The Bushbunker: The American Revolution of 2008

From April 2007:

(I began writing this one this morning as a spoof meant as a gift for Malcolm. Somewhere along the way it became a more serious essay. I don't actually think it's going to happen, of course, but one can always hope.)

Time: the not too distant future. Oh, say…October 2008. That seems reasonable.

Background information: The US presidential elections of November are due, but the political scene is one of confusion. The Republicans and their corporate backers are desperate to get – say – Rudi Guiliani elected. The Democrats are a divided house, but with a wafer thin majority in the public opinion polls. The very public infighting between Barack Obama and Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton has harmed the Democratic cause, as has the refusal to impeach Bush and Cheney, the continued support to “Israel” right up to, during, and through the Great Gaza Genocide of December 2007. The defeat in Iraq and the Democratic refusal to break ranks in any meaningful way with the neocons on terminating that conflict has also eaten into Democratic votes. But all that this has meant is that, because there is no real third party candidate, people will not vote rather than vote for either party. Although the Democratic votes have plummeted, the Republicans have not gained; and the Democrats still hold a slim lead. And Hilary Clinton has been forced to promise the electorate that if voted to power she will crack down on political corruption, the lobbies, and the military industrial complex, clean up the environment, and withdraw troops from the global US jehad against Islam.

The big corporations are worried. Very, very worried.

Recent history: Recent events have not favoured the Republicans. Domestically, the crime wave is shooting up and up, the job market is imploding, food prices climb through the roof as meat and maize are diverted to produce “bio-fuels” for SUV owners, and parents battle school boards that aggressively push a fundamentalist Christian religious agenda. There are credible rumours that the draft will be reintroduced to keep the lid on social discontent. As the housing crisis continues, thousands of formerly relatively well off Americans suddenly find themselves on the street, homeless and with no social support.

Internationally: The most awaited event of the Bush presidency’s final two years, the attack on Iran, was a disaster. Massive casualties followed the sinking of several US carriers by Iranian anti-ship missiles provided by Russia. Since the land forces were too overstretched and incapable of invading Iran, only naval and air resources could be used for the attack. They were far from enough, even with the liberal use of nuclear warheads. This use of nuclear weapons against Iran has not damaged that country totally beyond recovery but has damaged the US so much diplomatically that most of the world’s governments no longer dare, for fear of their own people’s wrath, to maintain close relations with the US. Russia, infuriated by overt American attempts to contain, destabilise and impoverish it, is now openly supplying weapons to anyone with a grudge against theUS. China has – seeing the way the wind is blowing – pulled most of its investments out of the American market, and is, more quietly, doing the same.

Following the defeat, once again, of its renewed 2007 summer invasion of Lebanon, “Israel” – unsure of the continued backing of its embattled American master – had tried to gather its people behind it by a massive and sustained offensive against Gaza which ended in December in what came to be known as the Great Gaza Genocide. In the space of four days, in the full glare of the international media, and under direct orders of the new “Premier” Binyamin Netanyahu, the “Israelis”, using aircraft, tanks, and artillery, killed by conservative estimates three hundred and fifty thousand unarmed Palestinian men, women and children, on the premise of “fighting Hamas”. At least half a million more were forcibly deported to the Sinai peninsula. Gaza city was a mass of smouldering ruins. Netanyahu defended his armed forces’ actions by claiming that the people had been given “fair warning” – an hour – to leave the city and that anyone remaining after that time was fair game. It backfired spectacularly. Not even the Americans could protect “Israel” against the backlash. Even India’s pliant pro-Zionist government collapsed after its Left allies withdrew support over the Congress regime’s refusal to break off diplomatic relations with the “Israelis”. A new left wing coalition was stitched together which immediately repudiated the previous pro-American/Zionist government’s foreign policy completely. The same thing has been happening everywhere. New governments in centralEurope have universally demanded the immediate withdrawal of allUS forces based on their territory. France’s unexpectedly left wing new government has broken off diplomatic relations with the US and “Israel”. The floodgates are creaking.

In Iraq, the last few American troops, having suffered about ten thousand dead, are now set to leave. They control nothing any longer, not even the approaches to their own bases, and have to be helicoptered out because they no longer can venture outside. Even the helicopters are shot down every day as civil war rages all around. In the heart of the erstwhile Green Zone, the last American diplomats are fending off teary eyed appeals from Nouri al-Maliki and his former ministers for asylum to preserve their skins. The diplomats are to be evacuated in short order. They will take no Arabs with them.

In Afghanistan, a resurgent Taliban now surround Kabul. With the fall of the Bagram airbase, the NATO troops remaining in the capital are trapped. The Afghan army has gone over to the Taliban side, lock, stock, and barrel. Hamid Karzai – unable to flee – has been killed by his American bodyguards before he can sign an unconditional surrender. The NATO commanders are negotiating with the Taliban for safe passage of their trapped forces in return for recognition and reconstruction aid.

Defeat everywhere.

Frustrated at home and stymied overseas, Bush and his neocons have decided on a last minute gamble to snatch at least an electoral victory from the ashes of defeat.

After a prearranged “provocation”, they are going to launch a total war against all the major nations of West Asia, bar “Israel”. The first target will be Syria, and then, Saudi Arabia, whose new monarch is not deemed friendly. North Korea has been considered, but with its potent military arsenal and its capacity to wreak destruction on the puppet states of Japan, South Korea and “Taiwan”, it was thought better left for a later assault.

Genesis of the revolution: The trigger that set off the revolution cannot be isolated to any particular factor. Certainly, the domestic situation of disaffection with the collapsing economy, all round corruption, skyrocketing prices, food shortages (something hitherto almost unknown in the US) and burgeoning crime, has a major role to play. However, it is thought that the final precipitating factor was the planned invasion of Syria. It would never have been easy to justify invading Syria. The defeat in Iraq was so obvious it could no longer be propagandised away, though Afghanistan could be passed off as a NATO defeat, not an American one. The nuking of Iran could not hide the fact that the Iranian government not only survived but had been leased a few nuclear warheads by Russia to deter further attacks. The Jewish Lobby no longer had the power it once wielded after the Great Gaza Genocide, and “Israel” was a totally isolated international pariah. The “defence” of “Israel” was no longer an excuse on which an invasion could be launched. Some atrocity was needed, something so major indeed that the American people would be forced to rally to the flag. Something as much bigger than 9/11 as 9/11 was bigger than Tonkin Bay.

Accordingly, it was decided to sacrifice an American city; to cremate it utterly, to shock the world into silent acquiescence if not enthusiastic approval of “retaliatory” attacks. What city? They needed some place well enough known to arouse the proper pitch of shock and horror.Little Rock, Arkansas, would not do.

They chose San Francisco.

Now it is virtually certain that, had the city of San Francisco actually been destroyed as planned, there would never have had been an American revolution. Unfortunately, however, the NSA employee actually detailed with driving the truck borne nuclear bomb into San Francisco, arming it, and leaving, did no such thing. Instead, he went to the TV networks, called them all together for the scoop of all time, and broke the news. By the time he had been shot dead by snipers from a SWAT team he had even handed over, not just the bomb, but some recordings he had illegally made proving his contentions. It was then that the anger exploded.

The Bush administration denied it, of course. The bomb mysteriously “disappeared” for a crucial half an hour; when recovered, it was found to be a crude dynamite device, easily defused, most likely the work of a crank. The recordings were not so easily explained away, nor was the murder of the whistle blower, seen live on national television, for which the killers were never apprehended. Then the Bush administration declared that, notwithstanding, the invasion of Syriawas now an imperative, since “terrorists” now had got the idea that American cities could be destroyed by bombs in trucks and they had to be destroyed before they could carry their intentions out.

This was met by an American people who were no longer the brainwashed sludge of 2001 and 2003. Already badly hit by military defeat and isolation abroad, unemployment and inflation at home, and deeply worried about the future, they rise in mass protest. Anti-war protestors swamp the cities. They are rapidly joined by allied groups disaffected with the Bush regime’s policies: the NAACP, gay power groups, anti-draft organisations (among whom mothers’ organisations are prominent), minorities (excluding Americans of Indian origin, who stick fast to Bush), anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, and environmentalists. Meanwhile, senior army and Marine commanders say unequivocally that they will refuse to obey orders if forced to attack Syria or any other nation that has not attacked the US. The Democratic Party is pushed into an anti-Bush stance by its own power base; and things are made a bit easier for it by the eclipse, the total collapse, of the Jewish Lobby. The Bush regime responds by mass arrests of Democratic politicians including Denis Kucinic, Al Gore, Barack Obama, and even Jimmy Carter. Hilary Clinton goes into hiding. Joe Lieberman, denouncing the Democratic Party as “treasonable”, joins the Republicans – but a significant section of the Republicans is now in revolt too.

It is at this moment that a massive rally is planned for Washington. Led, among others, by Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, it says it will stay in place until it has forced the resignations of Bush and Cheney and their “cabal of evil” and the installation of a non-partisan interim administration which will oversee the elections.

This announcement can be said to be the point at which the Revolution can be said to have begun.

Events of the Revolution: Significant events can be best discussed on a day-to-day basis.

3 October: The rally is announced for the 10^th. It is immediately banned by the Department for Homeland Security as a “treasonable step”. The organisers say they will go ahead anyway, “with renewed vigour”, as Cindy Sheehan puts it in a TV interview. Orders to the TV station not to air that interview are ignored.

6 October: Thousands of protestors are already flooding towardsWashington, ready to camp out if necessary, bringing tents and even prefabricated huts with them. Some roads are ordered closed off to traffic. But a call by the organisers for local Washington residents to rise in support brings a massive response; spontaneous pro-rally demonstrations break out all over Washington. Barricades are physically removed. Police open fire and kill eight people at various points in the city.

10 October: The National Guard is called out. All roads out of the city are – theoretically – blocked off. But the demonstrations now ravaging every neighbourhood and the protestors now arriving cannot both be contained; and more and more protestors enter the city. Local right wing gangs are hastily armed and let loose on them, but the protestors are also not all unarmed, and there is enough bloodshed that the goons withdraw.

Dick Cheney appears on television claiming that “The President is going to be unswerving in his determination to defeat the treasonous rabble who want to destroy our country.” He announces that there is no basis to the rumour that the draft is being reintroduced and asks that the anti-conscription segment among the protestors go home. His speech has no effect; the protestors have smelt blood.

11 October: Washington is crammed. The demonstrators are everywhere – all roads are jammed with them, and from the poorer sections of the city its black inhabitants also pour out in support. The police can no longer beat the mass of people back. The people do not simply, as before, march and disperse. They arrive, set up camp, and vow to stay until the Bush regime is gone. The parks, and even the front gardens of many homes, are full of people, pitching tents, shouting slogans, and coming, coming, coming.

So many are the arrivals that even the FOX network stops pretending it is a paltry few “anti-American traitors” and concedes that a massive anti-government demonstration is taking place.

Persistent rumours that Bush is going to speak on television are borne out when he gives a speech from the Oval Office in the evening. In it he says that he, as a “war president” has the right to “defeat and resist the demon…demonstrat…demonstrationisers” and with the breakdown in civil authority, he, therefore, was taking over the country’s administration, indefinitely postponing the November elections, and temporarily banning the “Democrat Party”. He warns of “smoking the ringleaders out of their holes” should they not immediately disperse.

His speech raises his opponents’ spirits instantly.

12 October: Bush telephones the Pentagon and orders the US Army to fight its way into the capital, restore authority, and forcibly evict all the protestors, Washingtoners and outsiders both. General Peter Pace, Army commander, agrees, but his subordinates refuse point blank to pass on the orders. Railing against “faggots and atheists who made it to the army’s upper ranks”, Pace resigns.

By evening, by popular military acclaim, General Eric Shineseki comes out of retirement and “with great personal reluctance” re-assumes command of the Army in “these difficult times”. The Pentagon recognises the appointment, but the White House repudiates it.

On the approaches to Washington, a bus full of unarmed protestors is fired on by National Guard troops who claim they were shooting in self defence. More than twenty are killed. Media on the scene catch National Guard troops planting weapons in the gutted bus, and manage to smuggle out the images. By evening these scenes are going out to the world from New York, which has by now become the centre of the anti-Bush movement.

This evening of 12^th October, demonstrators fill Pennsylvania Avenue, physically break down barriers, and are at the gates of the White House. Bush’s security men set up machine gun nests on the White House lawns.

13 October: Bush, unable to trust the Army, turns to the Marine Corps, but to no avail. The Marines – like the Army – refuse to fight the people. After the previous day’s massacre of the bus-borne protestors, the National Guard announces that while its troops will continue to provide security, they will no longer block people from entering the city and will have no part of the anti-demonstration campaign. Bush sacks the National Guard commander by telephone; his subordinate refuses to accept charge.

Small, “spontaneous,” pro-Bush demonstrations break out all over the Bible Belt, and these get wide coverage in the media. Ann Coulter rushes from “protest” to “protest”, accompanied by the likes of Sean Hannity and Michael Ledeen, delivering flaming pro-Bush rhetoric. It has no effect whatever so far as the situation in Washington is concerned.

In an emergency session, the US Supreme Court declares the protests “totally illegal and an infringement on the US Constitution”. But the neocon-appointed, conservative-packed Supreme Court has so little credibility the protest organisers do not even bother to respond.

14 October: Food supplies are running short in Washington. FromNew York a major truck convoy is intercepted on Bush’s orders. It is allowed to proceed only when it gives assurances the food will only be distributed to “legitimate residents of Washington DC”. When it reaches Washington, however, its National Guard escorts stand aside and watch as the food is handed out to all comers. The protestors set up distribution centres at nodal points so that there is equitable food distribution. By now some of the protestors have gone home, but with more arriving, there is a constant number present. Sheehan and other organisers set up a rota; if the Bush regime continues to hold out, they will set up a regular system of tours of duty. They issue a statement that Bush and his cronies will be handed over, if captured, to an international war crimes tribunal.

In “blue state liberal hotbeds,” the US government has broken down completely, its orders are ignored, and in most areas local councils take up administration in their own hands. In red states, anti-Bush protests are making themselves felt as well; and for the first time, local authorities stand aside and let them proceed. Most of them are looking uneasily over their shoulders at what is going on inWashington. For the first time, the frontiers of faith are shaking.

Most Christian churches, except the extreme fringe of Rapture Righters, declare that they have no position in the current crisis. They ask their faithful to follow their consciences. A rumour that the Vaticanhas called for Bush’s immediate resignation is denied by the office of Pope Clement.

This is also the day that the Labour government of Britain, emasculated by Blair and tottering under Gordon Brown, and facing its own protests over its pro-US attitude, bows to the inevitable and resigns. The new Liberal government takes over and announces that it will make a common future with Europe outside the shadow of theUS. As a first act, it formally asks for an immediate withdrawal of allUS forces stationed in Britain, to be completed within six months. The European Union calls on the US to “rejoin the comity of civilised nations” by declaring an interim government.

15 October: The pivotal day of the Revolution. Morning: Bush and his most trusted men hold an emergency conference in the Oval Office. Karl Rove, Cheney, Richard Perle, and John Bolton are present. Condoleeza Rice is not invited. The time for token blacks who can’t be relied on is past.

The meeting is interrupted by an emergency alert and everyone is quickly evacuated to an “undisclosed location” - a bunker under the White House lawns. Moments later, a single engined Cessna crashes into the West Wing, partially demolishing it. All four aboard are killed, as are two on the ground. It is immediately declared to be a kamikaze suicide attack by terrorists among the protestors. What it was actually was an attempt to set down a small group of protestors on the White House lawn, bypassing the outer security rings, which went wrong when the pilot – under fire from the ground and caught in a crosswind - hit the White House instead. The West Wing catches fire. Bush and his acolytes continue their meeting down in the bunker. Excerpts:

BUSH: Them terrorists are a-getting too much to bear.

CHENEY: We are simply not being tough enough. On them or the media. The media is an enemy, you know, Junior. When we were winnin’ in Iraq, they were underminin’ us and saying we all were losing. We have to crack down on them.

ROVE: Damned liberal scum. Faggots and suchlike. We shoulda shot them all much earlier. I’ve always said so. They stabbed us in the back right from the beginning.

BUSH: This is a Christian nation and I’m God’s anointed. So these – this Michael Moore an suchlike – they’re on Satan’s side.

BOLTON: We have the corporates on our side, but we can’t rely on anyone else.

PERLE: What can they do right now? Precious little. Even if they sack people wholesale – I don’t know if you’ve noticed – but this demonstration thing has gathered a momentum, unless we break it up by force we aren’t going to win.

BUSH: What force? Who? That Jap bastard Shineseki won’t obey orders no more.

PERLE: We do have a private army. A very loyal private army.

CHENEY, ROVE and BOLTON (together): Blackwater.

BUSH (relieved): Well, then, get ‘em moving. Ask them to come in and clean up this mess!

CHENEY: No sooner said than done, Junior.

What happened next?: Frankly, I don’t know. Did Blackwater’s mercenaries come in, guns blazing? Did the National Guard fight them? Did the Army fight them? Did everyone just stand aside and let them destroy the demonstrators? I leave it to the reader – but with the addition of a quote attributed to Bush:

As massed protestors broke down the gates and poured onto the White House lawns, as the defenders put down their guns and walked away, as sledgehammers began smashing away at the doors of his bunker, Bush is supposed to have wailed:

“A helicopter, a helicopter, my kingdom for a helicopter!”

It may be an apocryphal urban myth of course.