So with our new International Overlord’s inauguration coming on January 20th, I figured it only fitting that I should dedicate a small piece to the current Inimitable (well, except for by Frank Caliendo) Overlord… George W. Bush!

Bush’s term  in the White House has certainly been a wild ride (for the entire world!), and again, much like Nixon, he most certainly hasn’t apologised for anything that might be perceived by some as ‘wrong doing’. Righteousness in a leader as powerful as the US president is a dangerous trait. But hey, why linger on what he did or did not do in office, let’s focus on some of the fantastic things he’s said over the years!

The BBC have a great collection, featuring such gems as:

“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”

“And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and [Tony Blair] read it.” – On the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, Washington DC, 7 December, 2006.

… Yeah. Mandatory IQ/aptitude tests for all incoming incumbents? (As an aside on US presidents, and other positions of leadership, some guy has worked out that being US president has the highest chance of  ‘death in the workplace‘, by quite some margin!)

Moving swiftly along because if we’re honest everyone’s bored to death of Bush — The 2008 Darwin Awards! For people that have never heard of the Darwin Awards, they are trophies (well, not REAL trophies, for reasons which will soon be obvious) that are awarded to people that through some ‘quirk of fate’ (i.e. moronic stupidity) remove themselves from the gene pool. Darwin’s survival of the fittest in action. It’s basically just a list of people that have died in very stupid ways, that through schadenfreude (gotta love the Germans) make us feel a lot better about ourselves.

I’ve copied the shortest one here (because you really should just read through the awards):

“Darren was dumb even for a junkie, but what he lacked in IQ he made up in creativity. In the supermarket, he notice a bag labeled “Birdseed 100% Poppy Seed.” He seized his chance to circumvent the stranglehold of the International Drug Cartels with the following logic: 100% Poppy Seed = 100% Opium! Figuring he was onto something good, he bought a bag of birdseed, boiled it into a thick black paste, and proceeded to inject it into his vein.Nothing happened, so he did it again.

An hour later, he was brought unconscious to our Emergency Department, as sick as it is possible to be. His chest X-ray showed thousands of tiny seed-like objects scattered throughout his lungfields. Our working diagnosis was Milary Tuberculosis, so-called because the TB deposits resemble millet seeds. Little did we know!

Only two weeks later, after he recovered from life-threatening septicaemia and multiple organ failure, did the true story emerge. Darren survived, but subsequently died of a garden variety overdose.”

Okay, that wasn’t as short as I thought it would be…

We’re almost done with stupid things, but I thought I should at least try and talk about something stupid that’s happened to me… you know, to bring it home. Now, it might come as a shock, but I don’t often associate with stupid people, so it took me a while to remember an instance of stupidity, but then I simply thought back to my short trip to the Deep South, in the Appalachians, near Atlanta (the same trip where I had my very own ‘Save The Cheerleader, Save Seb’s Libido’ experience…)

I’ve had a last-minute change of heart, so I’m going to gloss over that little story, because I really don’t know who’s reading this. I’ll save it for my memoirs. Needless to say, it was delightfully American, slightly charming, and 100% stupid.

Finally: Nigerian Bikers’ Vegetable Helmets.

I’ll start with something most people don’t know about me: I can’t drive.

(This will seem like a total non sequitur, but hang in there, I’ll deliver the goods, trust me.)

I’ve driven rally cars at high speed down treacherous dirt tracks. I’ve competitively raced quad bikes. I’ve taken a Dodge Viper to almost half the speed of sound.

But… I don’t have a driving license. A little odd, considering I once dreamt of being the world’s greatest rally driver.

The question that everyone inevitably asks is ‘Why don’t get your license?’ I’ve even owned and insured 3 cars in the vain attempt that it would spur me on to take my test. It didn’t. I’ve taken numerous driving lessons, and even passed my theory test… but still, 8 years on, I still haven’t taken a single driving test.

Why?

Because I always meet interesting people on trains and planes. There are other reasons, like the running costs and how fat I would get if I drove everywhere. No doubt, the benefits probably outweigh the inherent problems of having to get trains, planes and taxis everywhere.

However, if I drove a car, I would never have met Donald Rumsfeld’s chief political analyst. Neither would I have been invited to join the American secret service.

It was a blisteringly hot day in July. I’d just said goodbye to my beautiful, blonde hostess in Los Angeles and climbed into a train that would take me through some beautiful vineyards to Fresno — the armpit of America — and then onto Yosemite. Just a few seconds before the train departed, a small, wiry-haired man stumbled up the stairs into the carriage and sat down opposite me. He smiled at me apologetically as I hastily took me feet off his chair — my comfortable trip to Fresno had been scuppered by a very innocuous-looking, slightly-rotund man!

After he’d caught his breath, I introduced myself.

‘Hi.’ He nods back at me. ‘How’d you do?’ (I actually say that — sue me!)

We banter a little. I explain what I’m doing so far from home, alone; he explains why he’s on a train to Fresno, alone. He seems awfully friendly, but then most middle-aged, geeky bachelors tend to make the most of human contact when they can get it — something I have to get used to, I guess…

‘So, what do you do?’ I’d noticed he had a very expensive-looking suitcase, but that was the only hint of affluence about him.

‘I work for the government.’ He grins. My mouth forms a little ‘o’ and every muscle tenses. An awfully large number of misdemeanors from my younger years quickly flash before me. Was this really going to be the end of my short but sweet tale? He must’ve noticed my alarm because he quickly elaborated: ‘I’m a political analyst.’

I relaxed and sunk back into my oversized, supportive Amtrak chair (they’re made to be comfortable for large Americans, I guess). ‘I’m just back from the Middle East, actually.’

And so we talked, and talked and talked some more. I quickly learnt that this guy had a very serious job: to visit countries that America would soon declare war on, or were thinking about declaring war on in the future. It was his job to visit Iraq and find out if the populace would welcome an American invasion and occupation. He was there, in the Balkans, before NATO bombed Yugoslavia, calculating if the risk was worth the reward.

Who did he report to? How was he actually connected to the government? He finally opened up, a little way past Bakersfield, with the grape vines of Central Valley sliding by in a blur. ‘Donald Rumsfeld. He’s my boss.’ He grinned again, and not for the first time he looked apologetic. Humble, resigned to whatever fate he’d cast upon Iraq, and the other nations he’d visited. He flew around the world, analysed the political climate and then reported back to Donald Rumsfeld; if his findings said ‘go’, they went.

If he had reported back with different findings, Rumsfeld might never have given the command to proceed with such shock and awe. Perhaps that’s why the analyst looked so bashful and minced his words. Sitting opposite was his most loyal and unswerving ally: a man from Britain, an allegiance that had been quite severely tested.

As the conversation twisted and turned — my eager inquisition digging deeper and deeper –  I could tell he wanted to talk about different things. He was single, without kids, travelling to see his mother. He wanted to talk about his life, and how troubling it was to be responsible for so many millions of Americans, and the citizens of other countries that might soon feel the brunt of the world’s only super power.

I listened for the rest of the journey. Eventually, we came to a standstill in Fresno. He stood up and smiled properly for the first time since we’d met 3 hours ago. I don’t know if it was my awesome listening skills, or the fact that he was going to see his mother — I like to think I was at least partially to blame.

As I was gathering my bags, he begun to make his way down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs he suddenly stopped and turned around. He said my name and paused; until he had my attention, or steeling himself, who knows.

‘You know, Donald was always against the war in Iraq.’

How better to celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day than with the discussion of WAR?

I’ll let you in on a little secret, something I’m rather ashamed of: my knowledge of history is really lacking. I blame it on my schooling: basically, we studied the Romans, the Tudors, some Jurassic/dinosaur stuff… and that’s it. Seriously, I left school not knowing a thing about World War 1 and 2, or any contemporary political history. Oh, I forgot: we also studied the Normans — so, millions of years ago — then a huge gap — 2000 (the Romans), 1000 (the Normans) and 500 (the Tudors). And that’s it.

Obviously my knowledge of history has improved now, but there’s still some huge gaps from the last 500 years or so — Napoleon? I know that ended in Waterloo… I think. And there was the Crimean, but I don’t know anything about that. World War 1 was started in Serbia or something… but Vietnam? I haven’t a frickin’ clue why there was a war in Vietnam — and Burma too?

There’s a huge block of wars that occurred in colonial times, between 1600 and 1900 — not least of all the War of Independence (which I only found out was America vs. Britain recently!) Britain has been at war with Spain, the Netherlands, France… in fact, I think the only power we haven’t been at war with is the Portuguese. The colonies (i.e. everywhere except Europe) have basically been in a constant state of flux for 500 years, until the relatively-calm period of the last 50 years.

You probably know that New York was originally New Amsterdam — it was handed over to the British Empire, as part of some peace treaty with the Dutch Empire. Did you know that, after the First World War, Iraq was part of the British Empire… for more than a decade! Ah, the Middle East… for more than 2,000 years it has been the most contested part of the world. First for religious reasons, then exploration and trade, and now energy (with a bit of religion).

That’s the bit I get a little bit hung up on. History is full of war. Peace can be described as ‘the time between two wars’. Is there really a difference between terrorism (the instilling of terror within a given populace), and war? ‘Terrorism’ is usually used to describe acts by small groups upon entire nations — paramilitary, guerillas, etc. Is it any better if you declare war beforehand, and then send five guys in a B-29 to kill 100,000 people in Hiroshima?

Then we have ‘the crusades’, a rather fancy term used to connote a religious war. Crusaders are, by definition, religiously sanctioned warriors — you are killing in the name of a god. A crusade, generically, is an attack on some kind of lifestyle or ideology. You can have a crusade against drugs, or drunken behaviour, or Islam. A crusade, in essence, is righteous — its instigators firmly believe that what they are doing is right.

And therein we have a problem, because I’ve just described every war, religious or otherwise. War, from the protagonist’s point of view, is right. You don’t march into another country for fun, you do it because you must. War is a necessity for long-term survival — it is rational in that sense. (Well, OK, war — after diplomatic means have been exhausted — is rational.)

This is quite a hard thought to get your head around, but hang in there. Islamic terrorists declared war on America for ideological reasons — as an American, you probably can’t comprehend their rationale, but the terrorists believe they are right. Seriously, just as the Nazis wanted a world without Jews, they want a world without Americans. Look at it from the opposite point of view: George Bush declared war on Iraq, because he thought it was right. It’s as simple as that. The calculations leading up to that decision might be infinitely more complex, but it ultimately boils down to ‘it’s us or them’ — our way of living, or theirs.

It’s kind of funny, but obviously very sad at the same time: war will always exist. Fortunately, with the world explored and colonialism out of the way, we don’t war over land — but it was never about land anyway; it was about resources (food, slaves, oil, etc.) And guess what… (those of you that know me will know what’s coming) — until we get off this planet of ours, until we reduce the strain on our natural resources, war will always exist. We can build upwards into the stratosphere and down to the Earth’s mantle, we can synthesize materials and use ‘greener’ manufacturing methods, but ultimately we’re going to run out of resources.

Imagine for a moment: we have space travel. We can jet around from star to star, planet to planet. Can you imagine a war occurring back on the home world? No. Try to visualize the extent of the universe and the trillions of planets that can support life. Do you think we would ever need to war again? No — at least not for a very, very long time.