The Destructive Brats

Bush-Cheney and the Neocons: Dismantling the Planet
A. Alexander,
June 17th, 2007

When I was a kid one of my best friends was a redheaded boy by the name of Jeff. We all used to tease Jeff, because his head seemed borderline abnormally large. It wasn't big due to a debilitating birth defect or anything...it was just kind of too big for his or any other person's body. Comparatively speaking, by the tender age of five, Jeff's head would have made Barry Bond's steroids enlarged grape appear tiny. Of course, Jeff's gargantuan gourd was all natural.

Back then, none of us had even heard of steroids. But his large noodle wasn't the only reason we razzed Jeff. He had an innate need to break stuff. If it was new -- or at least new to him -- and nice, Jeff had to find a way to break it.

Jeff's older brother Pat created things, radios out of a board and some wires for example, and Jeff destroyed stuff. We used to think the differences between the two brothers had something to do with Pat having sandy-blonde hair and Jeff, red. It was probably due to something more profound, but when you are seven or eight-years-old hair color is as logical as any reason. Jeff and Pat had an older brother Donny and a sister named Mary. Later on another brother, Freddy, and a still younger sister, Norma, joined the clan.

Jeff's parents were poor. Most of the people in our town acted as though they might "catch" being poor from Jeff's family, so pretty much everyone avoided them. I knew Jeff's parents were poor, but I didn't care. Nobody knew how to do a proper make-believe "Cops-N-Robbers" like Jeff and his brothers. Far as I can tell, I never did catch the being poor virus from them.

Anyway, being so poor, Jeff's parents couldn't afford to buy them new toys for Christmas. Everything the kids received on Christ's birthday came directly from Goodwill or the Salvation Army. My parents bought new toys for me on Christmas, but I was forever jealous of the used toys Jeff, Pat, and Donny received from their parents. Why couldn't my mom and dad buy me the cool space gun with the broken barrel? What kid didn't want that? Instead, I had the brand new Apollo rocket complete with lights. Whatta rip!

So, Jeff's parents would give him the cool space gun or the action figure with the missing hand for Christmas and it never failed, by end of the day he'd have it all broken to smithereens. Every toy Jeff got for Christmas would be left in ruins before the sun went down. Pat-the-put-togetherer always tried to salvage something, but rarely could. For the remainder of Christmas break, while the rest of us were playing with our new toys, Jeff would sit in the corner pouting. "I wanna play with a toy too," he'd whine."No way," Pat and Donny would reply, "you break everything!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

Every Christmas and on his birthday, the only two times of year that Jeff and his siblings received gifts, he would spend ten minutes playing with a toy and then set about the business of destroying it. Then, of course, the next several days were spent listening to Jeff moan and whine about the injustice of not having any toys to play with. It was almost as though he never quite made the link between his own destructive behavior and the messes he created for himself, like not having any toys to play with and nobody being willing to share their things with him.

Jeff's mom got mad at us for saying so, but we all figured his inability to make the obvious mental links between his actions and his misery, had something to do with his abnormally large head. Over the years I lost touch with Jeff and his family. I wonder sometimes though, if he didn't grow up and join the neoconservative movement. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that he is Dick Cheney's personal aide or employed by the "Weekly Standard" as William Kristol's assistant. "What should we do about Iraq, Jeff," Cheney and/or Kristol might ask. "Break it," Jeff would say.

"Why do that?"

"Why not?"

"Good point," Cheney and/or Kristol would probably reply.

Indeed, there are times I think Jeff is running the entire Bush administration's foreign policy. Iraq: broken. Lebanon: in tatters. Afghanistan: on the verge of collapse. Palestinian lands: coming undone at the seams. Iran: ... holy fu@$!

They, the Cheney-Kristol-led neocons, want to start another war with that country, too!

The Bush administration has totally destroyed, smashed to smithereens really, the entire planet and the worse they break one thing -- say Iraq -- the more they can't wait to destroy the next -- say Iran.

It is almost as though Cheney and the neocons look at the messes they've made and see absolutely no relationship between the piles of cinders and ashes, and their actions. Then, the moment they start eyeing the next target and people grow nervous and edgy, Cheney and his boys become indignant, whiney, and begin to pout. "Why won't they let us 'fix' this problem? Why won't they let us play foreign policy anymore?" With each passing day I become more convinced than ever, that Jeff is in charge of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Maybe, if we just buy a bunch of broken space guns and give them to the Cheney-Kristol neocons...maybe if we give them enough, they'll be too busy destroying the toys and won't have time to dismantle the planet?

It's worth a shot - it isn't like the Democrats are going to do anything to stop them.

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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free