GEORGE VS. OSAMA: AND THE WINNER IS?
It really upsets me that Osama can say, with some validity, that he is winning the war with the United States.
Al Qaeda communiques celebrating the anniversary of 9/11 all mocked the myth of American power: that no one can confront American might let alone hurt it. In bragging that all he needs to do is send several holy warriors towards the United States carrying a banner -- and in response, the United States loses a significant portion of its treasure and manpower, Osama makes a good point.
It hard to argue the truth. While I hate to agree with the evil bin Laden, I can't see any other explanation for this absurd state of affairs we find ourselves in. Osama credits this phenomenon to the weakness of his target: George W. Bush. Again, who am I to argue? And it's not Dubya's army that's weak. It's his brain.
And this hurts because most Americans did not vote for this President. They didn't like his brain. The mere presence of a smarter president, like Al Gore, might have proved a deterrence to a 9/11 style attack. After all, the 42 presidents prior to Dubya apparently were. At the very least, Gore would have framed the fight against terrorism very differently.
Instead of amplifying the threat posed by the rag-tag group of holy misfits, an intelligent president might have surreptitiously popped them off, one-by-one, while maintaining a public face that these are a swarm of nasty, albeit lucky, gnats. You harden the cockpit doors of airliners -- again, not with a lot of fanfare, and the jihad nutcases go back to being your garden-variety gnats.
Then, through diplomacy and economic blockades, you go about destroying the nuclear capabilities of rogue states while working to secure WMD arsenals all over the world. Imagine if the money we spent in Iraq went towards securing the nuclear arsenals. The feudal gnats would have nothing to throw at us. They would have nothing to celebrate either. And without 9/11 to rally around, recruitment would be way down.
So what's funny about all this? Beats the hell out of me. After 5 years of making jokes about Bush, things are starting to get un-funny. It's a little bit humorous, I guess, that Americans would fall for Karl Rove's idiot candidate just to get some tax breaks, if only because Karl Marx said we would hang our own sorry, greedy assess just to make a few more bucks. I don't want either Karl to be right.
Ironically, it's all a little like the Saturday Night Live skit where President Gore wakes up in the future only to find himself drowning in an $8 billion surplus, the Afghans are free of the Taliban, Osama is dead, and an impotent, cash-strapped Saddam is selling the US cheap gas.
In the dream, George W. Bush is a retired governor, cutting brush in Crawford while the Republican Congress still has Terri Schiavo on life support.
Then Gore wakes up and it's the U.S. that's on life-support.
It really upsets me that Osama can say, with some validity, that he is winning the war with the United States.
Al Qaeda communiques celebrating the anniversary of 9/11 all mocked the myth of American power: that no one can confront American might let alone hurt it. In bragging that all he needs to do is send several holy warriors towards the United States carrying a banner -- and in response, the United States loses a significant portion of its treasure and manpower, Osama makes a good point.
It hard to argue the truth. While I hate to agree with the evil bin Laden, I can't see any other explanation for this absurd state of affairs we find ourselves in. Osama credits this phenomenon to the weakness of his target: George W. Bush. Again, who am I to argue? And it's not Dubya's army that's weak. It's his brain.
And this hurts because most Americans did not vote for this President. They didn't like his brain. The mere presence of a smarter president, like Al Gore, might have proved a deterrence to a 9/11 style attack. After all, the 42 presidents prior to Dubya apparently were. At the very least, Gore would have framed the fight against terrorism very differently.
Instead of amplifying the threat posed by the rag-tag group of holy misfits, an intelligent president might have surreptitiously popped them off, one-by-one, while maintaining a public face that these are a swarm of nasty, albeit lucky, gnats. You harden the cockpit doors of airliners -- again, not with a lot of fanfare, and the jihad nutcases go back to being your garden-variety gnats.
Then, through diplomacy and economic blockades, you go about destroying the nuclear capabilities of rogue states while working to secure WMD arsenals all over the world. Imagine if the money we spent in Iraq went towards securing the nuclear arsenals. The feudal gnats would have nothing to throw at us. They would have nothing to celebrate either. And without 9/11 to rally around, recruitment would be way down.
So what's funny about all this? Beats the hell out of me. After 5 years of making jokes about Bush, things are starting to get un-funny. It's a little bit humorous, I guess, that Americans would fall for Karl Rove's idiot candidate just to get some tax breaks, if only because Karl Marx said we would hang our own sorry, greedy assess just to make a few more bucks. I don't want either Karl to be right.
Ironically, it's all a little like the Saturday Night Live skit where President Gore wakes up in the future only to find himself drowning in an $8 billion surplus, the Afghans are free of the Taliban, Osama is dead, and an impotent, cash-strapped Saddam is selling the US cheap gas.
In the dream, George W. Bush is a retired governor, cutting brush in Crawford while the Republican Congress still has Terri Schiavo on life support.
Then Gore wakes up and it's the U.S. that's on life-support.
posted by R. Reynolds at 9:13 AM
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