Snarl or Snicker

It's not just the pre-catastrophe headlines that capture my attention, but sometimes the post-mortem articles, also buried among the myriad cell-phone ads of Section One, that deserve more attention than they get. For instance, I read today that our troops have officially given up the search for WMDs in Iraq.

Come again? Not to belabor the issue, but isn't that why we went to war? I seem to recall Ari Fleischer making that precise point when announcing our invasion that fine March afternoon. Now, it's, well, "never mind". As the Republicans used to cry during the horrible 1990s when everybody's apparent wealth and happiness was egregiously threatened by the horniness of our President, "Where's the Outrage?" Of course I am being facetious, for how can I seriously compare the trivial deaths of thousand of people and the inconsequential occupation of a foreign land filled with 30 million hostiles with the earth-shattering cum stain on a blue dress?

On the other hand, there is truly logic to the decision to forego further searching, since they are as likely to find WMDs in Iraq as they are to find the Lindbergh baby, Wiley Post, Jimmy Hoffa's pinky or Nicole Simpsons's real killer. So this is a concession to Reality, a word and concept heretofore alien to the Bush Administration. He may be evolving after all.

I don't know whether to snarl, like Michael Moore, or snicker, like Jon Stewart. I guess I should just sigh, like Al Gore, and return to the Private Sector. "All is Vanity" wrote one of the contributors to "Ecclesiastes," one of the smartest books of the Bible (and yes, I think the Bible is a great piece of literature, whatever my atheistic tendencies). Another incisive cynic, Voltaire, derided the simplistic, myopic world view mirrored in today's Neocon apologists through his character Dr. Pangloss in "Candide."

That work is fresh in my mind after I blissed out on a PBS "Great Performances" last night of said operetta by Leonard Bernstein and some of the great lyricists of the century. There is a song that Pangloss sings that deconstructs his insipid philosophy called "The Best of All Possible Worlds," and its lyrics often echo in my head when I encounter mindless optimism and blind faith. In explaining Evil, as embodied by the existence of snakes, he sings "''Twas snake that tempted Mother Eve/Because of snakes we now believe/That though depraved we may be saved from Hellfire and Damnation/(Because of snake's temptation)/If snakes had not seduced our lot/And primed us for Salvation/Jehovah could not pardon all the sins that we call Cardinal/Involving bed and bottle.../Now, onto Aristotle.

As an aspiring lyricist myself I am awed by the combination of clever rhyme scheme and ironic content. But even more incisive was his take on war, as specious as anything Bush's speech writers could concoct for his upcoming Inaugural Address: "Though war may seem a bloody curse/It is a blessing in reverse/When cannons roar both rich and poor by danger are united/Till every wrong is righted/Philosophers make evident the point that I have cited/'Tis war makes even, as it were/The noble and the Commoner/Thus war improves relations."

And no prevarications.