, it seems, now that you're losing the confidence not only of the American people but even the hear-no-evil Congress. Attack. Well, not such a new strategy: more of a Bush pattern, really. When in doubt, in the face of ctiticism or question, get angry and--instead of answering the question--blame the questioner. Your Cheney did a notable job for you yesterday, too, but at least he found alternatives to "irresponsible." It's "dishonest and reprehensible," he said, with his customary ominous glare, to promote these "cynical and vicious falsehoods" about the origins of your Iraq adventure.

Meantime, on the truth front, reports today of five more US Marines killed in action, and another soldier dead. Did anyone count the civilians?

On a gentler note, to complement Tuesday's "Moonset", here's "Sunrise", from the selfsame balcony:

Sunrise

Sunrise glitters, dazzling
gold in distant windows.
The soft, insistent roar
of traffic from the city.
A chill wind rises. "Le vent,"
the French poet wrote, "se leve,
il faut tenter de vivre".
"The wind is rising. We must
try to live." A line I loved
greatly in a younger day.
Now, though, in an older one,
I say, No. No must
about it. And no trying. Trying
never gets it done. Let's live,
simply, and with joy.