PRESIDENT George W Bush has generously taken Nelson Mandela off America’s terror watch list because Congress had mentioned that his continued inclusion was getting a bit too “embarrassing”. Dubya was awed that Congress could actually spell the word but covered that up adroitly by offering the House a new plan for Iraq that was so sharp, “you could pick your teeth with it”. Congress declined politely because they knew that in the global shed of teeth, Mr Bush wasn’t the sharpest incisor. Instead, they counselled the President to draft a glowing address welcoming Mr Mandela into the world of non-terrorists; a speech that would simultaneously affirm America’s abhorrence to drugs and remind the world that Mr Mandela had understood better than most that people were bound in their common humanity in the only place they could call home – Earth. President Bush agreed enthusiastically because he thought Mr Mandela, whose accent he pegged at somewhere around Athens, Georgia, had voted for him in the last election. “Say nope to dope,” he began succinctly and moved on, 10 terrible pages later, to his soaring, elegiac conclusion that would forever remind mankind of Dubya’s gift for laconic tedium. “And above all else is The Sky.” It was a rousing metaphor and Mr Bush was pleased by its reaction, a sudden hush that descended on the Rose Garden, killing five. He was a knowledgeable man who was proud that he’d never been mistaken for being intelligent because, as he explained to Mr Mandela later, “most people do not mistake a cup of milk for the cow”. Mr Mandela was nonplussed at the presidential candour exhibited by Mr Bush. What he didn’t know was that it was merely a bovine reminder of Mr Bush’s dedication to his craft as it was hard work being inept and Mr Bush worked tirelessly at it. It took a certain genius to run the world’s most powerful country into the ground and Mr Bush glowed with satisfaction when he heard that the US now owed the rest of the world so much money that the International Monetary Fund had ruled that the term “sovereign deadbeat” was no longer an oxymoron. Mr Bush was a practical politician whose foreign policy was simple and two-fold. Never settle with words what you can settle with a flame thrower; and, a smile was all right but a smile backed up with rocket launchers and a Sherman tank was even better. It was far-right-thinking politics that elicited a whistle of admiration from Charles Manson but Mr Bush modestly waved off the adulation. He could use more of that, he told Mr Mandela privately, more loyalists around him who valued honour more than their own lives. It was no wonder, he told Mr Mandela proudly, that the Japanese called it Bushido. “Arigato but no Arigato,” said the Japanese stiffly. They didn’t like the honour code of the samurai being reduced to mean presidential libido. In any case, they didn’t like being criticised by American conservationists as a nation of dolphin killers. “If the dolphins are so smart, why do they hang around the tuna?” asked the Japanese reasonably and it was a good and pointed question which Mr Bush did not like because it confirmed his long standing suspicions that the Japanese were a fishy bunch of people who saved more than they consumed, which was downright un-American if not vaguely communist. Congress thought the US economy could use more Japanese customs and began looking for a suitable candidate to replace Mr Mandela on America’s terror watch list. They’re now eyeing Dubya for single-handedly terrorising the world economy.
• S. Jayasankaran is the bureau chief of Singapore’s Business Times and can be contacted at sankaranjaya@yahoo.com

Source: Malay Mail – July 9, 2008