Bush’s Nightmare (Rant 109)

Cowboy Cookies. All their fault. Baked by First Lady Laura Bush, her own recipe, absolutely delicious, the President devours them before going to bed. Alas, this once they play the most powerful man in the world a tricky trick. As he slides gently into Morpheus’ arms, George W. Bush has a dream – nay, a nightmare, and…



Oh, Fr Frank, easy to guess. The state visit to Britain is marred by ugly demos. More and more US soldiers get killed in Iraq. Country sinks into civil war, anarchy and chaos. The economy worsens. He doesn’t get re-elected…



Nope. Wrong dream and wrong scenario. UK visit is a qualified success. Iraq stabilises. Ogre Saddam is spotted in his lair at last and ‘terminated’. The President scrapes through the next election. Not bad, eh?



Really? What’s this nightmare then?



Blacks, chiefly.



Eh? What! Bush is not a racist. You can’t pin that on him…



Sure. But over into the Pres’ incubus:



‘Mr President, Mr President, wake up! Louisiana has just announced it’s joining the Islamic Emirate of Amrika. The twelfth state to secede. You have to make a statement.’



‘My, oh, my! I’ve got me a problem. It’s against the constitution. What’s the matter with these black converts? Why don’t they like our great country?’



‘Mr President, you’ve had it coming a long time. Remember Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the basketball player? Converted to Islam from Southern Baptism. Back in ’96, he refused to stand up when they played the Star Spangled Banner. And Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, rejected Army draft. America, he declared, was ruled by Zionists, ‘really against the Islamic religion.’ And, before that, the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad. Malcom X. Louis Farrakhan demanded a separate state for black Muslims some years ago. Well, they’ve got it now.’



‘Ha! That’s the damnedest thing! What the hell! Can’t we get Colin Powell and Condy Rice to do something? They’ll dish it out to them.’



‘Sorry, Mr President. You forget you dismissed Powell after you got re-elected in 2004. Your Secretary of State now is Ariel Sharon. Everybody kept saying he might as well have held that job – so he got it. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to help much with this.’



‘By golly! My Middle East friends then. The Saudis. They’ll help. Aren’t they keepers of Muslim holy churches or something? I’ll phone my friend King Saud. Get him to put in a good word with our blackies…’



‘No, sir. Again, your memory lets you down. The Saudi monarchy was toppled years ago. All the Royal Family was slaughtered in a coup. Radical Islamists took over. Jaysh Bin Laden, Osama’s son, is now Commander of the Faithful in Arabia. And Egypt, Syria, North Africa, all the regimes of the region have either voted Islamists in or succumbed to popular insurrections. It all started with your invasion of Iraq. It radicalises everybody. They now call themselves the reborn Muslim Califfate.’



The President groans. ‘My, oh, my! It never rains but it pours. But I know what. Tony Blair. Let’s phone him. (He’s got blacks too.) The British always have an ace up their sleeve. He’ll have ideas. But it’s a little cold in here. Isn’t the heating on?’



‘No more Middle East oil, that’s why, Mr President. And Britain isn’t too reliable these days. King Charles III is Defender of the Islamic Faith. Prince William is married to a Moroccan princess. Because of the birth-rate, most of the country is now populated by Muslims. Tony Blair is semi-retired – runs Harrods’ pet shop department part-time. Takes order from boss Mohamed Al-Fayed. Specialises in poodles. Kind of a joke amongst Brits: ‘It serves him right’, they snigger.



Total despair spreads over Bush’s face. He takes his face in his hands, is silent for a while. Then he asks, wearily: ‘Is there no hope left, Herb?’



‘From Iran, perhaps, sir.’



‘Iran? The axe of evil? And nuclear programs. You kidding?’



‘No, sir. It’s about this Mahdi guy of theirs, sir.’



‘The Mad…a mad one? Amongst the ayatollahs? It figures.’



‘Not quite, Mr President. The Mahdi means ‘the right-guided one’. A kind of Muslim messianic deliverer. One who comes to rule before the end of the world. One who restores peace and justice. All Muslims believe in him, notionally, but Shias especially. And imminently. We got this promising Mahdi project going right now…’



‘But how can a Muslim Shia deliverer deliver me from my current woes, I ask you?’



‘Well, sir, it’s an idea the CIA have got. Based on this old British novel, Greenmantle, by John Buchan. A ruse German spies got up to during WWI. They got wind of Muslims in the British Empire being stirred by expectations of the Mahdi’s return. The Mahdi would mount a holy war against the infidels. Defeat them and drive them out. So, the Germans made sure a Mahdi turned up, you see.’



‘No, I don’t see , Herb. Call me dumb, but I don’t get it. A Shia fanatical holy warrior unleashing a crusade…oops, that word again - you know what I mean – this kind of guy would be pure poison, surely?’



‘No, sir. Not if he rallies the faithful to holy struggle against Sunni, anti-Shia fundamentalists in the Middle East, Pakistan, America, all over the world. (They don’t believe the Mahdi is identical with the Shia Hidden Iman, for one thing, but we won’t go into that.) Once we have divide the enemy camp, we can then rally our troops and fight back.’



‘Oh, can we? That’s great. By the way, what troops of ours are you talking about? Marines? Navy Seals?’



‘Er - Mr President, we thought of more ideological crack units. Something like Jerry Falwell. Southern Baptists. Christian Zionists. Boys from Mossad. They’d be best suited for the job to fight Muslim hordes back. Nurture back our blacks who have defected to the Emirate. Bring democracy to the Middle East…’



‘There is some error with this reasoning’, it begins to dawn on Bush. He is about to belt it out when feisty barking from pooches Spot and Barney wakes him up. As the nasty nightmare fades away, the President is hugely relieved.



‘Oh, the Lord be thanked! It was only a crazy dream. Laura, pass me some more of those Cowboy cookies, please.’