ROLE PLAYING

The sounds from last week’s Democratic debate still ring in my ears, and I cannot forget the role played by each of the candidates. Hillary was the defensive coordinator employing the prevent defense. The one who says, “Crap, we’re leading by 11 points and there’s only 5 minutes left. As long as we don’t give up the big play, we can’t lose.” Any football fan can tell you what happens next – the other team throws one ten yard pass after another, then a guy breaks a tackle and gets 20 yards, and the next thing you know the other team has the ball and the momentum, and is driving for the game winning touchdown … with plenty of time left on the clock. All the “prevent” does is prevent a team from winning; Hillary presumably has been told that by now. In future debates, she’s going to have to stop dodging every question. Do that, Hill, and you just might win the nomination (though I don’t see you winning the Presidency).

Next, there was Barack. He played the role of the earnest, concerned political observer who noticed Hillary’s increasing unwillingness to answer questions. He was critical, but in a detached, passionless way – much like you’d expect from a professor, one of his former occupations. Still, it was probably a pretty wise tack to take because the dirty work was being done by his new ally, John Edwards. Edwards played the role of trial lawyer. He finally looked to me like he learned something from all those years in the courtroom. He went for Hillary’s jugular and, like one of Michael Vick’s dogs, didn’t let go until he drew plenty of blood. Of course, in Iowa the attacker gets as bloodied as the person attacked. But that was fine with me, since I’m an Obama guy. Seriously, though, I was impressed with Edwards. As a litigator myself, I appreciated his skills.

Next came Richardson, who I’ve decided is every sane Democrat’s second choice – or at worst third. Richardson played the Den Mother. “Can’t we all just get along?” Well, Bill, no we can’t – especially when the one ducking all the questions is cleaning up in the polls. Does Bill have a job promised to him in the Clinton Administration? I don’t think so. I think he realizes his only chance is in a brokered convention, and he’s trying to position himself as the nice guy who everyone can live with as a “compromise solution.” Pretty shrewd, really.

Then came Kucinich. He played the role of Randle Patrick McMurphy – you know, the Nicholson character in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Actually, there was difference. McMurphy was institutionalized for being crazy, whereas in fact he was sane. And Kucinich? Let’s just say the inverse applies. OK, so maybe he’s not certifiable, but I don’t think the country is ready for a guy who can talk matter of factly about witnessing UFOs, and then goes home to a wife who is less than half his age and wears a tongue stud. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see those two in the White House. Oral sex in the White House? Never.

That leaves us with two candidates – Biden and Dodd. They played the role of the owl. They’re both under 65, only a few years Hillary’s senior, but they came across as being a generation older, a generation more experienced. “Trust me,” they both said, in their best avuncular voices. “I’ve seen it all in my career. At this point, I’m the closest thing we have to omniscience. Methuselah and I.”

So what did we learn from these wise old owls? That the most dangerous country in the world isn’t Iraq. Nor Iran. It’s Pakistan. That’s what we were told during the debates. And then, as if on cue, America’s favorite General/Dictator/Fuhrer, Mr. Musharraf, declared marshal law.

Score one for the owls.

Must I describe the goings on in Pakistan today? Our beloved Mr. Musharraf, who we count on to keep the nukes out of the hands of Bin Laden, has ordered Pakistani’s lawyers, judges, and human rights activists to be beaten and incarcerated. Meanwhile, our “friend” is releasing terrorists by the score – no doubt, to make room for the real criminals, the disciples of justice

Oh, those wacky friends of ours. Sometimes they get a little carried away with their fascistic tendencies. But that’s OK. Because they have their roles to play, and we have ours. In this case, our role is Benefactor. We continue to supply our buddies in Pakistan with monetary aid. That’s right, at a time when our national debt is reaching $9 trillion and when Musharraf is beginning to resemble Mussolini on one of his bad days, we have decided to pump him up with American largesse at a rate exceeding a billion dollars a year. Man, there’s nothing quite like Christian generosity, is there?

At times like this, I guess there’s nothing else you can do than point out how strange it is to be Uncle Sam these days. Essentially, we’ve become a Thespian-Superpower. Sometimes we’re funding military dictators who violently oppress any signs of dissent. Other times, we’re saying things like “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.”

That was a quote from President Bush, back when we claimed to believe in freedom. It was thrown back at us from Harvard trained Beazir Bhutto, who now lives under house arrest under the orders of our beneficiary, Fuhrer Musharraf. When Bhutto doesn’t realize is that our roles have changed. In our current part, we’re not just playing the Benefactor. We’re playing the wise, old practitioner of real politique. The scriptwriter in the sky – or in the bunker, as the case may be – is telling us that if we push back against Fuhrer Musharraf, we’ll somehow unleash the nukes of war. For practical reasons, then, we have to actively support tyranny.

Funny, but Hitler probably had his own practical justifications, didn’t he?

When I look at this mess in Pakistan, I can’t help wondering what a country like India is thinking right now. Forget about the idea that they would ever again trust our rhetoric. How can they possibly predict what we’ll do from one year to the next? They’ll surely think back to the days when we were friends with Saddam. Or Bin Laden. Maybe they’ll even remember that James Bond movie when our hero, then played by Timothy Dalton, was cavorting about Afghanistan with a tall, dark, bearded leader of the Afghan resistance and fighting together against the Soviets. You need a scorecard to figure out who our teammates are and who our enemies are from one season to the next. Thank God there’s not this much mobility in the NFL or the NBA.

Let’s leave aside the issues of shifting alliances, rhetoric, or even morality. Let’s see if there’s a greater lesson to be learned here. I say it’s this: given how friggen fickle and hypocritical all countries are, given how difficult it is to trust what a world leader says, and given how dangerous American weapons of mass destruction have become, it is incumbent on our nation to choose our wars very, very, very carefully. We can give this reason or that reason for invading, but who is going to believe us? And when we attack another country for reasons that aren’t readily apparent, but have to be unearthed from “secret intelligence,” you can believe that the world won’t support us and our enemies will fight us tooth and nail.

Then again, maybe we don’t care. What’s another 30 or 40 thousand American casualties? And what’s another trillion or two in debt? Once you’ve made this much of a mess, it doesn’t feel like you can dig any deeper.

Of course, no sooner do I say that than I see the grizzled faces of Biden and Dodd remind me of Dante. Just when you think you’ve found the deepest circle of Hell, there’s always another one deeper still.