Politicians! You Can’t Live With ‘Em ....

Plowing through the mailbag this week after my release from the hospital, I came across an e-mail from President Bush, and a letter from James Carville on behalf of John Kerry.

That’s nice, I thought. They must be writing to wish me a speedy recovery.

“Dear Steve,” began the e-mail from President Bush.

I don’t recall a personal relationship with the commander in chief, but I did have a head injury and suffer amnesia. Maybe we were closer than I remembered.

Oh, wait a minute. As I read further, I realized the president was writing to hit me up for money.

“I need your help today,” he said, calling Kerry a flip-flopping knave. Bush asked me to cough up as much as $2,000 to help keep him in office another four years and save the republic. “Thank you for your friendship, and may God continue to bless America.”

How I ended up on his mailing list, I’ll never know. But I was flattered, and thought about writing back to say: “Yes, Mr. President, count me in. Like you, I believe the threat of mercury emissions is overblown and want industry lobbyists to continue undermining regulators under orders from the White House. I also like the idea of threatening to fire anyone who blabs that the true cost of prescription coverage is $150 billion more than you admitted. Put me down for $2,000, and, by the way, I still think Saddam had nukes.”

I closed Bush’s e-mail and reached for the letter from Carville. It turned out he didn’t care about my head injury either.

OK, I thought. It’s the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq, and maybe Carville was writing to tell me Kerry had a smarter antiterrorism plan than the one we’ve got now.

Fat chance. Carville was playing bagman for Kerry, but at least the prices were reasonable.

“Whatever you can give will make a difference,” Carville wrote. “$20. $35. $50. $100. Anything.” Sounds kind of desperate, no?

You would think that, in a two-page letter, Carville might have touted a half dozen Kerry proposals.

Wrong.

Maybe two or three ideas?

No sirree.

One?

Guess again.

Here’s the note I penned:

“Yes, Mr. Carville. I like the way Kerry continues bashing the president while saying next to nothing about his own thoughts on terrorism, or anything else, for that matter, assuming he has any. I look forward to eight more months of schoolyard name-calling while the world blows up and Kerry tries to figure out what he stands for. Enclosed is my check for $35.”

I know it’s early in the campaign, but I’m worried that what we see is what we’re going to get. Then again, it was Kerry’s wife, Teresa, who once said the campaign trail is where good ideas go to die.

Politicians, as a breed, are incapable of acknowledging or learning from their mistakes, says Scott Atran of the National Center for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

“All they do,” he said, “is spin, spin, spin” to perpetuate their own survival.

For instance, as Dick Cheney and others keep reminding us, it’s terrific that Saddam Hussein now lives in a cage.

Is everyone nodding in agreement?

Good. Now ask yourself whether the U.S. occupation of Iraq is going to stop maniacs from blowing up trains in Madrid or any other Western city, or whether it’ll only motivate more and more of them to come after us.

The problem we’re now having in Iraq, a mission Bush led and Kerry supported, is one I was not alone in predicting a year ago.

If we stay, chaos will reign.

If we leave, chaos will reign.

Either way, terrorists will be delighted.

For anyone who believes we’ve planted the seeds of democracy in the Middle East, I’ve got some magic beans for sale. As Atran argues, you cannot fight the world’s far-flung, America-hating fanatics by waging a preemptive conventional war in a single country. You can only inspire more soldiers to take up arms.

Our battle, Atran has written, “is Hercules’ fight against Hydra, the monster who sprouted new heads for each one severed.”

Spectacular go-it-alone bombing missions and the dumping of 120,000 troops into a shooting gallery are yesterday’s answers. In the new world, Atran says, we need an alliance of small multinational military units sharing intelligence and stalking terrorist cells throughout the world, the same techniques used by sociopathic terrorists.

But that’s just one part of the solution.

One year after the start of the war, American foreign policy is still hypocritical enough to outrage our enemies and alienate allies. By every standard used to justify the war in Iraq, our good friend Pakistan is a far more worthy target, having harbored terrorists and shared nuclear technology that could destroy us all.

One year after the start of the war, mainstream Islam shames itself by not standing up each and every day to denounce the killers who distort the Koran and celebrate the murder of innocents.

One year after the start of the war, Americans would rather discuss Janet Jackson’s bared breast than question our gluttonous dependence on Middle Eastern oil, even as gas prices soar and soldiers come home in boxes.

Dear George, and Dear John, thanks for your notes. I’ll keep an eye on the two of you and reconsider later. I’m kind of tapped out right now.

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected] and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez.