The Newsweek portrait is very revealing.
Now we know more than ever why George W. Bush is unrelenting, why he talks in soft tones almost all the time, why not even the entire paraphernalia of the United Nations, not even Pope John Paul II can stop him from pushing the button that will unleash an initial 3,000 bombs on Iraq. He is doing God’s mission, according to the newsweekly. And so we find in the man the biblical bristle of an old mediaeval world when kings ruled by divine right, and nobody could stay their hand.
Only recently, at Opryland in Nashville, the so-called Buckle of the Bible belt, George W. Bush addressed religious broadcasters and said that "behind all of life and history there is a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God". America, according to Mr. Bush, is "encountering evil" in the form of Saddam Hussein and by inference, the US had no choice but to confront this evil, "by war if necessary".
Newsweek points out that George the Younger "assembled his career through contacts with ministers of the then emerging evangelical movement in political life". Now they form the core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first time in half a century . . . Bible-believing Christians are Bush’s strongest backers and turning them out next year in even greater numbers is the top priority of the president’s political adviser Karl Rove."
The magazine continues:
"Bush advisers know that many Americans – and much of the world – see him as a man blinded by his beliefs and to the complexities of the world as it is . . . Here was the product of elite secular education – Andover, Yale and Harvard – who, for the first time, was reading a book (the Bible) line by line with rapt attention. In that sense, Bush is a more unalloyed product of the Bible Belt than his friends. Bush found in Bible study an equivalent mental and spiritual discipline.
I had thought all along the younger Bush spent much of his youth carousing, although for a brief period in the mid-80s he was a tippler. He chased girls, of course, but in the end he quit drinking, turned his back on the life of a goodtime Charlie. "It was goodbye Jack Daniels, hello Jesus," a friend is quoted as saying. "We didn’t even know that Bush turned to the Bible to save his marriage and his family." Laura, his wife, was probably threatening at one time to fold tent, leave Dubya and bring their children with her. Dubya stopped drinking.
A later event is probably more significant. "When Bush moved to Washington in 1987 to help run his father’s campaign, he seized the main chance: To take over the job of being the ‘liaison’ to the religious right. He quickly saw that he could talk the talk as well as walk the walk . . . As a candidate, Bush sought and got advice from pastors, especially leaders of new nondenominational ‘megachurches’ in the suburbs. His ideas for governing were congenial to his faith and dreamed up in his faith circles."
This is a new Bush. He emerges from Newsweek’s half-shell as a cassocked reverend more than a fire-breathing politician. Holy water is splashed on his front-shirt, certainly not laughing water, a monitor of Christian love than Republican politics. A crusader. Yes.
In that sense then, Bush could always rationalize his impending war on Iraq.
While Carl Rove (his political adviser) and Hill leaders work the domestic side, Newsweek states, "Bush is dwelling on faith-based foreign policy of the most explosive kind: A potential war in the name of civil freedom – in the ancient heart of Arab Islam." Then this aside: "If one of his goals in ousting Saddam Hussein is to bring freedom of worship to an oppressed people, how can the president object?"
In the Newsweek cover story, the "Thou shalt not kill" injunction in the Ten Commandments gives way to a greater spiritual need: Free the Iraqis, give them freedom, instruct them in democracy. The fact that tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis and Americans could die in the war – a war unleashed by Bush himself – does not seem to matter. Or matters little. What matters is that Saddam Hussein is evil, and as evil, he must be exterminated even if 300,000 US combat troops will be needed to exterminate him.
Strike Saddam Hussein down before he becomes another Adolf Hitler and spews death and destruction to all Europe. So what if virtually the rest of the world objects to the war? They are not as close to God as George W. Bush is, not as endowed with divine right and light. It is hard to fathom that such a president can emerge from the democratic foliage of America where the Statue of Liberty stands proudly above the harbor of New York, beckoning all of oppressed humanity to come and partake of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
It is the America of George the Younger and George the Elder as it is the America of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. We are extremely fascinated by Dubya, Bible held in hand instead of an anti-terrorist bomb. His every gesture is a study in self-righteousness, the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he would transform the world in the image of America.
As far as the president of the United States is concerned, he walks in the valley where few dare to walk – the valley of the extraordinary brave. Can the God he worships and the Bible he holds be wrong?
It wasn’t a great fight at all, not one where Manny Pacquiao’s pugilistic talents flared and left you stunned and gape-mouthed. He won all right last Saturday evening at the Luneta with a fifth-round knockout of Serikzhan Yeshmagambetov, a journeyman from Kazakhstan. In the fourth, Pacquiao even sank to the canvas as Yeshmagambetov drilled the Filipino with a right smash to the jaw. But the visitor, who could have followed through with a wicked combination, hesitated for one-split second, and Pacquiao got his wobbly legs back.
Even then from beginning to end, Pacquiao – but for that fourth round mishap – was in control. What he lacked was the sizzle, the timing and the extra something that defines a world champion. Obviously, he did not train very well for this fight, and it showed. He missed a lot of punches. Many of those that did hit the Kazakhstan fighter either glanced off or landed lamely. But his left was at work and that is all that mattered. Once in the first, a solid left across the chin brought Yeshmagambetov down.
It’s funny how he goes down. He half-floats for a while, then sinks.
The fight could have been over in the first, except that Pacquiao wasn’t as sharp as he was. He missed follow-up punches. The swivel of his waist wasn’t there enabling him to fire as an Apache helicopter fires even when ascending or descending or turning in mid-air. The next rounds except for Pacquiao going down in the fourth were uneventful. Flurries of punches came and went but never rose to a lightning storm. It was evident Pacquiao was biding his time.
This came in the fifth when a Pacquiao left boomed on his foe’s jaw and sent him hurtling half-way through the ring. The end was near. Yeshmagambetov should have shuffled back and stayed out of the range of Pacquiao’s left. He chose to fight mano a mano, and that was his undoing. Pacquiao rifled another left to the jaw. Yeshmagambetov staggered, half-floated again, then slumped to the ring like a cuckoo bird diving off grandfather’s clock. This was the end.
All right, I won’t argue that Pacquiao is or is not the best fist-tosser we’ve had in many years. I remember having written in a past column that he was or deserved to be the heir apparent of the great and immortal Pancho Villa. But he was not in the best condition for that fight with Yeshmagambetov. It showed. The lack of rigid training had him missing punches, going in full tilt without aiming his bombs well, and getting punched when he could have glided out of range.
If he gets into the same ring with Marco Antonio Barrera for the big fight in the condition that he was Saturday, I am afraid our boy will be diving into shark-infested waters. Oh yes, he has that roundhouse of a left, but that alone will not win him the world’s coveted bantamweight crown. Pacquiao will need more weapons, most of all the Spartan training, the lack of which brought down Mike Tyson.