Dear Theo
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota had been living for nearly sixty years with an undetected birth defect of tangled blood vessels in his head that caused him no problem until one cold winter day, on December 13th, when a blood vessel broke giving him a life threatening brain injury-something very rare for a man his age (see note 1). Suddenly this modest low key little known senator was thrust into the national spotlight because his death or resignation could have ceded control of the Senate back to Republicans.
When I heard about the pro-war senator’s seizure (see note 2) I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought except that it occurred during a teleconference with reporters on Iraq on a day that fell on the third anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s arrest, and, most importantly, when President Bush was meeting with defense officials at the Pentagon to discuss his new surge strategy for Iraq (see note 3).
As I read up on the senator I was amazed to discover that he was born on December 28, 1946 a date which had historical significance as it fell on the 90th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson’s birth and in the year that George Bush was born.
As I continued my studies I also learned that of the 26 senators South Dakota sent to Washington two were named Johnson with the first having served during the Wilson Administration (see note 4). But more intriguing was the discovery that George Bush wasn’t the only man serving as President when a Pope named Benedict became pontiff of the Catholic Church. For this distinction also fell to Woodrow Wilson who witnessed the elevation of Giovanni Chiesa as Benedict XV in 1914, the year World War I began (see note 5).
But a coincidence that truly astonished me was the discovery that in Wilson’s sixth year in office the Democratic Party-due to Wilson’s policies on the League of Nations and the war-lost control of both Houses of Congress to Republicans giving them a two seat edge in the Senate. For this paralleled the Democrats’ victory in Bush’s sixth year due mostly to political corruption and the handling of the Iraq War (see note 6).
It then became clear to me that comparisons of George Bush to Harry Truman made by some on the Right and to fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson made by many on the Left were inadequate. That of his 42 predecessors the President that Bush most closely resembled in his moralism, democratic idealism and religious faith that bolsters this view, is the invincibly intransigent and tragic Woodrow Wilson. Indeed, it became clear that while Wilson and Bush were perfectly justified in sending troops to fight abroad-the one to Europe in World War I and the other to Afghanistan and Iraq in the current world war-yet what the League of Nations was to Wilson and his party the Iraq War had become for George Bush and Republicans. In other words, just as Wilson set out to make the world safe for democracy and prevent a second world war by using the League to short cut history and democratize the world, so too did Bush by invading Iraq and ousting its dictator seek to make the terror spewing Middle East safe for our democracy by using the model of a democratic Iraq to liberalize the region.
Moreover, when Wilson’s call for U.S. membership in the League was stiffly resisted by the Republican led Senate, and Bush’s policy to stay in Iraq was similarly resisted by Democrats both men dug in and refused to compromise. Contrary to expectations they redoubled their efforts and surged ahead: an isolated Wilson with a national speaking tour to reverse public opinion-that ruined his health and presidency-and Bush with a troop surge that has done nothing to reverse America’s growing isolation and irrelevancy in the Middle East, reconcile Iraqis and turn their government into a stable, unified, pro-American liberal state (see note 7).
Indeed, Theo, George Bush is the Woodrow Wilson of our time an incarnation of his towering idealism with the former dealing with a crisis rooted in the latter’s momentous decision to intervene in World War I (see note 8).
As I mentioned above, Tim Johnson was born on December 28, 1946 90 years from the day Woodrow Wilson was born and five months from the birth of George Bush. This makes Johnson a point of convergence linking the fates of Bush and Wilson, a nexus and a warning sign unequivocally and marvelously confirmed by the birth dates of these three men. Incredible as it is when we take the numbers in Johnson’s, Wilson’s and Bush’s birth dates and count them up as single digits the product in all three cases is the same two digit number-a number which has oracular significance, hence:
Tim Johnson: December 28, 1946 or
1+2+2+8+1+9+4+6=33
Woodrow Wilson: December 28, 1856 or
1+2+2+8+1+8+5+6=33
George W. Bush: July 6, 1946 or
7+6+1+9+4+6=33
In light of Johnson’s near fatal illness these convergent numerical signs indicate that George Bush embodies Wilson’s democratic idealism at its utopian worst and most destructive; it makes it clear that his unrealistic policies in Iraq are driving us to exhaustion and defeat in the Middle East and that this must radically change before it’s too late and disaster strikes. Indeed, as saving Iraq’s worthless, corrupt, sectarian government was the thrust behind the surge with good reason Johnson suffered a brain hemorrhage when he did-not before or after Bush’s meeting at the Pentagon with his generals but precisely at the moment when he was there discussing his desperate new plan to win the war (see note 9). While this plan was intended to rescue Iraq’s nascent democracy from collapse all it has done is slow it down, prolong its agony and delay the evil day of a sectarian showdown.
Truly, Theo, Johnson’s illness, his bleeding of the brain and physical collapse on his senate room floor, were emblematic of the hemorrhaging of our troops and treasure in Iraq, of the war bleeding us politically and militarily, of a total foreign policy collapse if we don’t change course; a collapse possibly leading to a regional war involving radical Iran and the use of nuclear weapons. For the number 33 also signifies Harry Truman, the 33rd President, the commander in chief who a-bombed Japan into submission and was President when Bush and Johnson were born.
Indeed, the President, who launched a global war against Islamic terror with the noblest aspirations of wanting to democratize Iraq and the region now blindly serves the low narrow sectarian interests of a militant Shiite government complicit with Iran in supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and in weakening our power and prestige in the region (see note 11). It reminds one of Wilson coming to Versailles with his vision of world peace expecting to save mankind from war then caving into Clemenceau’s thirst for revenge in bludgeoning Germany into making war reparations as the price for getting his League-thus setting in motion the next great war, the war that Wilson fearfully foresaw and blindly tried to stop.
Imagine for a moment a sick Woodrow Wilson defying his doctors and caring wife and going on a nation wide tour to alter public opinion on his lost cause. Think about this pitiable man pushing himself to the limit in the service of his League then suffering a paralyzing stroke after collapsing from fatigue and bitterly achieving nothing. What happened to Wilson over the League is happening to America in the Middle East over Iraq, the unintended consequences of good and noble intentions pursuing an impossible nation building dream. The president’s policies have led to collapse, paralysis and marginalization vis a vis our moderate Arab friends who cowering before the rising power of the mullahs refuse to join us in a coalition to curb, contain and isolate them. As I said in The Rise of Nuclear Iran: Arab leaders’ fear of Iran is greater than their confidence in us to protect them. A consequence of shattering 1000 years of Sunni rule over the Arab world and toppling Saddam Hussein while doing nothing about Iran and the spread of its toxic influence. That is why Tim Johnson had his seizure that day, Theo; it was a warning about the destructive geo-political effects of the President’s Wilsonian plans and policies in Iraq-his nation building dreams that are woefully out of synch with reality, the reality of an ancient sectarian clash that has no military or political solution, that security gains however great, or power sharing cannot solve. Again our nation finds itself in a quagmire as our enemy in Tehran waxes in strength to the rising hopes of jihadist forces everywhere who see the same defeat of the US that overtook Russia in Afghanistan (see note 12).
Wilson and the victors at Versailles set the stage for a second world war that outdid the first in cruelty and carnage; and Bush’s policies in Iraq are advancing the region toward a catastrophe more dreadful and horrifying than the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s with its million dead and two million wounded. Unless we withdraw our forces from Iraq and bring the war on terror to Iran, ridding the earth of its evil regime, the Iran-Iraq War with its deadly use of WMD will be prelude to a horribly greater war possibly fought with nuclear bombs.
Like I said above, Theo, Johnson’s seizure coincided with the third anniversary of Saddam’s capture by U.S. forces in Tekrit. And 17 days later, two days from Johnson’s 60th birthday, he was put to death in a sectarian lynching that was an abomination of justice; a lynching that fell on a Sunni holiday intentionally planned to antagonize the hated Sunni Moslems; a lynching which signaled that the Maliki government is irredeemably, hopelessly and viciously sectarian; a lynching that so appalled Charles Krauthammer that he concluded in one of his essays: “We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government (see note 13).” Krauthammer was right, the Maliki government is not worth defending; in fact as Iraq’s disempowered Sunnis refuse to live in the shadow of the Shia they once ruled they are hell bent on taking back the country. At this time in history, Theo, the Shiites and Sunnis of Iraq are irreconcilable and can only settle their differences on the battlefield after a long protracted exhausting war, as Protestants and Catholics settled theirs after fighting to a stalemate after 30 bloody years (see note 14). We are bleeding for no good reason in Iraq, for a lost cause of democratic peace like Wilson’s useless League that failed to stop a second great war. Indeed, Theo, Tim Johnson’s terrible brain seizure so precisely and tragically timed by Providence was a prophetic warning confirming this truth.
Theo, before concluding this letter on Senator Johnson I will cite one last ominous sign about the surge, not given by the stricken senator before the President’s surge speech, but 114 days later-a number of special significance to the war (see note 15). Now as the senator shares the same last name with Lyndon Johnson, the President who turned the Vietnam War into an unpopular cause and tragic defeat, so as if to give us warning that Iraq is headed down the same fatal path Johnson was released from his hospital on April 30th, a day of infamy in the history of America which I will return to shortly (see note 16).
But before I do it is important to note that on the very same day of Johnson’s release Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey was discharged from Cooper Hospital in Camden after sustaining serious injuries in a car accident 18 days before. This was the same Jon Corzine who served in the U.S. Senate with Johnson when the Iraq War Resolution came up for vote (see note 17). The same Jon Corzine who at the time was 60 years old like Tim Johnson and the President, and who like Wilson is the governor of New Jersey (see note 18).
But what is ominous about these convergences, Theo, is that April 30, 2007, the very day both men were discharged, marked the 32nd anniversary of Liberation or Reunification Day when North Vietnam captured Saigon and unified the country under communist rule. A dark day in American history and even darker for South East Asia. While this coincidence is astonishing in itself, clearly portending a bad outcome for our surging forces and the war, what makes this more convincing as a divinely given sign-once again joining Iraq to our fate in Vietnam-is that Corzine suffered his accident on April 12th, four years from the day when the world saw the fall of Baghdad (see notes 19 and 20).
Notes
1. Only one in ten with this birth defect called “arteriovenous malformation” are known to suffer intracerebral bleeding and not past the age of 55. As Johnson was close to 60 everything about his seizure and its timing were extraordinary in the extreme.
2. Johnson was one of 30 Democratic senators who voted for the Iraq War. Moreover, at the time of his seizure Johnson was the only member of the Senate with a child serving in Iraq.
3. Saddam was captured in his home town of Tikrit on December 13, 2003.
4.Senator Edwin Johnson of South Dakota held his seat from 1915-1921.
5. Benedict XV was pope from September 3, 1914 to January 22, 1922. Known as the “peace pope” he labored tirelessly to end the Great War sending emissaries to the ends of the earth with messages of peace and reconciliation. Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005 taking his name from Benedict XV whose mission for world peace he has dedicated his pontificate to continue.
6. While Republicans going into the 1918 election had a one seat edge (215-214) over House Democrats, minority party support gave Democrats a voting advantage. Moreover, as the 1918 Senate elections gave Republicans a two seat edge over Democrats (49-47) the 2006 election gave Democrats the same edge (51-49)-with two independents that caucus with them.
7. The profoundly corrupt government of Nouri al-Maliki is as rigidly Shia today as when it began in 2006 and perhaps more so due to the defiant rise of radical Iran as a regional power-an achievement that make members of Iraq’s ruling Shiite coalition proud to be Moslems and is cheered by the mad Arab street
Despite US support for Iraq’s Shiite government to the tune of $200 million per day and 4000 dead Ahmadinejad is more popular and respected within government circles than George Bush. This in part is due to the fact that Bush is involved in an abusive and demeaning relationship with Maliki where he is constantly taking advantage of the President’s generosity, infinite patience and blind commitment to reconciliation and nation building while giving little in return to make it a success. However, the intractable problem of reconciliation is not all on Maliki’s shoulders. The weight of the problem is equally on both sides of the sectarian divide and equally deadly. Truth is most Iraqi Sunnis are hell bent on taking Iraq back from the Shia and returning the country to the status quo ante; they refuse to live in the shadow of the “heretical” sect and no concessions from the Maliki government in power sharing and oil wealth will change that.
8. The Middle East that George Bush is struggling to remake in America’s image was the unintended consequence of two historical events: the Ottoman Empire’s fatal decision to join the Central Powers in World War I, and Wilson’s decision to join the other side. As America’s entry into the war indirectly helped England to defeat the Turkish caliphate-by saving Britain from redeploying all or most of its troops in Arabia to the Western Front-these two decisions created the Middle East as we know it today and underlies the volcanic eruption of jihadi violence, terror and mayhem.
9. Johnson collapsed from his seizure at approximately 12 PM EST when the President was at the Pentagon. It is important to note that Johnson’s illness also coincided with a trip to Iraq by fellow South Dakotan pro-war senator Jim Thune. These meaningful and related coincidences show that a higher power was at work in Johnson’s illness just as it was with Ronald Reagan’s fatal Alzheimer’s (see On the Death of Ronald Reagan).
11. Blacklisted Iranian banks like Melli Bank known by Maliki’s government to be conduits for financing Hamas, Hezbollah, The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and other terror groups, and to fund Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, operate freely in Iraq.
With it’s open support for Hezbollah’s subversion of democracy in Lebanon and Hamas’s relentless war on democratic Israel the Maliki government is anything but the “firm U.S. ally in the war on terror,” that the President claims.
12. As I said above the Arab street and Arab leaders, including Iraq’s Shia government, have a higher regard for Ahmadinejad than for George Bush who, despite the surge and its security gains, is seen in the region as a weak, toothless leader, a paper tiger being defeated by Iran.
13. Charles Krauthammer, “Shiite Happens,” National Review, January 5, 2007.
14. In 17th century Europe it took thirty years of religious warfare between Catholic and Protestant Christians before both churches learned to temper their rage, tolerate their differences and live in peace. It was a long hard bloody conflict fought over the mysteries of theology and the politics of kings where millions died and cities burned. But such is the way of human history in the clash of power, politics, ideas and dreams. And such is the way of the sick and broken nation of Iraq; a nation destructively divided between Sunni and Shia that must tragically advance through a dark rite of passage of horror and death until hatred and war are finally exhausted and the blessings of peace are achieved.
15. From the surge speech given on January 10, 2007 to Johnson’s release from the hospital was 114 days. The symbolic significance of this important number as it relates to Iran, Iraq and the upcoming election on 11-4 will be discussed in my letters on Ronald Reagan, John McCain: The Mantles of Reagan and Kennedy and the Columbia Shuttle Disaster.
16. Johnson was admitted into the Washington University Hospital on December 13th and was transferred to Washington’s National Rehabilitation Center on February 20th where he was a patient until his release on April 30th.
17. Johnson voted yea and Corzine nay. Johnson has since turned against the occupation and is calling for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.
18. Corzine was born January 1, 1947 just four days after Tim Johnson. The significance of the ominous number 60, symbolic of the destructive 1960s, is discussed in my letter on the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
19. In other words, Corzine is injured on the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad and is released from the hospital almost simultaneously with his old senate colleague Tim Johnson on the anniversary of Saigon’s fall. Keep in mind that Tim Johnson’s seizure fell on the third anniversary of Saddam’s capture and that Saddam’s 38th birthday, April 28, 1975, fell on the second day of the siege of Saigon by North Vietnamese forces. What we see in the interplay between these three men is an astonishing synchronization of corresponding events focused like a lazar beam on Iraq and Vietnam.
20. Both Bush and Johnson were born in the year that saw the start of the First Indochina War between France and Vietnam. The war’s starting date was December 19, 1946 nine days before Johnson was born. On this day in 2006 Bush admitted in a televised address that his Iraq strategy was a failure and would soon be replaced. It is interesting to note that like the Iraq War the First Indochina War-forerunner of our disastrous Vietnam War-started on the 19th day of the month. This is another sign that we must extricate ourselves from the Vietnam-like quagmire of Iraq so we can deal with the new realities taking shape in the region and replace our destructive obsession with Iraq with an Iran first policy.