Sans
Brain, Bush Will Be
A Better President
By Gul Jammas Hussain
15 August, 2007
Tehran Times
Noon
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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