Sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes
you feel like listening to President Almondjoy — mix cocoa and
coconut to get cuckoo nut — of Iran and sometimes you would rather
watch President Chavez pile up mounds of Venezuelan guano. In
either case, visiting the United Nations is like taking a trip to
Mars.
It is enough to make a grown man cry, like say for instance
Senator Voinovich. He feared that if Ambassador Bolton were to
become a fixture at the U.N., the Voinovich grandchildren might
grow up in a world of confrontation. One look at Bolton’s moustache
would send the peaceful infants of our otherwise utopian future
into paroxysms of apoplexy. And so the answer to the trivia
question “What is the shortest sentence in the Congressional
Record?” will always be: George wept.
As it turns out, there are scarier excrescences going out on
limbs in the world body. (We should never forget W.C. Fields’ line
in The Bank Dick: “He called my proboscis an adscititious
excretion.”) Ahmadinejad sees no evidence a Holocaust occurred or
Israel exists. A man of science, he has a particular interest in
nuclear physics. Why make Sherlock Holmes deductions to accuse him
of nefarious plots? His intentions are no doubt irenic, my dear
Watson, if perhaps a bit addled.
Chavez is an Old School Commie, or perhaps Old Factory.
Olfactorily he is challenged, that’s for certain: he detects no
sulfurous miasma anywhere in the U.N. building other than President
Bush’s diabolic wake. The United States, he says, is an imperialist
power bent on oppressing and pillaging the blameless innocents of
the world who whittle their olive branches in sylvan boughs.
Perhaps, he thoughtfully suggests, the United Nations headquarters
should be relocated to Venezuela. Sounds about right to me:
Pollyanna wants a Caracas.
Although this makes for great comedy, the tragedy is immense.
Like the Dupont grandson who killed the wrestling coach and Robert
Durst who dismembered his old neighbor in Galveston, these are not
ordinary loons. They are wealthy loons, who can afford to actualize
their phantasmagoric worldviews. Every time we sit, not go, at a
Citgo station, we are putting money in Chavez’s pocket. At many of
the other stations we are donating to Iran, a tad less
directly.
Are there no solutions? Will oil be the dominant fuel for the
foreseeable future? Will the United Nations be a haven for despots
under the guise of a convocation for universal harmony? Is there no
way to thwart these nonaligned countries from hamstringing us with
their misalignment? As a semi-professional Scrabble player I am
very aware that CANAILLE is an anagram for ALLIANCE.
We tried regime change in Iraq, but regimen change is proving
much harder in the absence of regiment change. Ostracism is often
effective but it requires unanimity that Russia, France and China
will undo with pusillanimity. The diplomatic option is a sham, even
if Bolton makes tonsorial adjustments. These guys just buy time and
then sell us down the river; it’s a bad business all around. What
is left beyond illusion, delusion and collusion?
The truth, in an ultimate irony, is that the only answer is some
small-scale imperialism, like terrorism in reverse. It worked in
Libya, Serbia and Bosnia in one form or another. When North Korea
disobeys us on missile testing, we drop a bomb or two on government
buildings. In Iran, bomb the nuke labs. No need to decimate them
like Osirak, just do some damage and stand by to do it again if
they have the nerve to start them up again. (Lather, rinse,
repeat.) Not quite surgical strikes, just shock therapy. Enough to
intimidate them into submission, not enough to evoke a unified
nationalistic response that metastasizes into a protracted,
un-winnable war.
In the meantime, the inmates are taking over the asylum, not to
mention the Manhattan parking spaces. The quacks are trying to pull
us into the mire, knowing our phobia of quagmires. Trying to psych
us out, they send us their prime psychos. No longer is the United
Nations a bunch of old ladies wasting their time on gossipy
intra-Venus gabfests; now we have a bunch of martial Martians.
President Bush will have a devil of a time digesting this bunch of
nuts.
