By the Smirk, Ye Shall Know Him

That's the opening line from the latest installment of Jeff St. Clair's series on Bush the Younger, featured in Counterpunch:

It is Bush's identifying mark. The cruel sneer fissures across his face at the oddest moments, like an execution or a spike in the deficit or the news of a light-stick being rammed up the anus of an Iraqi prisoner. It hints at this own sense of inviolateness, like the illicit grin of some 70s porn star--which may not be so far off target if even half of what Kitty Kelley dishes in her delicious book The Family about Bush's peregrinations turns out to be true.

Flash to Bush's most famous moment, the instant when he supposedly redeemed his tottering presidency. There at ground zero, megaphone in hand, using firefighters as props, Bush squeaks out his war cry. It won't be a war of justice, but revenge, cast as a crusade against evil. Then, hands palsied with anxiety, he closes with his signature sneer and gives the game away.

The mask drops, revealing in a flash, like a subliminal cut, the dark sparkle of the real Bush. You get the sense that he detests his own supporters, those who refuse to see through the act. But perhaps that's giving Bush too much credit. He reminds me of one of the early popes or one of the more degenerate emperors, such as Domitian: cruel, imperious, humorless, and psychologically brittle.

Bush and his team turned 9/11 into a kind prime-time political necrophilia, an obscene exploitation of the dead. For example, Flight 93 was transformed into Bush's Masada, where the passengers committed group suicide by bringing the plane down into the remote Pennsylvania field in order to save the White House. Of course, this was a lie...

St. Clair goes on to note that even Bush's bloody "success" in Afghanistan is nothing more than a charade--the Taliban, far from being eradicated, operate with impunity in areas not controlled by other, equally vicious warlords. Karzai is less a president and more of a mayor. Thousands of innocent Afghans were killed and then forgotten about. And, as for Bush's own thoughts? Here's the conclusion:

As Condoleezza Rice put it, Bush, the conquistador in a jogging suit, soon got bored with "swatting flies."

(Torturing flies was, of course, a favorite past time of Domitian. According to Seutonius, "At the beginning of his reign, Domitian used to spend hours in seclusion every day, doing nothing but catching flies and stabbing them with a keenly sharpened stylus. Consequently, when someone once asked if anyone was in there with the Emperor, Vibius Crispus made the witty reply, 'Not even a fly." Domitian, that wanton boy emperor, was also the inspiration for the famous line in Lear.)

Cruel, imperious, humorless, and psychologically brittle--yeah, that's Dubya to a Tee.