Unbelievable!

"If Iraq, in the middle of the Middle East, can build a stable democracy, it'll be unbelievable, really.”

Laura Bush is right. Although the word IF should be done up in flashing neon lights, unbelievable is the key word. It’s a brave new world, that the Bush’s envision. A utopian world where the natives merrily vote, even if at gunpoint and justice ( according to Biblical principles) pours down from heaven like manna.

Nation Building, a practice scathingly derided by Republicans when practiced by non-Republicans, has a shaky history. Indeed failed attempts at putting together countries define the boundaries of the Middle East today.

Liberia is one of the United States’ attempts to restore Freedom to slaves while avoiding the problem of tolerating them as free citizens. George and Laura, in a rather transparent attempt to dress up that horrific country to appear as an example of successful American nation building, is traveling to Liberia to draw attention to their newly elected female President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. It was “a really good, competitive and fair election." Says she, ignoring the indifference the US has shown to all African problems of late and that elected tyrants, crooks and madmen fill the pages of history books. Like Her husbands handlers, she doesn’t agree that liberal democracy in an impoverished, savage, ignorant and corrupt land does not flower as easily as the Sonora desert after a rainstorm.

Laura likes the idea of a Woman President, or at least she was programmed to say so at the Stepford institute. I have no objection either, although the notion of a women leader being intrinsically more honest, compassionate and incorruptible isn’t really supportable. I do however object to her terrifying choice of a successor (if he allows a successor) to her husband George: Condoleeza Rice. "I'd love to see her run, she's terrific" says she, sounding like an animated Norman Rockwell image.

Laura is apparently the image the administration wants you to see: a pleasant, white, Anglo-Saxon, small town, devoted wife. As such she can tell us how important it is for Alito to be treated with respect and not hint that the stunt with Alito’s wife was choreographed or that disrespect for Alito stems from his disrespect for the rights of women – or that her husband leads the greatest political smear machine in several generations. The pirate ship of state her husband pilots has become broken, bloodied and in need of some dignity. A nice female figurehead might just help; conservatively quaffed and suited, shy smile carved and painted on the wood.