Because Dubya Said So!
Why prolong this insidious war? Gouge the economy? Rape the
environment? Only one retort left

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, June 23, 2004


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It's somewhere around 1977 and I'm about 10 years old and I'm up past
10 pm watching juicy riveting prime-time "Magnum, P.I." (or whatever),
and of course right at that moment I want nothing more from the
universe than to stay up another hour and watch even more TV so as to
feel, you know, older, and wiser, and somehow cooler.
And right about then my mother walks in and says hey kiddo, time for
bed, and I plead and whine and protest and say no no no please please
please why why why, and she says, slightly exasperated and motherly,
well, because I said so.


She had her reasons, of course. After all, you gotta set some ground
rules, gotta establish the boundaries and make the wee ones understand
that the world ain't always full of clear explanations and justifiable
details, and sometimes you, as the dumb oppressed plebe, you just
gotta shut the hell up and do whatever the elders say because, well,
they said so.

You loathed that line then, and you'll hate it even more now.

Yes, the line has returned with a nasty vengeance. Let us watch as
this all-encompassing mantra of childhood, this absolutely invidious
comeback line you simply are not allowed to question, let us watch how
it mutates, in a twist of raging egomania, into the Bush
administration's most bestest catchphrase du jour.

Let's watch, for example, as the bipartisan 9/11 commission -- the one
that Bush finally, reluctantly, whiningly, after nearly three years,
agreed to allow to exist at all -- let's watch as they emerge after
months of investigation with a report that declares, once again and
for the 500th time, that there was no collaboration whatsoever between
Saddam and al Qaeda in the 9/11 attack. Duh.


Of course, when the 9/11 commission's report came out, BushCo was
quick to reply: Um, well, we never actually claimed, you know,
verbatim or whatever, that 9/11 was orchestrated by Saddam and al
Qaeda, you know, together.

Except, of course, yes you did, Dubya. Repeatedly. Ad nauseam. In this
very memo to Congress, outlining your reasons for leading America into
this brutish hellpit. And also on just about every newscast and
interview and mumbled speech, hint and gesture and Dick Cheney's
pallid snicker, all resulting a huge majority of misguided and
fear-pummeled Americans who honestly believed not only that Saddam had
a role in 9/11 but also that he pretty much piloted those doomed
planes himself, and that's why we needed to blast the living crap out
of his ****-poor nation and earn ourselves huge gobs of global scorn
while generating more anti-U.S. hatred among terrorists than Osama
could have ever dreamed. Go, team!

Oh but here's Dubya, in an AA-grade bout of denial, summing up the
entire point quite nicely: "The reason I keep insisting that there was
a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there
was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

See? That's all you need to know. There was a connection because I say
there was a connection. We stomped into war for justifiable reasons
because I say there were justifiable reasons. Nearly 1,000 U.S.
soldiers have died for my oily and ultraviolent petrochemical
corporate cronies because I say they should die. End of story and off
to bed now, you little punkass American suckers.

And lo, "Because I said so" spreads like an ugly rash through BushCo's
increasingly teetering, imploding administration, as they desperately
cling to any tattered shreds of whatever the hell it was that they
claimed was the original reason that they shoved this nation into an
economic tailspin and launched us into a brutal, violent, unwinnable
war that, by most every measure, we've already lost.

Why continue this hideous, bloody invasion that is failing on every
front? Because we said so. Why continue gouging the economy like pigs
in a trough? Because we said so. How can raping the Clean Air Act and
increasing logging in national parks and rolling back 30 years of
environmental progress and dissing the Kyoto treaty and molesting the
planet in the name of massaging the testicles of your corporate
cronies in Big Oil and Big Industry possibly be healthy for the
planet? Because we said so.

How can hacking away at women's rights and endorsing homophobia in any
way progress the evolution of the battered human soul? Because we said
so. How can banning stem-cell research possibly be anything but a
nasty and ridiculous and harmful decision that only strokes the bloody
Bible of your wildly ignorant right-wing Christian voting bloc? You
guessed it -- because we said so.

America is still on track and headed in the right direction despite
all violent, ugly, soulless proofs to the contrary? Because we said
so. Why do I, Geedubya, lie my Texas a-- off and say I never really
met that Ahmed Chalabi guy and barely know who the hell he is, even
though I had personal meetings with him and loved him like a drunk
frat brother and championed him as the great swarthy hope for Iraq for
like, a solid year? Because I said so.

And now please shut the hell up and quit shoving all those innocent
dead Iraqi women and babies and all those disgusting pictures of
U.S.-approved rapes and sodomizations and murders and tortures from
Abu Ghraib in my face, OK? After all, those pictures don't even really
exist. Why? Simple: Because I said they don't.

It is the new Bush doctrine. Screw proof. Screw validation. Screw the
U.N. and screw Europe and screw your damn 9/11 commission and screw
every hunk of lingering logic and humanitarian reasoning on the planet
and screw, finally, the notion that we need to justify our actions to
anyone, least of all the dumba-- American public, you who've swallowed
every lie so far like Jenna swallows her 10th Coors Light.

Because I said so. It is the final comeback line. It is the only line
that still holds, given how we have been awash in so many outright
lies and fabrications and bogus Orange Alerts and flagrant misprisions
it would make Richard Nixon cheer. It is the last twitch of Dick
Cheney's political sneer, the darkening blackness in Rummy's eyes, the
last spasm of Condi Rice's comatose credibility, the only pathetic
shield BushCo has left.

(BushCo Fun Comparison: 1) Budget allotted the 9/11 commission to
investigate one of the most horrific atrocities in American history:
$15 million. 2) Budget allotted Ken Starr and his flying monkeys
during the GOP's appallingly nasty effort to crucify Bill Clinton
because he had mediocre oral sex in the Oval Office: $70 million.
Just, you know, FYI.)

But the amazing thing about BushCo's line is how quickly it can turn
from a cheap escape route into a sort of desperate prayer, a final
gasp of hope that their regime's insidious policies will somehow see
them through into a second term, despite the enormous wake of
destruction and bile. We'll win because we said so! We'll be admired
by those who now scorn us because we said so! We'll cling to our power
like desperate monkeys on meth because we have no other choice!

At which point America will stomp into the room and check the clock
and realize, oh my God, little Dubya has been up way, way past his
bedtime, and has clearly become far too whiny and bitchy and
destructive and needs to be put to bed, pronto. Why? Simple: Because
we, the Bush-sickened voters, will finally say so.