Tuesday night, the campus was honored to host a Distinguished Lecture Series speech by novelist Salman Rushdie, a man who is in his own words \famous for the wrong thing.""
From 1989-98, he had to live in hiding from a $2 million bounty for his death issued by the religious dictators of Iran, done as a result of his controversial novel ""The Satanic Verses."" Having been on the receiving end of the totalitarianism and lies of the Islamic world, he turned his sights on the fear and slow degradation of our freedoms here at home.
He spoke with a wonderful dark humor about how we live in a strange place called ""Ashcroft Ridge"" of false alarms, heavy security, and a new fate that can befall detractors, to be ""Dixiechicked.""
More pertinent was his comparison of novelists and politicians. The chief difference, according to Rushdie, is that novelists tell you they're making stuff up, while politicians just plain lie to us. Looking out at our current political situation it's clear that Rushdie hit the nail right on the head.
President Bush held his first press conference in quite a while, at which he employed some ludicrous spin on how his foreign policy is conducted. Among his claims was that the recent bombing in Iraq, which killed dozens of people, was a sign of desperation by insurgents in Iraq. Yes, the successful breaching of security and deaths of dozens is a sign that things are going very well for us. The most ludicrous claim was that the ""Mission Accomplished"" banner, which was behind him, while he gave his infamous aircraft carrier speech, where he played the part of a G.I. Joe action figure, didn't come out of his White House but was put there by the sailors on board.
Having heard the fiction offered by the politician, let's look over the actual record. This White House has micromanaged every event they've held. A New York Times article in May revealed that White House aides asked those standing behind Bush at an Indianapolis event to remove their ties so they'd come across as more regular people on TV.
The White House asked the U.S.S. Lincoln to turn around so there wouldn't be a backdrop of the bay as he spoke, just the ocean. They had it stay out at sea so he would have a reason to come in by plane instead of helicopter. White House communications deputy Scott Sforza was sent to the Lincoln days in advance to lay out everything from the lighting to which crew members would get to stand next to Bush.
They now tell us the sailors decided spontaneously that there ought to be a large decorative banner, that the White House's communications team members ""weren't that ingenious,"" in the words of the president. The only thing more insulting to the American people than the original exercise is that they expect us to believe the new excuse for it.
The greater fiction we're peddling is the progress in Iraq itself. In his 1998 memoirs, Bush's father wrote that a primary reason he and his coalition did not topple Saddam Hussein in 1991 was that it would involve a long hard occupation of Iraq. We are now faced with what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called a ""long, hard slog"" in a memo that leaked to the press. In the memo he also detailed that while we have had success picking off individual terrorists, two years after 9/11 this administration still has no actual long-term plan to fight terrorism. During his Madison visit Monday, Wesley Clark called the memo the first honest word we've received from this administration on Iraq. It's becoming more and more clear that Bush sees the writing on the wall; he just can't read it.
The message Rushdie gave to the audience, that we must not take lightly our right to criticize authority, needs to be remembered in times like this. He was right when he said that the lines between fantasy and reality blur as the world becomes less and less realistic. We have to take reality back. Otherwise we will be stuck with this current administration that twists reality for a foreign and domestic policy course that brings us further and further toward the edge of the cliff.
