Tom McCarthy In Beirut: On Monday Bush Tied Israel’s Fight Against Hezbollah To The Events Of 9/11…

READ MORE: 9/11, Iraq, Israel, Saddam Hussein, Lebanon

Throughout the work-week I've been chewing on the speech the president gave in Miami on Monday.

It's nearly 8 a.m. Friday and they are bombing some part of town - one has to assume the southern suburbs - inside out. The low rumbling strikes sounding as I write follow the two or three rounds of strikes that repeatedly lifted me from sleep last night.

The bunker-busters - if indeed these new ones are they - are not quite as loud as the usual ones but the sound resonates longer and has a metallic quality to it, comparable to the sensation of striking a tuning fork and applying the stem-end to one's noggin.

[Last night for fun we were watching one of the CNN anchorbots performing a live stand-up from a downtown hotel rooftop when at around 1 a.m. we hearkened four bombs bursting in air.

Without missing a beat the anchorbot starts narrating the incident to her appropriately concerned counterpart in the studio. "We just heard four strikes, Monique, from the south..." and she points into the dark. Pretty soon, like within thirty seconds, as she's repeating again and again what happened, a new graphic comes up: "Breaking News: Blasts Rock Beirut." Uncanny, this real-time news coverage.]

Monday's speech was the one where the president tied Israel's fight against the armed Lebanese group Hizbullah to the events of September 11.

The president said: "The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East. ... For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive. And as we saw on September 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change."

There is an immediate question that jumps out at you when you read what the president said. That question is, if the president were a pre-school teacher, and we citizens of America were pre-schoolers, and if what he said was the text of a book he was reading to us before naptime - slowly, dramatically, in a pre-school-teacher voice, taking time before turning each page to show everyone the pictures - then how many among us would wet ourselves?

Actually what the president said sounds incredibly like a scary story told to children.

Gather round, now:

"For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive."
The president holds the book face-out and moves it back and forth so everybody can see. The picture, a two-page spread reproducing an original watercolor illustration, shows tyranny and terror thriving.

The images are unnerving but beautifully done. In one corner is an impressive fire with men with olive skin and dark beards in the foreground pointing automatic rifles to the sky. Maybe one of them is squeezing the trigger of his weapon and tiny watercolor-rendered bullet casings are showering down and little orange streaks of paint are coming out of the rifle muzzle. It's hard to tell if the men are joyful or angry.

In another corner of the illustration Saddam Hussein in his fat yet coiffed phase is seated on a golden throne, wearing a beret and thick rings and a stern look. In another corner a scrum of protesters with bared teeth and features twisted in rage are tearing up a burning American flag. Above the crowd are dialogue bubbles containing the words "Death to America" and "Down with the Great Satan."

At this point some of the pre-schoolers start to cry. It's a pretty scary story.
The president turns the page.

"And as we saw on September 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States..."

A picture of towers with black smoke and some flames shooting out. The president pauses for a while to let this one sink in. More kids are crying now. Others are sitting rigid and staring, motionless.

Next page: "...and it had to change."

An image of Saddam's Fardus Square statue being pulled off its pedestal. The president uses a very nice voice as he reads the five words on this page. There are smiling yellow flowers painted in a border around the image.

A palpable wave of relief spreads among the pre-schoolers. A few of the really bawly kids sit up a little bit and although they still look distressed you can see them on the verge of smiling through their tears. Maybe at the end of all this there will be cookies and Kool-Aid for everyone after all.

The children's story conceit actually can be applied to pretty much every explanation of foreign policy that the administration has attempted in the last six years. (Not that they're talking down to us.) Like how every Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of "Gilligan's Island."
So anyway I'm at work on a counterthesis to refute the president's intricately geared explanation of why every American who agrees that 9/11 was a mega-catastrophe should support the administration's policy of blocking a cease-fire here in unfortunate little Lebanon.

The text of my naptime story runs thus:

Once upon a time, the United States suffered a devastating attack at the hands of an international terrorist organization based in Central Asia with ideological grounding in the Middle Eastern country of Egypt and financial grounding in the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia.

In response, the United States started a civil war in a different Middle Eastern country, one called Iraq, thereby pulling off with baffling efficiency the feat of creating multitudes of new enemies for the United States while at the same time creating an appallingly lawless and violent and relatively proximate live-action training ground for those new enemies to polish their kill-ya chops.

Then the US egged on a cross-border conflict in yet another corner of the Middle East, in a country called Lebanon, establishing the United States anew as a seemingly enthusiastic sponsor of death for the Middle East region's increasingly displeased and mistrustful inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the bad guys from p.1? They're working on a "surprise." But don't worry about that.

Just go to sleep. Dont worry the Dumb Asses will oblige in a split second.

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