Four more with GWB

Throughout his election campaign, Bush has accused his opponent of being a flip-flop. John Kerry voted for war in Iraq and then said he would have voted differently if he knew then what he knew now. Saddam Hussain did not have WMD, and he did not have any links with the Al Qaeda network. These are facts confirmed by investigation after investigation. But Bush is not a flip-flop; he is a stick in the mud. Right or wrong, he is not going to change his mind or admit his mistake.

So he sticks to his guns. The Bush Doctrine is a firm conviction of preemptive strike, which means burning the bed before the bugs can bite. The President of the United States has a duty to protect his country from terrorist attack, and he has sent his armies to distant lands to search and destroy terrorists and their breeding grounds. But the preemptive strike is also working at home. The no-fly list had 16 names on it after 9/11 in 2001. That list has now swelled to more than 20,000 names and each month hundreds of new names are being added to the list. Senator Edward Kennedy has been stopped five times for questioning at the airport, because his name appeared in the secret no-fly list of the US government.

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That is the sign of a country, which is jittery and paranoid. Even though Bush has been tough on the terrorists, he has also terrorised his own country at the same time. Take a look at the airports, federal offices, national monuments and landmark buildings. The security checks, roadblocks and dividers have turned them into besieged fortresses. The terrorists may be a threat to America, but it is George W. Bush, who has successfully taken that threat to the American hearts.

So, if GWB is elected -- God help us -- for another term, what will happen in the four more years? Perhaps we could use a little bit of George Santayana to answer that question. "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim", he wrote in "The Life of Reason" published in 1905, the same volume in which he had also famously observed: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Perhaps Bush is going to do more of the same thing in four more years, sending more troops in Iraq, going after new countries like North Korea and Iran. Perhaps he will be like the mad old man in the village market, poked and provoked by rogue nations to lose his temper and go completely berserk. Perhaps he will scowl a bit more, cackle more often, and take his arrogance to its logical conclusion. Perhaps there will be more bomb blasts and more deaths, yet vaunted claims coming from a more megalomaniac President that the world has been safer because of his madness.

In four more years, Iraq is likely to descend into greater chaos. The trial of Saddam Hussain might be over or draw near its end, giving him life or death sentence, if he is not already dead by then. Four more years of heightened security in the American airports, borders and cities, because the pale of terrorism will have widened due to more nations coming under Bush's pre-emptive strike. The Palestinians will still be fighting against Israeli occupation, and more nations in the world will take side with them.

It is possible that GWB's attack on terrorism will increasingly turn into an attack on the Muslims. The going wisdom that although not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims, will significantly change. Perhaps Islam will turn into more than a religion, a kind of a rallying idealism for anti-American sentiments in the Third World. If history is any lesson, hostility breeds hostility and revolutions thrive on attempts to suppress them. In four more years, it is possible that terrorism will be cultivated more as Bush tries to crush it more. The composition of terrorists might change as well. Most terrorists will be Muslims, while more terrorists will be non-Muslims.

Bush will muddle through the domestic economy in the next term just the way he did it in this term. More jobs will go abroad, healthcare will be ignored, and the high-income group (above USD200,000 I am told) will continue to enjoy the benefits of various tax breaks and tax rebates. But then the most common sense of all is that the U.S. economy will bleed, picking up the tab for the costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, if not on other new fronts. This drain will put strain on the U.S. budget.

For the same reason I believe GWB will win in November, I also believe he will preside over a stormy second term. Growing terrorism, rising antagonism, piling body bags, domestic crisis, dissipating coalition and more shocking revelations about WMDs and Iraq are likely to plague his presidency in the next term. It is possible that he will regret his re-election and wish he were not there to face the salvos.

Don't ask me why, I have a gut feeling that GWB's return to power will also mark the beginning of the American decline. He will preside over the lowest point of American goodwill in the world. He will find Iraq and Afghanistan different from Vietnam, which had semblance of idealism and political wisdom. Iraq and Afghanistan are sheer vengeance turned into show of might. America is hobbling in the zigzag between moral ambiguity and military power. GWB is going to head the most hated government in the world.

Polls show that more Americans actually believe GWB is a decisive leader not a flip-flop. But decisiveness in error only proves arrogance. And arrogant power is the steppingstone of ruinous end. GWB is undermining democracy in his own country to export democracy in faraway lands. Iraq and Afghanistan have been feudal societies in the garb of autocracy. GWB will be dismayed in his second term that the fragile plant of democracy doesn't grow in the rugged soil of occupation. It is tantamount to convincing someone who is in a straightjacket.

George Bush will come back in 2005, and that is how it looks to me. Cognitive psychologists use a term for a common logical error, which is called the "availability heuristic." It means making judgments about the future based not on a broad body of historical evidence but on recent, vivid events that skew our perceptions. One example is that if a list of men and women are flipped before your eyes, you will tend to think that you saw more men than women.

The U.S. voters will vote for Bush because their minds are playing the same trick on them. Despite all the lies and mistakes of George Bush, they think of 9/11 every time they think of him. It is a sort of mind game, where the name George Bush is the joystick in their hands. It helps them relentlessly zap Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussain, Abu Musab Zarqawi and the terrorists who attacked their country in 2001.

Let me tell you what is my best bet. I hope my mind is also playing the same trick on me. I wish the American voters were flip-flops and changed their minds not to vote for GWB. Actually, I want John Kerry to win. He needs to win.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.