Rovian bedtime stories by Ira Chernus

[tocqueville]

DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Strange bedtime stories
By Ira Chernus

White House aide Karl Rove has a simple rule: when you are falling behind, attack your opponents at their strongest point. In the upcoming election, the Democrats' strongest point should obviously be Iraq. With the spotlight eternally focused on the disastrous war there, Rove has to figure out how to turn its dazzling beam to his party's advantage.

So he's borrowing a page from an ancient Iranian storybook and imitating Scheherazade, the maiden whose husband's policy was "wed 'em, bed 'em, and kill 'em at dawn". Rove is telling Republican candidates to follow Scheherazade's rule: when policy dooms you, start telling stories - stories so fabulous, so gripping, so spellbinding that the king (or, in this case, the American citizen who theoretically rules our country) forgets all about a lethal policy.

The Republican Party stories are the same ones white people have been telling each other ever since they first set foot on North American shores: if you want to be safe, go to the frontier and wipe out the Indians. As former State Department official John Brown has noted, our Indian wars are not over yet.

Now Rove and his president are trying to sell the Iraq war as a frontier conflict, too. They want us to see US troops as the cavalry putting down the "Injuns". Or better yet, as pioneers creating "Fort Apaches" (in Iraq they're called Green Zones) in the midst of a vast wilderness full of savages. What strength, what courage it takes to survive. But they have a job to do: they must teach the savages how to be free. And above all, like their pioneering forebears, they must have the guts to stick it out until the job is done.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG15Aa01.html