Sans Brain, Bush Will Be
A Better PresidentBy Gul Jammas Hussain
15 August, 2007
Tehran TimesNoon Meem Rashid, the "poet of poets" and pioneer of free verse in Urdu, was also a decorated diplomat who represented Pakistan in numerous cities throughout the world from New York to Jakarta.
But Tehran was the city he fell in love with.
During his long stay in the Iranian capital, he penned two beautiful books about Iran, Stranger in Iran and Modern Persian Verse. His second book, a translation of modern Persian poems into Urdu, provided a great service to readers of the subcontinent.Rashid expertly mixed the old tradition of storytelling with modern free verse poetry.
In one of his fascinating poems, he tells the tale of a leading politician of a rich country who accidentally lost the major parts of his brain. His government panicked over the sudden loss of the prime minister's brain. A national state of emergency was declared. In an extraordinary session, ministers, government functionaries, advisers, and bureaucrats brainstormed and came up with the idea of sending the brainless leader to the Persian city of Shiraz.
An unusual barber used to live there, expert in his own field, but who was also given another extraordinary gift from God Almighty. He possessed a unique talent for cutting the human skull, removing the brain, and cleaning it before putting it back in the skull or even replacing it if the brain was too badly damaged.
After hectic diplomatic efforts and desperate appeals from the patient's family, the barber agreed to perform the unusual operation on the foreign leader. While the operation was being performed, a tragedy struck. Somehow the barber wasn't paying attention for a moment and out of the blue a cat came, picked the brain up off the operating table, and ate it.
The wise barber didn't panic at all. With the aplomb of a man skilled at his profession, he called his assistants and asked them to immediately bring him a bull's brain. He then placed the bull's brain in the politician's skull and discharged the patient, giving him a clean bill of health.
After he returned to his country, people noticed that the prime minister had become more active, agile, alert, and wise in the affairs of state.
So, the brouhaha raised by political commentators, columnists, and editorialists over the news that George W. Bush is going to lose his "brain" at the end of this month when Karl Rove retires is unwarranted.
If we go by the wisdom of the poet, Bush will be more active, agile, alert, and wise in the affairs of state sans brain.
Rove, Bush's chief strategist and the mastermind of his two presidential election victories, who was often called the president's "brain", played a major role in orchestrating death, destruction, and misery from Iraq to Afghanistan, to Palestine , to Lebanon.
For the past seven years, Rove, who holds the title of deputy chief of staff and senior adviser, has been the unseen hand behind U.S. politics.
Using Rove's skills in the art of political spin, Bush dragged the United States into two major wars.
Mr. Rove "believed that America's overwhelming might could create its own foreign policy reality."
Now everyone is wondering how this "reality" will be affected by his departure.
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