The Chimp and the Honeybees: A Fable

Once there was a community of animals, living in and around the edge of a forest. They got along fairly well together. Sometimes there were small fights, sometimes larger fights, but they had done a fairly good job of working together for many years. One of the things that was sometimes used to help settle disputes was the Beating Stick. It wasn't used often; in fact, it was mostly just used as a threat, but the job of holding the Beating Stick was one of great responsibility.

One night, Old Elephant picked up the Beating Stick and took it from Wise Donkey, who had been holding it and using it judiciously, and gave it to Little Chimp. When Little Chimp saw the Beating Stick, he was delighted. Oh, how happy the Little Chimp was to be holding the Beating Stick! He danced with joy, and swaggered among the other animals, shaking the stick at them and enjoying his newfound importance. "What shall I do with this stick?" he thought to himself. "I can't just hold it!" As he walked along, he spied the large honeybees' hive at the top of a hollow tree. "How I would love to get at all of that honey, that liquid gold," thought he. "The honeybees don't sting much. I'll bet I could just go, sit in the hive, and suck up all of that sweet, raw honey. Wouldn't that be nice? And now that I have the Beating Stick, I'll bet I can make it happen!"

Little Chimp fell asleep under that tree, dozing quietly and dreaming of the honeybees' hive. While his eyes were shut, a small group of wasps flew up, and finding him completely asleep, stung him several times, leaving painful welts on his skin. "Owww!" yelled Little Chimp. "This changes EVERYTHING! I'm mad now!" He stormed off to the other animals, all of whom had also been stung by wasps before. "We're sorry you got stung," they said, "you have to be watchful of wasps, you know."

"The honeybees will pay for this!" yelled Little Chimp. But the other animals, even Old Elephant, reminded him that it was WASPS, not honeybees, who had stung him. "They look about the same to me," harrumphed Little Chimp. "Ok, let's go get the wasps." So Little Chimp and a bunch of the other animals marched off to the wasps' nest, and Little Chimp started beating the nest with the Beating Stick. The wasps flew out of their house, stung the Chimp and a few other animals a few times, then flew off to wait. "Ok," said Little Chimp. "Let's go get those honeybees!" As he turned away, with the other animals in confusion, the wasps patiently returned and began rebuilding their nest.

"Little Chimp," said the owl, "those honeybees didn't have anything to do with stinging you."

"They were in on it," said Little Chimp. "They were out to get me, too. And I'm starting to think YOU are out to get me, Owl." Little Chimp eyed Owl suspiciously. "They are a threat! Those honeybees threaten our entire community!"

The animals displayed nervous smiles to Little Chimp, while sharing nervous glances between themselves. They knew that the honeybees, with their small stings, we're not a threat. Plus, they had worked to keep the honeybees' hive small and manageable, despite the queen bee's efforts. "Come on!" shouted Little Chimp, "Who's with me?"

Many of the animals drew back. "Uh, beating the honeybees' hive is a dumb plan," they said. "Cowards!!!" screamed Little Chimp, baring his teeth and waving the Beating Stick around his head. "I have the Beating Stick! Who is to tell ME what is and isn't dumb?"

He ran to the honey tree, climbed to the top, and with a few scared and reluctant followers, began beating the hive. Some of his helpers used smoke to keep the bees docile. Little Chimp found the Queen Bee, and plucked her out of the hive. "I win!" he shouted. "All you honeybees are now free from the Queen. You can thank me any time now." As Little Chimp's helpers took a closer look at the hive, they realized the bees were never a threat to them. But they realized now that the Queen was gone, other creatures, hornets, yellow jackets, wasps, scorpions, vipers, were starting to infiltrate the hive. "I'm the new ruler here," declared Little Chimp, plopping himself down in the center of the hive and stuffing a large dollop of sweet, crude honey down his throat. "You bees get back to work."

The honeybees realized that as horrible as the old Queen was, she had at least kept the hive orderly and provided them with what comforts they had. They also realized that Little Chimp had not the first clue about running a honeybee nest. They were getting angry, and even the smoke wasn't keeping them down. They began to sting Little Chimp and his helpers harder and harder.

But what did Little Chimp care? He had the golden honey. It was all his. He licked and gulped it down greedily. "I'm starting to think this was all about the honey," said Owl to Donkey. "Shut up!" yelled Little Chimp, who had overheard them, "How dare you suggest that? This was about bringing a better way of life to the honeybees, and about teaching our enemies a lesson!" He was being stung frequently now, by bees, wasps, hornets, and was starting to get a little woozy and nauseous from the honey and the poison in his system. He swung the Beating Stick around carelessly, breaking off pieces of it on the tree.

As he dozed back off to sleep, with a big smile on his face, and his belly full of dead honeybees and honey, the poisons of the attacking animals in his veins, he dreamed happy dreams. "I took the Beating Stick, and I did just what I wanted to do," he thought. "I am the greatest leader of all time."

Moral: Mission Accomplished.

They were warned

Clarke Watch

Well, the right-wing smearing of Richard Clarke has been both intense, as expected, and hysterical, as expected.

What's most frustrating about the Cheney Administration is the arrogance with which it insults our intelligence. First, it has the audacity to force, over both the popular and electoral votes, this incurious, shallow bumpkin on us and the rest of the world as a "leader". W is the worst excuse for a human being we've had in the oval office in a long time, and I include Nixon in that list - and it isn't only because he lets Cheney pull his strings. He is starting to have almost as much blood on his hands as LBJ.

Their latest insult to our collective intelligence is the smear of Clarke. They can't even think ahead to what their statements and actions mean. All they know is that Clarke isn't being "loyal", and like any other cosa nostra, they mean to destroy anybody who doesn't put loyalty to their junta above all else. But back to why this should insult anyone with half a brain and memory that goes back more than 2 years (this obviously excludes the vast majority of the media):

After 9/11 happened, there was only one way for the Cheney administration to spin it that was even remotely favorable to them: that they had dropped the ball. The Bushies all came out and said, "Gee, we are really surprised by this. Along with the rest of the American people, we weren't expecting it, and were caught with our pants down. We will now focus like a laser beam on the problem of Iraq, er, I mean, terrorism, because it is clear what a deadly serious issue it is. (Plus we can use terrorism to justify all of our harmful policies and accuse all of our political opponents of being, or supporting, 'terraists'. See how neat that works out?)"

So, in essence, they argued for their own incompetence. "Whoops", they said, (though of course they never apologized) "who would have guessed?" (I shouldn't have to remind readers of the Watch that in the summer of 2001, Bush attended an economic conference in Milan, where anti-aircraft guns were used to secure the summit, lest fanatics hijack a plane and crash it into them. I guess the members of his security team didn't know what those guns were for.)

Now Clarke comes along. His book has many important themes and analyses, including spreading blame between White Houses for not being able to roll up Al Qaeda. But he has three main points about this administration in particular that I think drive his urgency to communicate. 1. This White House was not unaware. They were warned, repeatedly and urgently, by him. 2. The administration was focused on Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, before and after the attack, and were happy to have an excuse to invade. 3. The invasion of Iraq was Osama Bin Laden's dream fantasy - a perfect tool for recruitment of new members to anti-US hate, and a rallying cry for Islamic fanaticism everywhere.

The lazy concubines in the press will ignore points 2 and 3 forever, if we let them, because they are complicit in shoving us into this horrible war. (By the way, somebody snaps a few pictures of some mercenaries getting killed in Iraq, and NOW it's a brutal war? NOW? What about all of the thousands of innocent Iraqi children and other civilians who we have maimed? Those "Shock and Awe" fireworks on CNN were pictures of real people, with real families, being burned and crushed to death in a city, with our weapons. We may not have dragged their bodies triumphantly through the streets (*cough cough Uday and Qusay cough*), but for people to suddenly wake up now and declare this a brutal war?! They need to be slapped. What about the hundreds of dead US soldiers, if they can't be bothered to consider Iraqis? What about all of the horrible maimings on both sides? Somebody had a camera to see how some Iraqis really feel about mercenaries occupying their country, and NOW people are outraged, shocked, and disgusted? What do they think the anti-war people were talking about all those months? Ignorant fools.) So, don't expect the press to ever acknowledge what Clarke is trying to say about Iraq, even though he resigned in protest as the war began.

Instead, as a smoke screen, both the White House and the press are focusing hysterically on point 1, that they were warned before 9/11. Clarke says they were warned and that they were asleep at the wheel. Now, I think it is easy to surmise that they were indeed warned. Part of their uncontrolled, uncoordinated response to Clarke has been the statement that, although Clarke was warning them about Al Qaeda, he was such a jerk that no one could work with him. So, they've pretty much admitted that Clarke was trying to warn them. And, apparently there was so much chatter in summer 2001 that the FBI and CIA were lit up like Christmas trees.

As Digby notes in this post, there have been a boatload of officials that have resigned and walked out of this administration in disgust over their handling of terrorism. Quoting Digby, this includes Richard Clarke and "Rand Beers and Donald Kerrick and Roger Cressey and Paul O'Neill and John Brady Kiesling and Joseph Wilson and John H. Brown and Don North and Anthony Zinni and Karen Kwiatkowski and Ray McGovern and Ray Mcmichael " I would add to this list John O'Neill, who Digby may have meant by Paul O'Neill. John resigned from the FBI in disgust that the Cheney administration was actually not just ignoring Al Qaeda, but had specifically ordered the FBI to back off any investigations involving the Bin Ladens. John quit, took a job at the World Trade Center, and died on 9/11. You can read more about him at http://www.rememberjohn.com/

So, it's pretty clear that Clarke and others did warn them. As far as them being asleep at the wheel, I think the ends prove it. If they were really "on battlestations" and on point, and treating terrorism as an important subject, and all that other stuff that they are claiming now, would Bush have continued to read a goat story to grade school kids after Andrew Card told him that "America was under attack" that morning? Would our fighters which are supposed to be able to scramble to protect Washington DC in 5 minutes or some such short time have failed to shoot down the jet that slammed into the Pentagon, some 45 minutes after the first plane hit the WTC? Would NORAD have been so asleep?

Now, here is the really mind-blowing, intelligence-insulting part of it. Remember, that being "asleep at the wheel" is THEIR COVER STORY. It is their only defense for letting 9/11 happen. That they were well meaning, but incompetent bumblers is their original spin. In their knee jerk, fanatical, desperate need to smear Clarke because he isn't toeing the administration line (now that he is a private citizen), they are denouncing everything he says, including their prime excuse.

What that leaves us with is that they were warned, they knew terrorism was a major problem, and yet 9/11 unfolded in the way that it did. Conclusions? They are not only incompetent (their first story), but are criminally negligent. Or worse, they let it happen on purpose. Those are their only two choices, now that they are painting themselves as being so on top of the pre-9/11 situation. Those stupid fools.

By the way, as they continue to smear Clarke, even accusing him of perjury without actually accusing him of perjury, as the creepy Bill Frist was happy to do in the Senate last week, remember that on 9/11 itself, when they thought that the White House was the next target, Richard Clarke and about a dozen other stayed in the White House command room, running the response to the attacks. Chimpus unelectus flew to Louisiana, then Nebraska. Sneer Cheney was holed up in a bomb shelter. As everyone else fled the White House, including Condoleeza Rice, the people remaining behind were told to email out a list of names of the people in the Situation Room so they could identify the bodies later. Richard Clarke stayed behind, strongly suspecting it was the end of his life, to continue to fight the terrorists and protect this country. That's the kind of man they are painting as delusional, unreliable, and treasonous now.

But, I'm sure this will all come out. After all, Rice now has to testify in public and under oath to the whitewashing 9/11 committee, which is being run by people complicit in the Iraq planning coverup. And Cheney gets to hold Bush's hand as they testify "together". Ah, isn't that sweet?

As we note that Bush's poll numbers were rising after the Clarke stuff last week, and that Americans had better get their ignorant heads out of their asses lest evil really win a stunning victory this fall, I urge you all to look into get out the vote efforts for the summer. We've never faced a more important election. Democracies are not great at always choosing the best leaders. Our strength lies in being able to elect out bad leaders. Let's play to our strength.