There's a scene in the world's oldest story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the king and his best friend Enkidu travel to the Cedar Forest to slay the evil demon, Humbaba. Gilgamesh ruled his city with a mighty fist, and anyone that would challenge his philosophy — his way, or no way — soon perished. As the habit of power has it, the walls of Uruk felt restrictive; he needed to spread his authority. Thus the duo journeyed deep into the woods to slay this formidable challenger.
While Humbaba was certainly a demonic force, his prowess was not without cause. The god Enlil, whom Gilgamesh happened to worship, had assigned the demon with the role of protecting the forest from hunters and loggers, those who would desecrate nature. It was not until after the king laid the beast to death that he considered that Enlil had put him there for a reason. Realizing that his god would be upset, Gilgamesh and Enkidu chopped down dozens of trees to craft an ornate door for their god's temple -- essentially, they did exactly what Humbaba was there to prevent.
When he had originally set out on his quest, Gilgamesh believed that Humbaba represented the totality of evil in the world. He knew that if he could only slay this one demon, righteousness would prevail and goodness would spread across all lands. Yet after the deed, all he felt was guilt and apprehension. For this crime of slaying Humbaba, Gilgamesh paid the greatest fee imaginable — the death of Enkidu, his best friend and confidante who, in the realm of literature, symbolically represented his other half. The death of his friend sent the king into an ascetic plight in search of immortality, a state he actually did find in the form of an oceanic elixir, and lost, again due to his hubris.
It's not surprising that George Bush is being so vigilant in his verbal and political assaults on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He has found the perfect scapegoat that, in his mind, could clear his name of the eight years of torture that he has waged upon the American nation. Not only has he found credibility for finding the criminal behind 9/11, but he has the added bonus of the first WTC bombing, the Bali nightclub bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and a few others to boot. At this rate, Dubya is seeking immortality as the hero of all American presidencies. In his mind, he probably even believes he deserves it.
One has to wonder why Gilgamesh never realized the irony in his destroying the forest that his god had tried to protect — one that is situated in the land now known as Iraq. Instead of worshipping nature in nature itself, the timber became a doorway to his demise. It's like church architects who paint majestic blue skies on chapel ceilings, when any natural theologian realizes that to worship the heavens all one needs to do is walk outside.
As our environmental challenges continue to be waged against us, our president is more concerned with clearing his name with the death of the one all mighty evil that has come to define his entire two-term presidential career. If he does so, he can — again, at least in his mind — be absolved of the crime of initiating a war that never had to do with terrorism in the first place. He'll walk away from office, self-satisfied, and then blame the next great evil on whoever fills the presidential shoes, who couldn't handle the peace that he helped create in America.
When Gilgamesh did find the secret elixir of immortality on the ocean floor, he decided to test it on an old man in his village to see if it really worked before ingesting it himself. After one of the greatest mythological quests the world has ever known, he still didn't trust the gods of nature. When a wily snake snapped up the plant and regenerated himself, Gilgamesh finally understood his own mortality. He realized that he too will someday die, and even though that knowledge stung, he finally understood that he too was a human being. We can only hope the same, and soon, of our government.