DAWN - Opinion; October 14, 2002

Published October 14, 2002

The doctrine of pre-emption

By Huck Gutman


A THIRTY-ONE page document, “The National Security Strategy for the United States,” recently submitted by President George W. Bush to the US Congress, has received much attention. In that document the Bush administration asserts that “to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.... to forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively.” America’s assertion that it can and will use military action pre-emptively has been discussed — though not as widely as it should have been — in the United States; it has been criticized in countries all over the globe.

The central concern of discussion and criticism has been on the unvarnished declaration that the United States is willing and ready to use its position as the lone superpower in the world to intervene — or invade — militarily whenever it believes its national security is threatened. The Bush doctrine not only accepts pre-emptive military action, it raises it to the level of national policy. Multilateral support is no longer necessary: America will act whenever it decides it is in its interest to do so.

The precedent this sets is, of course, a deeply unnerving prospect for future world affairs. If the United States can send its military into any nation which it perceives as a threat, then Russia can use similar justification to send troops into Georgia in pursuit of Chechen rebels. China can invade Taiwan to assert its sovereignty over ‘Chinese’ territory. Pakistan or India can cross the Line of Control and annex all of Kashmir in the name of ‘national security’.

The reasoning behind pre-emption, which ignores national sovereignty, international law, and multinational negotiation, is at its base an assertion of American imperium. The Bush doctrine envisions a world in which an American president can send troops where he wishes, when he wishes, for whatever purpose he wishes, as long as he maintains that American security would be imperilled by inaction.

None of this is news to most people concerned with international affairs. But what has remained unexplored are the economic reverberations of the Bush doctrine. A careful reading of the entire National Security Strategy document reveals an economic dimension that is deeply unsettling. But so shocking was the general purport of the document — unilateral, pre-emptive military action — that remarkably few people have read the remainder of the document with care.

The first sentence of the document insists, with certainty, that there is “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” Freedom and democracy are widely embraced as essential constituents of a fully mature state. But free enterprise? Much of the world’s population would not calmly accept that free enterprise is the only route by which one can build and sustain a nation. Socialism, communism, managed economies; collectives, cooperatives, social investment, socially determined and imposed limitations on ‘free’ enterprise: all of these have credence as sensible alternatives to the unfettered free market and unregulated free trade.

One should not quickly pass over this remarkable opening sentence, In it, the American president’s assertion that a country cannot succeed without free enterprise stands revealed as a cornerstone of his thinking. Free enterprise is so deeply entrenched in his thinking that he insists that the future foreign and military strategy of the United States will be based on the need to coerce — or if necessary bludgeon — nations into compliance with America’s positions on free enterprise and free trade.

The new policy is not, if one looks at it closely, merely intended to make America safe from terrorists; it is a policy which seeks to make capitalism safe from citizen opposition or government intervention. A century ago an American president, Woodrow Wilson, declared he wanted to “make the world safe for democracy.” Mr. Bush wants to make the world safe for multinational corporations — and wealthy individuals.

In the aftermath of September 11, President Bush proclaims in the Security Strategy document, that “the United States will work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.” This, he declares, will be a “distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.” He conveniently ignores the fact that, in the economic realm, even within America there is vigorous discussion and dissension about just what “our” values, and “our” national interests, are.

Mr. Gore, one recalls, received more votes in the last presidential election than Mr. Bush. Or, to take another example, poll after poll reveals that few in the US share Mr. Bush’s conviction that lowering taxes on the wealthy is a national interest. (Indeed, lowering taxes on the wealthy all over the world is a cornerstone of the new American security policy — but more on that, later.)

In his new model for American international relations, Mr. Bush states that one of the “non-negotiable demands of human dignity” is a “respect for private property.” So much for socialism, or even the concept of government taxation of individual wealth.

Buried deep in the document, in a section given a title better suited to a religious tract or trade magazine for CEOs, “Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade,” are seven aims which America will use its might to enforce. Several of these goals are so reasonable they would elicit world-wide assent, goals such as ensuring the rule of law, investing in health and education, and ending corruption. Others are not so benign, nor the subject of any sort of international consensus. These goals seem to have, as their ultimate aim, making the world safe for multinational corporations. The document speaks of assuring that legal and regulatory policies encourage “business investment and entrepreneurial activity,” and requiring that national fiscal policies “support business activity.”

Even more ominous among the goals is the insistence on free trade, an insistence that, in the context of the document, suggests that any nation that wishes to set rules or boundaries on its penetration by international trade and international capital is a threat to American national security. Every nation must remain open to the needs of international capital — and specifically, American investment. The complex matrix of the Bush policy depends in the final — or even the not-so-final — analysis on American preemptive military action. Should a nation oppose free trade, either by protection of its own industries and markets, or by placing limits on investment from abroad, American might may be brought to bear against that nation. Not just financial muscle, but military muscle as well.

But most egregious of the economic conditions that Mr. Bush propounds as the basis of American security is his insistence on “tax policies — particularly lower marginal tax rates — that improve incentives for work and investment.” The language he uses resounds powerfully to the wealthy of the world, while sounding like economic jargon to the majority of humankind. Mr. Bush’s policy is clear to those in the know, and hidden from most others.

What does an American foreign policy that insists on “lower marginal tax rates” mean?

The answer to that question is breathtaking. President Bush is announcing, to the US Congress and to governments around the world, that it is henceforward necessary to the national security of the United States for every nation to reduce taxes on wealthy citizens, domestic corporations, and multinational corporations and banks. “Lower marginal tax rates” is the code by which people of influence tell each other that they are opposed to progressive taxation. It signals an implacable opposition to any policy which would ask that wealthy individuals to pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes than low-earning workers pay. The code also asserts that corporations should pay taxes at a rate no higher than the most indigent worker in society. “Lower marginal tax rates” means that progressive taxation should be diminished or abolished.

Thus, the “respect for private property” which President Bush presents as a keystone of America’s international agenda does not mean, as might at first appear, respect for families of modern means who own their own flat, or a commitment to small-scale farmers to continue to own their own land. What Mr. Bush is propounding is that those who amass a great deal of property — the wealthy and the powerful — should be able to keep their property., It appears that when a government decides to redistribute even a modest portion of its society’s wealth from the rich to the poor, by means of tax policy, its actions are inimical to the security of the United States.

One of the fundamental purposes of government is to help distribute the resources of a society so that all citizens can have food, housing, health care, access to education. Taxation is a government’s primary means for distributing — and redistributing — these resources. In fact, taxation is the only way, short of property seizure, to redistribute wealth and income. Such taxation and the social redistribution it enables or precludes is the concern of each autonomous government and its citizens — not of the United States of America.

The Bush administration’s representation that American security requires the use of military force and economic coercion to assure that countries do not tax corporations and their wealthy citizens more than minimal amounts, that nations do not redistribute wealth or income through the tax system, is outrageous.

“This administration’s goal is to help unleash the productive potential of individuals in all nations. Sustained growth and poverty reduction is impossible without the right national policies,” the document states, with no reluctance to spell our what those right national policies are. “Governments must... follow responsible economic policies and enable entrepreneurship. Free markets and free trade are key priorities of our national security strategy.”

While addressing the very real problem of terrorism, the new American foreign policy goes far beyond that issue. It proposes nothing less than that compliance with conservative, market-oriented economic values and programmes is necessary to American security. It implies that American troops and military materiel will enforce each nation’s compliance with the agenda of the multinational corporations: free trade, free movement of capital, defence of private property and its inalienable rights, and ever lower taxes on the wealthy and powerful.

The writer is Professor of English at the University of Vermont and a columnist.

The ‘armchair’ soldiers

By Eric S. Margolis


PRESIDENT George Bush blasted Democrats last month for “not being interested in the security of the American people.” Democrats, it seems, were not jumping fast enough on Bush’s invade-Iraq bandwagon.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat and war veteran, furiously demanded of Bush to apologize. Bush spokesman claimed the president was quoted out of context, but the Democrats remained enraged.

Many senior Democrats are decorated war veterans. It is interesting to see what some of the leading Republican hawks who are clamouring for war against Iraq did during America’s last real conflict — Vietnam. The muckraking New Hampshire Gazette did a study.

President George Bush — a cushy slot near home engineered by Dad in the Texas Air National Guard; apparently was missing for an entire year; service records never revealed. Vice President Dick Cheney — no military service. Defence Secretary. Don Rumsfeld — no military service. Chief Pentagon hawks Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz — no military service. Grand Inquisitor Attorney-General John Ashcroft — no military service. Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott, no military service.

Media neo-conservatives baying for war against Iraq: Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bill Reilly, George Will, Ken Adelman, Chris Mathews, and Rush Limbaugh — no known military service during Vietnam.

These men are all around my age. I enlisted in the US Army during the Vietnam war and served my country. Where were they? Now, these warlike avoiders of military service want to send more young Americans into another trumped-up, unnecessary war.

Interestingly, the only senior member of the Bush administration with an honourable military record appears to be General Colin Powell, and he is least of all in favour of the coming war.

This ugly business came right after Bush had turned his fire on Germany’s just re-elected Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for refusing to join the anti-Iraq lynch mob. Bush was steaming angry — and rightly so — after one of Schroeder’s running mates stupidly compared Bush’s tactics over Iraq to Hitler’s. But this came after the White House and US ambassador clumsily interfered in Germany’s election by openly backing the conservative candidate, Edmund Stoiber — something close allies do not do. Schroeder won an uphill election campaign, largely by refusing to join Bush’s ‘jihad’ against Iraq, a position supported by two-thirds of German voters. Bush furiously accused Schroeder of “playing politics” over Iraq.

Lucky for Americans, Bush wasn’t playing politics over Iraq. With mid-term US elections only five weeks away, no decent person would dare accuse Bush of trying to whip up war fever to distract American voters from the looming $157 billion deficit he created, collapsing stocks, serial Wall Street scandals, a possible second recession, and daily revelations that the Bush administration should have known the 9/11 attacks were coming..

Bush refused to even congratulate Schroeder on his victory and had Defence Secretary Rumsfeld publicly accuse the chancellor of “poisoning” US-German relations. Whatever happened to Secretary of State Colin Powell who is supposed to deal with diplomatic affairs? More proof the Pentagon is running foreign policy and, as the mounting world-wide clamour against Bush administration policies shows, making a hash of things.

The Germans, in the White House view, are not being sufficiently warlike. So what if the Germans lost 4.2 million dead in two world wars (America lost 418,000), that’s no reason for them to be such Euro-wimps.

Germans and Americans seem to have switched stereotypes: it’s now Germans who are peace-loving, while Bush’s recently declared New World Order Part II strategy reeks of old aggressive Teutonic geopolitics.

Washington has long urged Europe to act like a true partner. But whenever Europeans dare disagree with US policy, they get blasted by the US government and media for insubordination and accused of delusions of grandeur.

In reality, Europe, in the words of master strategist Zibigniew Brzezinski, “remains largely an American protectorate, with its allied states reminiscent of ancient vassal and tributaries.” Now, for the first time since World War II, Germany has openly defied Washington, to the delight of most Europeans. Schroeder did this to save his political hide, but the effect is still highly significant: a cannon shot that could announce Europe’s coming of age and the beginning of a true partnership of equals with the US.

Germany has been forced to accept the role of a parolled criminal ever since 1945. It’s now time for Germany, tightly bound to France, and within the framework of the EU, to begin asserting its rights as a sovereign nation that has fully paid its debt for World War II.

Bush calls for democracy around the globe, but his unwarranted criticism of Germany is just another example of the occasional anti-democratic tendencies that course through his administration. German voters have spoken. Bush’s clumsy efforts to punish Germans for opposing a war seen around the globe as unjust and unnecessary have further inflamed European opinion against his government and damaged America’s strategic interests and reputation in Europe.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2002

What ‘regime change’ means?

By M. Iftikhar Malik


THE US and Britain are at it again — threatening to strike at Iraq if it refuses to submit to their will. The excuse being ‘arms inspection and disarmament’. But the ultimate goal being, “regime change and control of Iraqi oil.”

But to be sure, both conveniently use the UN to condemn Iraq and further strangling the nation of 17 million if it has any breath left.

Why have the United States and Britain been the most violent actors against Iraq since 1991 Gulf War and in the crisis thereafter?

Saddam Hussein does not explain it all, given that the US- British leaderships over the decades have changed, but their policies toward Iraq have not. Only they both, from time to time, exploit the UN Security Council to pass resolutions condemning the enemy of the day. Neither has any qualms about using this platform to extend its hair-brain, trigger-happy ‘foreign policy’ when it suits its purpose, to give its actions overseas, a thin cloak of ‘legitimacy’ — no matter what the rest of the world may think.

The US and Britain are the main actors in a vast, intricate and chilling historical drama: passing the imperial torch in the Middle East. Forget their own fatuous excuses — protecting the Kurds, safeguarding neighbours, implementing UN resolutions, enforcing no-fly zones. Only one grand design could legitimize the political and military frenzy Iraq provokes in both countries: the determination to maintain the Middle East and its resources under imperial control.

Under Britain, imperial control took the form of physical occupation of territory along with direct political management. The 20th century US and the UN model takes the form of indirect commercial and cultural domination, through sanctions and sometimes its own brand of ‘laws’ Helms-Burton Act, prohibiting business with Iran and Libya). Others, achieved through the use of surrogates — wealthy local elites, brittle political regimes, a Barnum-and-Bailey-like assortment of flunkies, groupies, cheerleaders and hangers-on.

The grave crime of which Iraq and Saddam Hussein are accused is imperial insubordination. Every other terrible act they have allegedly committed has been done or is still being perpetrated by other countries with no significant response from the US or Britain or the UN. But insubordination by Iraq invites severe retaliation.

Several UN resolutions remain on the books, barely mentioned, and unenforced to this day. Example: One requiring India to hold plebiscite in Kashmir, allowing the indigenous people the right to self-determination, and self-governance or alliance with a nation of their choice. UN mandated international arrest warrants against indicted Serbian war criminals Kradjic, Radko Miladic, and other well-known butchers, though the areas they freely roam in, are the same neighbourhoods patrolled by the US-British led forces. Several resolutions demanding Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian land, collecting dust at the UN, without anyone in any hurry to enforce them. The difference between Iraq and Serbia, Israel and India is, that Iraq is a predominantly Muslim nation, and others not.

The aim in the case if Iraq is to punish the people, government and president of the sovereign Iraqi nation so severely that no other Third World country, more precisely, a Muslim country would ever consider the same sort of disobedience, or be in a position to challenge US and British intimidations.

Iraq is once again, at the brink of being transformed into a wasteland where some already grandmothers and children face the choice of dying of hunger and malnutrition or become casualties of war, all because Iraq dared to defy the imperial rules. The conflict is about reinventing an old imperial order of hegemony, exploitation and tourism to exotic lands.

Viewing the Middle Eastern situation is these terms, the behaviour of Iraq becomes as clear and logical as that of the two imperial powers. It is the nature of the imperial imperative. And conversely, Iraq’s behaviour is anti-imperial rebellion and insurrection.

The UN, by allowing the body to be used for illegitimate purposes by the British and the US, is just as guilty of imperialism and hegemony as the two permanent security council members.

When Iraq needles and provokes the imperial rules, it is not being stupid; it is rebelling in a well-established anti-imperial tradition that is both programmed into the genes of our species and deeply burned into the chronicles of human civilization. Americans might remember their rebel ancestors who threw tea into Boston Harbour and then launched their own anti-imperial rebellion.

Saddam Hussein as a person and his iron-fist rule is not the issue. The issue is imperial rule and submission it demands from Middle Eastern states. Yesterday it was Libya and the Taliban. Today, it’s Iraq. Tomorrow, it could be Iran or Syria!?

Eleven years after the Gulf War, the rules of the game are clearer. Both sides are behaving according to fixed human rules and psycho-political criteria: the desire to dominate and rule and the counter-desire to be free and sovereign. People in the Arab and Muslim world are watching this ongoing saga with anger and frustration, quietly cheering for Iraq.

Yet they know that Iraq and its president are destined to suffer and probably get clobbered again soon. And they fear that the violent retributive rules of the new US brand of Imperium, like the old British one apply to them too.

Betrayed by right and left

By Emsi


THE Pakistani diaspora in the US is undergoing intense re-examination of its place in this democracy. The episode of three Muslim medical students being held under detention for 17 hours merely on a verbal report of an eavesdropping nurse. To add insult to injury another three Muslim medical students were denied rotation in the Larkin Community Hospital where they had originally been contracted to receive their training.

Daylong repeated radio and television accounts said that they “blew through” the toll way — that is, not paying the toll at the booth. As events unfolded all of the students were exonerated as the surveillance video footage clearly demonstrated that the two cars had indeed paid the toll. Now not only had the nurse lied but that the toll booth operator had also lied giving the police an excuse to stop the students’ cars.

To top it all after it had become quite evident that the three medical students were innocent of all allegations, Governor Jeb Bush, brother of President Bush, congratulated the nurse instead of apologizing to the medical students who were to study medicine in his State of Florida. Jeb Bush had his eyes on the upcoming elections which he is said to be leading according to a Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times poll of September 29, 2002.

Many US Muslims are asking whether the political right or the political left has betrayed Muslims. Some because of their prejudices, will stick to their ideological beliefs and embrace the political right or the political left. Each camp sees some sense in being repudiated if they do not support their erstwhile camp followers. Close examination however will reveal that both camps will have been found culpable of betraying Muslims. The conservatives will blame the “neocon” faction while the political left will state that they were not in power when Muslims were being persecuted. No matter what the excuse, it is a fact that at a recent Muslim conference in Washington D.C, and attended by some 30,000, not a single national politician of any political hue showed up. Suddenly Muslims are the “untouchables”. (“Frustrated U.S. Muslims Feel Marginalized Again” L.A. Times Sept. 27, 2002, by Theresa Watanabe).

Earlier this year an article entitled “Betrayed by Bush” on salon.com by Eric Boehlert (1) echoed the thoughts of many American Muslims. It spoke of our American experience and of the realities of the world of double dealing and expediency for pure political gain. Another article by Dr. Mahjabeen Islam (‘Islamophobia, a New Menace’ Dawn Sept 23, 2002) has rekindled the debate.

When Bush won in 2000 many Muslims, including this writer, congratulated themselves with the feeling that we had arrived and that we could play a significant role in this land of the free and the brave. We thought we could participate in the fruits of democracy which we have been told again and again is a good thing. We thought that there was no use being observers for that was a sure way of being marginalized. Little did we realize that even participants in this game can be victimized in a short space of less than a year.

Mr. George W. Bush’s present calculation is that during the mid-term elections later this year and presidential polls in 2004 Muslims will need him more than he needs them. He believes that his “Operation Enduring Freedom” has so endeared him to the average American voter that he can afford to ignore the Muslim vote since his margin will bridge that deficit.

Just a few months ago the opinion pollsters announced that Americans support Israel 5:1 against the Palestinians. His political advisers are probably telling him that there is no such thing as a Muslim bloc of votes and that with no one else to look up to, they, the Muslim voters, will fear his incumbency and try to appease him. If Mrs. Clinton decides to run, Muslim voters will remember that she returned political donations from Muslims saying that it was linked to terror groups. Her silence in the face of Muslim women’s suffering will be taken note of.

Thus, many Muslims may not loosen their purse strings for one who has so humiliated them by returning their donations and still going on to win the US Senate office. The present political calculus is that Muslims do not matter. It is precisely this calculation that the left as well as the right has made. Each in turn is relying on silence in the face of atrocities against Palestinians.

The clever word “link” has now again resurfaced. Palestinians are said to be linked to Iran and thus to “axis of evil” as Robert Fisk recently pointed out (“The lies leaders tell when they go to war” March 30th, 2002). With this simple equation, Americans are being told to not trouble their conscience over what is going on in the Middle East. In fact, there is no outrage over what is going on with the individual liberties of Muslims in the US. In April 2002 raids were carried out on even institutions such as the “Fiqh Council”.

With so much going on in and around Arafat’s compound in Ramalla, television networks focus on other topics. In the last Ramallah siege Katie Couric in her morning programme “Today” on NBC interviewed at length one victim of shark attack off the coast of Australia. This was her big story. This is similar to the world spectacle of saving one whale with a joint US-Russian effort with powerful ice breakers some years ago. The media which is largely in the hands of liberals has by its stone deaf silence also played a part in the oppression of the Palestinians. Where is the outrage?

Of late one veteran daytime talk show host, Phil Donohue, has resurfaced but his voice is drowned out by the constant neo-con diatribes.

Once again both political parties will lead the Muslim electorate to slaughter come election season this fall. Each one will promise what we will be willing to hear and believe. The key here is what the politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, will ask of us is something we will have to give in the present. What they will promise will be in the future like they have promised statehood for Palestine for the past 50 years.

Let us not forget that both Bush and Hillary have talked of the creation of the State of Palestine. Bush did so less than one year ago just before he needed to build a coalition of Muslim countries against terrorism. Dangling this plum of Palestinian statehood in front of Muslims ha d even prompted Saudi Arabia to make a generous offer of reconciliation between Israel and the Muslim countries.

Hillary, during the Clinton presidency, made the Palestine State statement while talking to school children. Imagine the wholesome image of a caring, full-of-compassion woman reading stories to small children. That was a perfect photo op. It did not matter that her own husband repudiated her and distanced himself from the concept of a Palestinian state. Recently, at a fund raiser former President Clinton said he would hold a rifle to defend Israel.

To his credit former President Carter has been on record for being against the “axis of evil” statement claiming that it will take decades to repair the damage. But having said so, where is he now? Where is the habitat of the people of Palestine?

With Bush refusing to even meet Arafat, some may think that Republicans are the Arabs, Muslims and to Palestinians in particular. The contempt shown by Bush was evident when he stated that Arafat must stop suicide bomb attacks while the bombing and shooting of Arafat’s office by Israelis was going on. This in spite of the fact that all electricity, water and outside access except cell phones was cut off and mighty tanks demolished the very walls that protected Arafat. Under siege and without any authority, he is expected to betray his people and sign a contract with the devil. Naturally, he refused and stated he would prefer to die rather than surrender. This recurred again last week. Again as before Arafat refused to give in, preferring to die for his cause rather than betray his people.

In 1983 an Israeli commission of inquiry, headed by Justice Kahan of the Israeli supreme court, found Sharon indirectly responsible for the Phalangist-perpetrated killings in Lebanon. This Sharon of Shatila and Sabra massacres is bent upon breaking the will of the Palestinians.

Arafat has been shoddily treated by US politicians both on the right and the left. We all remember Rudolph Guilliani ejecting Arafat from an opera performance in New York several years ago. Bush of course does not want to have anything to do with Arafat. This brings us to the left. Just how did the left treat Arafat? Few of us can forget reading the transcripts of Kenneth Star’s report suggesting that Clinton kept Arafat waiting while he attended to Monica Lewinsky.

Later as events unfolded, it became evident that Lewinsky’s testimony would hit front pages the next day, he came back from his vacation break, put on a fashionable military attire, a leather Air Force bombers jacket, and launched a series of cruise missile attacks on Muslim countries.

Rush Limbaugh, a right-wing talk-show commented that the sole purpose of the cruise missile attack was to keep Monica off the front page news. One cruise missile landed and destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and another killed 20 Afghans. Pakistan airspace was violated in the process. The next day the US media was not critical despite the resemblance to the movie “Wag the Dog” theme which briefly was that an American president uses war to manipulate news headlines away from his sex scandal.

To book or not to book

YOU turn on one of the thousands of TV talk shows and you see a guest being interviewed. How, you wonder, did he or she get there?

This how it works for authors.

Your publisher’s publicity agent calls the person who books the show. The booker (almost always a woman) has tremendous power to let the guest in the front door. She has hundreds of book writers from whom to choose; from autobiographies of Mafia wives to recipe books on gourmet cooking for pet dogs.

Pretend for a moment that you are a writer and have spent five years on a book titled “Presidents Who Have Done It and Presidents Who Haven’t.”

The booker thinks it would make a good subject for the talk show host and passes it on to the producer. If he OKs it, he passes it on to the host.

Although the book doesn’t appeal to the 18- to 35-year-old age group, the host, a big fan of presidents, agrees to have you on the show.

The publicity person (nearly always a woman) calls you, elated, and says, “I got you on ‘The Morning After Show With Harry and Hilda.”’

“Fantastic,” you say. “When do I go on?”

“Next Monday at 7. I’ll have a car pick you up at 5:30.”

The next thing you know a writer from the show calls you up to interview you. They want to know everything about you so they can give the host notes. Everyone knows Harry is not going to read the book.

The interview on the phone takes three hours.

After you get off with the writer, you start calling everyone to tell them you’re going to be on “The Morning After Show.” The first call is to your mother because you know she’ll tell all her friends in Queens. Then you call your sisters and brothers, and then friends all over the country.

You say to your wife, “I’ll show them after all those years when they laughed at me.”

Your wife says you should buy a new suit, shirt and tie.

The night before the big morning you decide to go to bed early — but you can’t sleep. You go over the questions the host might ask you. And you think of clever throwaway lines you will give him.

Then you go over the chapters in case there’s something about the presidents you might have forgotten. The sun is coming up.

Your wife is helping you get dressed. “Promise me you won’t be nervous. I know you’re going to be good. Just don’t put your hand on your chin, and be sure to look into the camera. If you don’t know something, fake it.”

You assure her that you are going to be all right.

Now there is a knock on the door. The limo is waiting for you. You arrive at the studio at six. You’re expected by security and taken to the Green Room — which, of course, is not green.

An intern asks you if you want a cup of coffee or a donut. You say no. You ask when are you slated to go on the air. The intern speaks in to a walkie-talkie and then says, “Eight o’clock—after the news.”

You want to ask why they got you there at six, but you know you won’t get a straight answer from an intern.

Mayor Giuliani comes in because he’s plugging his book. Britney Spears arrives with an entourage of managers, followed by a dentist who has a new method for whitening your teeth and a chef who’s going to demonstrate how to cook a turkey in five minutes. It’s quite a jolly room.

Harry and Hilda kid around and interview each guest according to their importance.

It is now five of 8. Your hands are sweating. Your big moment is about to arrive.

Then an assistant producer (the intern’s boss) comes into the Green Room. He says, “I’m sorry. We can’t put you on. We’re doing a remote from London with Prince William’s barber.”

“That’s unfair,” you yell.

“Life’s unfair,” the producer says and walks out of the room.

So you go home to explain to your mother, your brothers and sisters, and your friends.

One brother says, “I kept my kid home from school to watch you.”

When you call your mother she says, “I’m so ashamed. How can I go out in the street after this?”

Your brother-in-law — the one you don’t like, says, “And you call yourself a writer.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

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