I can hear him. Yes, all the way from some hideout in Pakistan. That giggle of his. I can see his ass shakin’ as he kowtows on his prayer rug, unable to keep from breaking out in gales of laughter at how his investment in a few fellow Saudis and a couple Egyptian—guys not from Iraq—turned out to be the gift that just will not stop giving—the gift of snide laughter. Osama is laughin’ his ass off at how me managed to turn the most powerful, developed nation in the world into a nation of trembling weenies.
He did. And we continue to not disappoint him. “Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us… On the other hand this supposedly ‘foiled plot’, as some of our enemies would like to call [it], will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.” This is taken from, Inspire(must have been inspired by Gitmo), the online magazine of al Qaeda. The story is about their expense for the “cartridge bomb plot” on the UPS freighter, that has added to the laughter they are having at the billions TSA is spending for scanners at airports. [Foreign Policy, 11.23.2010] This is, of course, the only way, in asymmetrical warfare, the guys in sandals with AK47s, and explosives taped to their scrotums can engage the richest, most militarily-powerful nation in the world that insists on putting military bases near their holy places and ram so-called democracy down teir throats. They call it the “strategy of a thousand cuts.” But for them it is the strategy of a thousand chuckles.
It rankles me that we fall for it every time. Not that we do not need to be concerned about our safety, but that we take the knee-jerk, expensive and often inefficacious reaction (often because somebody can make a buck on it). National security has become just one more political pawn in the American cultural civil war and another “industry” for revolving-door bureaucrats and politicians.
It really rankles me, because this religious fanatic has made himself, hands down, the man of the first decade of this century. Not Obama, Osama. And OMA (Oh, My Allah), he must really love it. In fact, as what might have been in some respects his antidote—Obama—turns out to be the timorous and temporizing disappointment, Osama seems better able to influence affairs in America from his hideaway, than Obama is able from the Oval Office.
Consider Osama’s record. He managed to turn a cowardly dolt like Bush into thinking himself a “war president” who came out swinging like a drunk (why not) in a bar at any Middle Eastern country that he could hit. His relatively small army of Al Qaeda managed to find ways to get America to sacrifice tens of thousands of its expensively-equipped soldiers to death and dismemberment in wars it cannot win or extricate itself. It resulted in two wars, financed “off-the-books” that contributed a big hunk to the triple-whammy that America’s economy got in 2008. It is a gift of laughter that keeps on giving. Osama managed to get American to indenture and indebt itself to China and Japan, and allow its economy to be ruined by a cabal of corporations, banks and greedy Wall Street bastards. Some of the veterans they like to call “heroes” are jobless and homeless. At this rate they won’t be able to keep their 800 military bases all over the world. That hypocrisy is a belly laugh that will last for years. And when it slows down it just takes a little tweaking to get things back up to speed.
One of his greatest accomplishments was to get those silly Americans to allow their government to spy on each other, and accuse one another of being weak on terrorism, but also throw their own principles and allegiance to the Geneva Accords out with the water from their waterboarding, extraordinary renditions, and other forms of torture. And then there was Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, Americans paying for Al Qaeda recruiting. What a guffaw!
Oh, but he isn’t done yet. What about those laughs he provided with the color-coded alters and the duct tape? And the shoes that have to come off at the airport, and the confiscated water bottles. And latest, Osama thinks it is just piss-your-pants (or whatever he wears) funny to see those Americans taking naked pictures of themselves and allowing themselves to be groped and fondled by people who would otherwise be stocking shelves at Wal Mart. If he wasn’t such a good Muslim he would order some of those pictures that are supposed to be erased from the machines. This is just too good, and too funny, to be true. But it is funny; not funny ha-ha, but funny sad.
America has made itself not only the enemy of the entire Muslim world, but the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Who would have guessed that it would be this easy. It wouldn’t have been possible without a moron for a president and a people who turned out to be so easy to terrorize. That’s the essence of terrorism—the complicity of the fearful. Some Americans are fearful of invasions of Al Qaeda and imposition of sharia law, when they barely have enough guys to have a pick up soccer game.
And now they have a new president, but he has bought into the whole program. He’s chicken, too, intimidated by his military of which he is Complicitor-in-Chief. Virtually nothing has changed. His enemies call him Muslim and he does everything to not pursue a policy that might be used as evidence to confirm it. Lacking the audacity Osama, he has allowed himself to fall into the same trap.
And now it has resulted in pure slapstick. Photos and videos on the Internet of Americans having their private parts x-rayed, or fondled by TSA people with the intelligence of Wal-Mart shelf stockers.* Like sheep, with a few ignored baahs of protest, the people from the country that regards itself as exceptional and God-blessed, file through submitting themselves to any indignity so they can go about fulfilling Bush’s post-911 exhortation to show those terrorists we aren’t afraid and get to the mall and get shopping.
And now, with scanners, there is no security for your “junk.” Photos are already all over the Internet.
“Hey Mahmud, look how fat that one is! Wow, check out the boobs on her! Did you see that guy squirm when that agent checked his ‘junk’? Oh, man, this is funnier than Bristol Palin on ‘Dancing With the Stars’! . . . Hey, Osama, check this; isn’t that Ahmed in that TSA line in Chicago? Yeah, it’s him, the guy who was working on the highly explosive flatulence technique.Inshallah, they are never going to detect that.
Osama, laughing with tears in his eyes: “And if they do catch him, just imagine what the new TSA security search procedure is going to be . . .”
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© James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.29.2010)
*OK, get me for being a class-ist for that remark, but, if you are going to protect us from airline terrorists, how about paying for some highly-trained operatives, like El Al does, with the ability to terrorize the terrorists. If it’s that important not to have our planes blown out of the air, you give the job to an FBI or CIA type, not the type of people who are hired as security guards.