Bush as Macbeth

The one strange thing about Bush is this almost Shakespearean aspect of all this. Here's a fellow that spends most of his life not working in any direction towards a political future, much less the White House.

It becomes a bit like Bush doing a mangled summer stock version of Macbeth, if one looks at they way it all went.

I bear a charmed life.

Macbeth, 5. 8

He gets picked, and groomed, by the neocons/theocons as their candidate. He takes power under a black cloud, and generally doesn't impress anyone for the first nine months of his presidency.

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.

Macbeth, 3. 1

The neocon vision is failing, and there is little hope or indication on the horizon that Bush and the others will be anything more than a footnote in the history books.

Then 9/11 happens, and Bush is handed one of those one in a lifetime opportunities to take the helm and lead decisively. The neocons/theocons realize this is the chance of a lifetime, and use this new wind in their sails to launch their agenda. Bush's popularity goes through the roof (as would be expected in such a difficult time), and he decides to go into Afghanistan.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

Macbeth, 4. 1

He rides a wave of strong public support, and seems almost untouchable.

That war goes well, relatively, and up to that moment (except for not getting Bin Laden) he's at least going in a direction most Americans see as a positive thing. The great irony is that, at the exact same time, the neocons plans of attacking Iraq (proposed in 1999,and decided in March 2001) become the entire focus of this "war on terror".

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

Macbeth, 3. 2

That's where the wheels start to fly off the wagon. Deception and lies take center stage for it's rationale, and the war is badly run right from it's first moments of planning. Decision after decision (especially in regards to Bremer) pile up the odds against the troops. Although the war is won, the peace is soon lost.

The ghost of Soviet era Afghanistan appears, and walks the ramparts of the castle walls. Those insurgents in Iraq use essentially the same tactics used by the "freedom fighters" trained by the Pakistanis, and funded by the Americans.

Like in Macbeth, violent storms arrive , as if to indicate the heavens themselves are in some strange discord with events.

The Weather

As in other Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth’s grotesque murder spree is accompanied by a number of unnatural occurrences in the natural realm. From the thunder and lightning that accompany the witches’ appearances to the terrible storms that rage on the night of Duncan’s murder, these violations of the natural order reflect corruption in the moral and political orders.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/themes.html

Those in power feverishly try to wash the blood from their hands, and decry how Iraq has taken over the agenda, and blown them off their glorious course and onto the rocks and shoals of destiny.

“Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

As they get deeper and deeper into the quagmire, they refuse to see reality. They've bought their own propoganda, and are blinded to the facts on the ground. They have come to believe their own lies, and it ends their reign.

Screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.

Macbeth, 1. 7

Even though the majority of Iraqis and Americans both want the US forces out of Iraq - they continue blindly onward towards their fate.

Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

Macbeth, 1. 7

Then, just before this election, the neocons come out with their night of the long knives, and savagely attack their former leader.

They lose the election, as the trees march towards the castle walls.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.

Macbeth, 4. 1

Hours after defeat, Rumsfeld becomes the first casuality of an Informed Electorate going Democratic. Within three days, those two men who shook hands share a fate neither expected. Saddam and Rumsfeld, once a mighty king and prince, both fall from a great height.

Even within the court itself, treachery runs deep.

When President George W. Bush lobbed a barb at Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, at his press conference, "I was obviously working harder on this campaign than he was," there were notable "oohs" from the audience at the public slapdown.

"Nobody thinks that Karl is in charge of the occupation of Iraq," said Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, who has close ties to Mr Rove. "I haven't heard any complaints about him. In a conference call with conservative groups no one faulted the turnout effort."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15645686/

But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.

Macbeth, 3. 4

Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Macbeth, 5. 2

The very seed that destroyed him was planted and nurtured by the man himself, and his court. It was there from the very start, and were it not for 9/11, it would have probably never sprouted forth and captured him in it's thorns.

It's root comes from that 1999 PNAC letter to Clinton, the one signed by all those that are now in the spotlight. Seven years after being written, it's conclusion has finally been reached.