Dramatis Personae

Last week our local Friends Meeting held a public meeting to pray for peace. As it often happens, the occasion to worship in silence brought clarity that had been eluding our explicit attempts to analyze current events. One Friend spoke of her attempt to reconcile her faith, in the Light of God's love within everyone, with the loathing she felt for George W. Bush. "I recalled," she said, "the image of Bush reading to a group of school children when he was first notified about the September 11th attacks. And I have been trying as best I can to envision Bush sitting, reading a story to a group of Iraqi children."

Later, a six year old eloquently offered his take on that same problem: "I think bad people still have the Light inside them; they've just forgoten about it."

As I pondered -- as so many have -- the why of this seemingly insane drive for war, I finally came to see a meaningful connection between the 9-11 attacks and the drive to invade Iraq. It's not really a matter of whether Hussein's regime has supported the Al Quaida terror cells (for which, as we all know, no credible evidence has been offered). The connection is, actually, not on their side, but on our side. The America that was attacked on September 11th, 2001 is the America that is now determined to force a regime change in Iraq. George W. Bush famously said that "freedom itself was attacked" that day, but that isn't quite accurate. It isn't "freedom itself" that was attacked, despite the mass murders in the Twin Towers, and the various degradations of freedom that followed. What was attacked was smugness, self-satisfaction, arrogance, and a kind of willful insularity that placed most of the world, and certainly all of the Muslim world, far beneath American notice. In other words, a bully was attacked, a thug that does not represent -- despite Bush's oratory -- the true character of the United States of America.

Or let's hope not.

In any case, bullies can still feel pain, and this bully got his eye put out by a hateful enemy who knew how to throw an ice pick. That victim seemed to be us; we hurt with his pain. We still do. Our vengeful lashing out is not rational, sensible or prudent, but it is certainly understandable. That is the only way I can explain the fact that even now, after so many patent absurdities and transparent lies, more than half of Americans polled still favor invading Iraq. Even though the bully can still see out of one eye, his main interest isn't accuracy, it's revenge. Understandable.

But bad policy. Understandable, certainly, for this administration whose platform is raised on revenge; its Attorney General enthusiatically, even zealously, promoting the death penalty. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheyney and Ashcroft seem to be characters taken from an Elizabethan revenge tragedy. A little bit of familiarity with that dramatic form -- which was big box-office in Shakespeare's day -- helps to explain Hamlet's famous, drastic hesitation. The audience damned-well knew a bloodbath was in store, and had no trouble sympathizing with the sweet prince's desire to avoid it, if he possibly could. But our bold, decisive "wartime president" seems to be the hero of a coarser sort of play, bloodier and more to-the-point, playing to the groundlings without much nuance.

Yet, I do not believe that Bush is a monster, any more than I believe he was fairly elected; I believe that the Light shines within him, and I pray for him to remember it before the final act. For he seems to have forgotten that America is more than just a bully. His policies and his rhetoric have relentlessly -- and so far, successfully -- appealed to that spirit of revenge that cares not who gets struck as long as it's somebody who might have icepicks.

But if America truly is more than that bully, then it is up to us to make the Administration understand that -- and then, if they do not, it is up to us to remove them. What's at stake is the deaths of innocent people at the hands of soldiers and terrorists, but not only that: the very existence of American democracy is at stake, and it is perilously close to failing.