Shorter America’s Worst Mother: Great numbers of people must die needless deaths in order to give meaning to my empty life.

Maybe that they haven’t attacked because we capitulated to Al Qaeda’s demands by withdrawing our troops from Saudi Arabia.

As opposed to Spain and England, who had…how many troop is Saudi Arabia again?

Oh, yeah, they hate us for our logical consistency.

The most fundamental reason why we have not been overrun with random acts of Islamic violence is that, by and large, the American Muslim community has rejected bin Laden’s brutal agenda. They’re Americans, they’re on our team, not the team that brought us 9/11. By comparison, England had to deal with the homegrown terror cell that pulled off the subway attacks, to name only one.

As much as the wingnuts ridicule Bush for his rhetoric labelling Islam the “religion of peace,” as much as they push for racial profiling and other policies that would alienate American Muslims, the fact is that these simple gestures by an otherwise incompetent administration probably have a lot to do with why bin Laden has won so few fans over here. We’re all Americans.

“I was one of those Americans who rather envied the WWII generation: their stoicism, their solidarity, their comradeship in facing a common enemy and the sense of purpose they experienced that reaffirmed what it meant to be Us vs. Them. I was not alone in yearning, in an inchoate way, to be swept up as they were in great, Manichaean, epoch-defining events.”

PAGING CHRIS HEDGES, PAGING CHRIS HEDGES – WHITE COURTESY PHONE – CRAZY BITCH ON LINE ONE.

I was one of those Americans who rather envied the WWII generation: their stoicism, their solidarity, their comradeship in facing a common enemy and the sense of purpose they experienced that reaffirmed what it meant to be Us vs. Them. I was not alone in yearning, in an inchoate way, to be swept up as they were in great, Manichaean, epoch-defining events.

Don’t you love old movies?

That generation didn’t have TV. And a big chunk of their visual entertainment time was taking in newsreels of the war. And all the fit-for-duty athletes were off fighting. Yes, that’s where this is going…

WWII was that generation’s sports for four years. You had favorite generals and if you were way into it you’d have favorite divisions and between the paper and the newsreels you’d see how your team was doing. Water cooler stuff.

You envy that generation so much? Well then ration yourself. Plant a victory garden. Buy some war bonds- oh. Right.

Re England’s “terror cell” – you named only one because there was only one. The cold hard fact is that Muslims all over the world are just about like eveyrone else. There are raving ideologues, sure. (Like Pipes. He sounds just as cold-blooded as Bin laden to me. And I have actually read them both.) But these people are a tiny minority, the rest are just “going along to get along” trying to make livings and stay as secure as they can in an insecure world. But of course, you cannot think this, or else this great, fake “manichean enemy” will all go up in smoke and you will be left confronting — yourself in a mirror. People like Gurdon would not be able to take that.

Seems odd to me that the people who are so “proud of what we have created” are also the ones so anxious to destroy it. I also love the “we” in there, like anyone in the modern Conservative Movement has actually contributed in any substantitve way to the culture – or did a great “Conservative Moralist/Realist” movement rock the worlds of art, music and literature and I missed it? And why is it that you only ever hear Conservatives use the collective “we” when they want to pretend they exist on the same intellectual contiuum as their superior predecessors? “WE the great members of western civilization created the constitution, but YOU, citizen, are a poor ignorant sap.” Awesome.

Re England’s “terror cellâ€? – you named only one because there was only one. The cold hard fact is that Muslims all over the world are just about like eveyrone else.

Yeah, uh, let’s look at some cold hard facts before we decide what the cold hard facts are. Consider this excellent DKos diary.

The diary discusses a poll question which asks Muslims whether they consider themselves Muslims first, or a citizen of their country first. The diarist notes that French Muslims (who, he argues, are fairly well assimilated despite popular belief to the contrary), are evenly split on this question, with 42% considering themselves French first, and 46% considering themselves Muslims first. (Interestingly, he notes that these numbers are very similar to those which apply to Christians in America, who divide half-and-half as to whether they are “Christians first” or “Americans first.”)

In sharp contrast to this finding, only 7% of British Muslims consider themselves “British first,” as compared to 81% who consider themselves “Muslim first.” You read that right – SEVEN FUCKING PERCENT. Is it so ludicrous to conclude that no, Muslims all over the world are not assimilated to the same degree, and some countries have done a better job of achieving national unity than others?

I hope you don’t think I’m suggesting that the Muslims who consider themselves “Muslims first” are all potential terrorists – far from it. But I do think it’s a pretty necessary precondition. It just seems self-evident to me that the better job you do of assimilating people, of persuading them that you all share a common goal and way of life, the less likely they are to betray your country and commit acts of violence against it.

It’s for this reason I argue that the policies and actions advocated by the wingnuts, such as racial profiling, would likely cause more acts of terrorism than they prevent. It’s not that Joe Muslim will pick up the morning paper, read about racial profiling in air travel, and suddenly decide to put down his latte and pick up an AK-47. But over the long term, America has the choice to continue regarding the Muslim population as friends and fellow citizens, or to turn against it as a potential enemy force to be regarded with fear and suspicion. And in the long view, we shouldn’t be at all surprised if the latter approach causes more and more American Muslims to embrace radical ideologies, since we’ve made it clear the American way of life isn’t intended for “people like them.”

As for Britain, I think my point stands that they have a problem, based on the statistics I cited above. I don’t know why an overwhelming majority of British Muslims think of themselves as primarily Muslim rather than primarily British, but I don’t think it’s something the UK should be proud of.

But of course, you cannot think this, or else this great, fake “manichean enemy� will all go up in smoke and you will be left confronting — yourself in a mirror.

If I use the word “wingnuts” one more time, will it become sufficiently clear that I’m not Michelle Malkin? I’m arguing AGAINST policies that treat Muslims as the enemy, and I thought that was pretty clear.

The sad thing is that it’s not a war. There are no armies, no massed invasion fleets, no epic battles. Like the crazy who thinks every skin blemish must be cancer, these bloodthirsty idiots see every threat to an individual American as an existential threat to America. As if a few terrorists could topple the strongest military power in the history of the world. The Soviets couldn’t do it, the Japanese couldn’t do it, Spain couldn’t do it, but a few guys with some explosives can? That’s prima facie stupid.

It’s as if they want to have it both ways. They are fearless about invading third-world countries because of American military power, especially air power, which these little tin-pot countries we like to pick on don’t have, but they turn around and in the next breath they cry plaintively that at any moment America may be toppled and suddenly find itself an Islamic dictatorship ruled under Sharia.

The good news? This is starting to sound awful fishy to a lot of regular folks. And a few people are beginning to have the courage to say out loud what it is they are seeing. The more panicked and over the top the rhetoric goes, the less credible it actually is. And they just get more strident…

mikey

They searched and searched for an enemy; 9/11 gave them one to squeeze and exaggerate and hold America hostage because of. They thrive in these sorts of conditions. ‘Existential’ struggle is their Precious; it gives them psychological purpose and is their political lifeline. They ain’t about to let it go. And since they view themselves as the Real Murkins, only a traitor would try to take the Precious from them.

That leads perfectly into an essay I’ve been sketching in my head called “Battlestar Galactica Republicans.” I promise it’ll rawk.

In other news: Adam Yoshida is Canadian.

I had literally *no* idea.

Steve, I am sorry. I did not mean “you” like you interpreted it. I was using that colloquial form of “you” that most Americans use instead of “one.”

If it was that confusing, I was also counting on the Gurdon example to clue you (the real kind) in. Apparently not.

And your polls regarding Muslims defining which is “first” don’t really prove that more Muslims in Britain are terrorist or pro-terrorist – just that they are less assimilated than French ones, and one might wonder why, and if there might be other reasons besides the muslims’ own opinions.

Onward from this, we might also try exploring what radicalizes Muslims or other immigrant communities in countries like Britain. Might it be something to do with British society? Who knows.

But again, defining your religion as more important to you than your nationality is a far cry from espousing terrorism.

In fact, people who always put nationality first have also been guilty of great wrongs in history.

Dear America’s Worst Mother™–

So, are Colostomy, Haggis, Bluetooth and Spot going to be enlisted in the fight straight outta high school?

Half a decade? (Do the math, moonbat.)

Given my current belief (given to me by the angel Moroni) that the way one’s understanding of how language works either determines (or possibly is determined by) one’s ideological disorientation, which then translates into an adenoidal voice on the heated air of the political continuum, I (unwillingly enough) have to come clean: My political ‘conversion’ (if you will) (if I may) came as quite a shock to a guy who’d spent the last 10 years of his so-called life happily occupied with inhuman inanities; and let me tell you, was that guy surprised. (Although. in retrospect, I don’t think it should have been quite the shock I like to pretend it was.)

My own disorientation—which I’ve come to identify as classical gibbering — also exposed an ideological fault line between me and both of my friends, a rift that had previously been a far more localized and discipline-specific dispute about Herman’s Hermits, (often argued sniggeringly over wine coolers and extended dance mixes of Abba.) Unsurprisingly (to me, at least), my friends were of the postcolonial/new historical/post-structural (including reader-response) schools of interpretation theory, and held treasonous political views, having been voted Most Likely to Embrace Ideas about US Imperialism/Hegemony and ‘Who-Could-Have-Seen-That-Coming-Blowback’ by their respective high school graduating classes. Often they would trot out their knee-jerk anti-American views as a way to distance themselves from me and my faithful native-bearers who had taken to wearing American flag lapel pins through our noses and decorating our mud huts with ribbon magnets; dismissively they called us ‘Cargo Cultists’ who had committed the unpardonable sin of having never read Pynchon or Delillo, Said or Walter Benjamin.

So, for me and the little fellow, not only was 9/11 an horrific day of tragedy, but it was likewise the day that began my political unmaking, and compelled me to slink through the scarcity of my beliefs, as well as endeavor to understand the philosophistrical underpinnings of my pathological inclinations in much the same underhanded way I’d previously gone about misunderstanding A Night Without Armor or My Pet Goat.

I remember that day (as if it was tomorrow) … We had gotten up early, me and the ‘guana, bracing ourselves to face the horrors of a sunny September morning. We were having our coffee, watching “Good Morning America,” playfully arguing over who would pack the car for the weekend trip we’d planned to visit our maiden aunts in Tucson, N.M., (they’re teachers at a Christian school there… well, they’re not really our aunts …)

And then, it happened. The little fellow jumped up, screaming,
“The plane! The plane!” And, like Rosemary with the thin lips of the spawn of Satan clamped to her left tit, I knew: This is no dream. This is really happening.

We decided to stick around a while before setting off for the Land of Enchantment, (at least until we had misconstrued what was happening,) and because we did, we watched it live as the second plane hit. It was at that point, I think, that we decided to cancel our trip, (which was alright by the little fellow since our ‘aunts’ had always kind of creeped him out.)

By the time Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, I’d rounded up the .357 magnum and the 12 gauge, 20 boxes of ammo, a big-ass knife, and my 6D Maglite, just in case. I put them all in the truck box so they’d be handy.

Yeah, we were 1500 miles away and it’d be hard to fight off a jetliner with those tools, but who knew what panic would take over and how widespread it would be if the attack continued or switched to other methods?

Call it a moment of clarity, call it an epiphany, but when the little fellow turned to me and hissed: “Let’s go kill us some brown people,” I knew what I had to do.

Now, at this remove, firmly entrenched in my views, I find it rather pointless to argue with those who have become entrenched in their views.

If the moonbats want to talk, they can talk to the little fellow;
he’ll be the one with the big-ass knife strapped around his waist.

…..

So, if you’ll excuse us — (and by “usâ€? I mean the duped, slack-jawed ‘volunteers’ we chickenhawks rely upon to feed our vicarious and cowardly bloodlust) I will leave you with this (for lack of a better word) thought: I miss Ronald Reagan. (And so did he … at least in those odd and fleeting moments when he remembered he was Ronald Reagan.)

It’s an interesting point about no small scale terrorist attacks by Al Queda., at least in the U.S.A.. I think the reason is fairly obvious. For attacks in western nations, OBL prefers the BIG hits – Spain, London, 9/11. He does not seem to appreciate, thankfully, how crippling the small scale attacks could be. But his audience is outside the U.S.. I don’t think that he so much wants to terrorize Americans, as impress fellow radicalized muslims with his prowess. Random shootings at shopping malls won’t do it. That’s junior varsity – Hezbollah, Hamas – level terrorism. He wants the big hits. But the big hits take a lot of planning and are difficult to execute – hence, from 1993 WTC attack to 9/11/2001. eight years to get that one the way he wanted it.

Ironically, the more successful we are at stopping the big attacks, the more likely that the smaller attacks will be contemplated, just to draw blood. And when they happen, and the right wingers play right into OBL’s hands by freaking out, OBL will probably realize that smaller attacks can be easier to execute and almost as effective as a propoganda tool.

I think it is so critical to catch OBL and his lieutenants because they are the big masterminds of the big hits. If Bush ever gets off his butt and takes OBL out, Al Queda will continue to exist, but it won’t have the same operational expertise and vision. And for all the bedwetters out there scared about a nuclear attack, an Al Queda without OBL will be much last capable of coordinating such an attack.

I’m no expert, but other than the level of assimilation I think one of the main differences between the French and British Muslims is that the former are mostly from North Africa while the latter are mostly from Pakistan. These are very different backgrounds in terms of religiosity and affinity to Al-Qaeda -type ideas.

Of course their real object of metaphysical hate is the Liberal…

What they need is an existential enemy who gives their life meaning!

One would think that Satan would be enough.

mikey – I watched some of this Ted Koppel special on civil liberties last night, and they actually had on a couple of Republican hacks, including a deputy attorney general.

I only tuned in for a few minutes, but I heard this deputy attorney general say ‘it’s a different kind of war.’ This is basically admitting that it’s a metaphor, and that they will redefine war expressly to justify their methods. It is basically a trumped-up police action, but that doesn’t make torture and secret prisons seem ok, so they have to make it into a supreme existential threat, a war of cosmic proportions. (and trash anyone who doesn’t buy it.)

You have people saying ‘if we change our lifestyle (i.e make sacrifices as in WWII) because of these attacks, the terrorists already win,’ while these same people are advocates of tactics that are contrary to what we are told America is supposed to stand for.

The material aspects of the ‘American way of life’ are more important to them than the moral aspects (which should come as no surprise,really)

I’m no expert, but other than the level of assimilation I think one of the main differences between the French and British Muslims is that the former are mostly from North Africa while the latter are mostly from Pakistan. These are very different backgrounds in terms of religiosity and affinity to Al-Qaeda -type ideas.

No! No! No! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

They’re MUSLIMS and they want to Keeel US!!!~!~!11

Your bloviating about their whys makes us unsafe. Like I was told my liberal friend who was arguing that we shouldn’t bomb the hell out Iran: History started November 4th, 1979.

I was one of those Americans who rather envied the WWII generation: their stoicism, their solidarity, their comradeship in facing a common enemy and the sense of purpose they experienced that reaffirmed what it meant to be Us vs. Them.

Our Most Precious Lady of the Anglophiles does realize, does she not, that WWII was primarily a war waged by center-to-far-left Americans against European and Japanese fascism, and that too many conservative Republicans and other rightists were in fact not on board — many being tacit Nazi sympathizers?

But these people are a tiny minority, the rest are just “going along to get along� trying to make livings and stay as secure as they can in an insecure world.

I spent a lot of time as a teenager wondering why everyone was so boring and here I am grateful for it.

I think Gurdon has betrayed an interesting point of view here. If she felt empty and purposeless, she might have longed for an “instigating” or “provoking” enemy that would inspire her countrymen to action (like when the Japanese “awakened the sleeing giant”). If she felt disconnected or “lost”, she might wish for some kind of “overshadowing” or “prevailing” or “sweeping” meta-enemy that is way, way bigger than any of our differences and unites us in common cause (like the Axis powers made us team up with Those Damn Commies).

Sadly, no. Gurdon longs specifically for an enemy that is “Manichean”. What an odd word choice! It’s only ever referred to the dualistic philosophy of ancient Persia; I’ve never seen it used as a metaphor before. Surely, she doesn’t mean that the Axis powers were actually Manicheans, does she (all misreadings of Nietzche and “Zarathustra” aside)? And even if they were, why would that bit of trivia be more driving to the Axis powers than the imperialism, nationalism, racism, ad nauseum that also informed their philosophy?

I’ve only got one answer that makes sense: Gurdon needs to have an enemy so obviously and mind-bogglingly evil that any misdeeds by the US pale in comparison. She longs for a return to the black-white dualistic morality of WWII, where anything “our boys” might have done wrong was a-okay, because We are The Good Guys. If we suddenly face an enemy that is clearly and unequivocally on The Dark Side, their very existence automatically redefines America as being on The Side of Right. And anything you do to “support America” or “support the War on Terror” makes you personally Right and Just and Good as well.

Gudron wants to face an enemy so bad that it eliminates any impetus to examine her/our own actions, admit any mistakes, and accept any consequences. In essence, she needs to face the Devil Without so she doesn’t have to consider the possibility of a Devil Within.

That’s so pathetic.

“Gudron wants to face an enemy so bad that it eliminates any impetus to examine her/our own actions, admit any mistakes, and accept any consequences. In essence, she needs to face the Devil Without so she doesn’t have to consider the possibility of a Devil Within.”

Thanks, you said this much better than I did. I think this tendency must be in that book of psychological illnesses (DSM-IV or something like that)? Too bad people like that are wandering around writing columns (and getting them published).

It’s only ever referred to the dualistic philosophy of ancient Persia; I’ve never seen it used as a metaphor before.

I have quite a number of times seen the word used ‘metaphorically.’ In this specific case, the writer just wanted a fancier way to give us the standard Right Wing false dilemma: that their GWOT is a battle between “contending principles of good (light, God, the soul) and evil (darkness, Satan, the body…” [Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language.]

And, for this writer and her ‘ilk’ — (I’ve always wanted to use that word the way they do)
— I think it is an appropriate use of the term, because, if they came clean about it,
they would acknowledge that it really is, for them, a holy war between Christianity and “Satanic forces.”

You hit the nail on the head, Dorothy. I’m just surprised how honest Gurdon was there. It’s like when a professional athlete admits he really only cares about the money and doesn’t give a crap about the fans.

…and here I thought ‘The Precious’ was oil.

I sit corrected; some nice writing on this thread.

Senor R:

Like father, like son; and like the father’s fellow-travellers, like the son’s. Muslims are the new commies: a threat to grossly exaggerate so as to scare the American people into voting for strongmen who will defend Christendom from the barbarian horde. And now Crack Pipes waits with relish for another “atrocity of terrible proportions� that will unite us all (again)in the cosmic struggle.

Yep. And this is why I recommend reading (or at least skimming) Laqueur, Walter: Fascism Past, Present, Future. Laqueur is an old hand on the fascist history circuit, and very much a buddy of Pipes and that crew. Guess what fascism ‘future’ is in Walter’s 1996 book? If you said Islam O’ Fascism, that nasty part-Irish fellow, you’d be right. This is where Hitchens and Little Roy Cohen got their grounding. See also James A. Gregor, former eugenicist turned ‘expert’ on fascism, for some more juicy 1990s Islam O’ Fascist writing. Pipes per et fils are basically a firm dedicated to scaring up enemies to keep the weapons shops busy. Not personal, really. Just . . . business.

Re: America’s worst mom:

I was one of those Americans who rather envied the WWII generation: their stoicism, their solidarity, their comradeship in facing a common enemy and the sense of purpose they experienced that reaffirmed what it meant to be Us vs. Them. I was not alone in yearning, in an inchoate way, to be swept up as they were in great, Manichaean, epoch-defining events.

Is she not aware that probably 90 plus percent of Americans of her class and political leanings in this country at that time liked Hitler fine, and were mostly dedicated to complaining about ‘Franklin Rosenfeldt’ and arguing that ships full of European Jews ought to go somewhere else? That involvement in Europe was wrong?

She’s totally without real emotions (except actual hatred for those who believe abortion should be legal).

It is a constant source of amazement to me why so many want so much to help the terrorists of this troubled world.

Radicals of any stripe, but especially the weak and the dispossessed, have few tools at their disposal to attempt to influence the course of events. The technique du jour is “terror”, which can be defined as small actions that are intended to cause great influence through fear and the almost inevitable overreaction that comes about as a result. Even September 11th, as horrifying as it was for those present and those directly impacted, becomes small when viewed on the scale of this nation as a whole. Yet time and time again you hear of otherwise presumably sane individuals who became so terrified by what occured that day that they liven in quaking fear to this very day. They talk of arming themselves and hiding, of how their life has been irrevocably altered. People who were nowhere near the affected areas, and in many cases had no direct connection to anyone involved. This is exactly what the perpertrators wanted, and so many people in this country so easily give it to them.

Keep in mind that only seven buildings and four aircraft were destroyed that day, plus a number of buildings were damaged to one degree or another, and at last count 2992 people were killed outright. Horrible as it was, and magnified by the echo-chamber of the constant repeating video playback, it was still just one set of events on a single day. The population of the United States is in excess of 300 thousand times that number killed, and I can’t even begin to speculate on how many buildings and aircraft there are in this country. The actual impact of the attacks themselves was almost inconsequential to the viability of this nation. Even if the events were multiplied ten-fold, or if anything approaching the nihilistic fantasy of a “terrorist nuke” where to have been used it would have no practical effect to the infrastructure of this country.

The only way terrorist attacks can threaten this nation is if we, in our fear and our blind reactions, do the terrorists work for them. Every time you fear the “other”, you are helping “Them” win. Every time you disrespect the founding Constitution of this land through you are helping “Them” win. Every time you edge closer to the fascist police state that we are becoming you are helping “Them” win. We have unfortunately already begun that journey, but it is not yet too late. Resist that path. The foundations of this nation, laid down by the founding fathers and built upon course by course by the sacrifices of patriots, are immeasurably strong. Nothing done by outlaws, no matter how militant, can harm those foundations, unless we do the heavy lifting ourselves.

Terror thrives in darkness, in the despair of the afraid. Look up, and see the strength of this land. Look up, and see the faces of its people, of all colors and creeds, and the greatness they represent. Mourn the passing of any who fall, but recognize that by upholding the ideals of this nation that there is nothing to fear.

In other news: Adam Yoshida is Canadian.

UGH! Don’t remind us, PLEASE.

Hot damn. Where do I sign up ?

Hey, Xtian guys, there’s a site that would really appreciate all this super-cool information you’re sharing here. Go to: http://www.proteinwisdom.com. They’ll love it. Really.

Wow. It’s magic. Just like that, the Xrazy Xtian guys just disappeared.

Which makes my last 3 comments look quite mad.

No, the last 4, no, 5 ….
(nevermind)

Uh, 9/11 gave Osama what he wanted: American neocons tanked up for war on his terms. Bin Laden anticipated the reaction and welcomed it. It stuns me to hear people claim we’re safer now because no new planes have been driven into buildings, when American soldiers are dying and being wounded in droves, when American allies are dying and being wounded in droves, when populations around the globe are thrust into greater chaos, and when the world is much LESS safe and secure than ever before. The magnitude of the clusterfucks bursting inside their brains is mind-numbing.

Here, I’ll lay it all out clearly.

Terrorism serves three purposes. The first is to provoke a response. The second is to gain publicity as opposing the people you are terrorising. The third is to actually do damage.

The latter is rarely a real priority, because it is nearly impossible to do significant damage with a terrorist attack unless your opponent is incompetent (see 9/11). Even the most successful attack (see 9/11) destroys just a tiny fraction of the economy and populace.

9/11 actually had the opposite effect of what was desired for getting publicity – everyone viewed the attack negatively, it pushed every moderate and mild anti-american away from Al Qaida.

But that was OK for Bin Laden, who clearly stated his goal ahead of time as doing to the US what “he” did to the USSR – bleeding it to its nknees and evential collapse. His goal was to provoke a response, to drag the US military into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, to kill muslims in “collateral damage” that would aid his recruiting. “The US will chase every flag we place on a hilltop” he boasted.

Ironically, the US obliged and kicked his ass. They didn’t put troops on the ground, but instead utilized the Air War/local support model successfully run by Clinton and Wesley Clark in Kosovo. The Taliban fell apart, and the locals did most of the collateral damage. Sure, we massacred a few weddings, but not enough to get a big backlash.

But then, even more ironically, having defeated Bin Laden almost totally, we let him go by being too dependent on local troops, and turned our gaze on Iraq. Attacking Iraq was seizing defeat from the jaws of victory for Bin Laden – here was a real tarpit of a regime that would make the russian experience in afghanistan look like a cakewalk in comparison.

So what does this have to do with why are there no more attacks in the US?

Because he doesn’t need to attack the US. Bush is keeping us afraid, he doesn’t have to do anything but exist. Bush is killing muslim civilians and occupying holy land and visciously wrestling the flypaper and bleeding the treasury – what more could Bin Laden possibly get by staging attacks in the US? Killing a few civilians (which loses support) and maybe blowing up a few stores? Not worth the risk of failure.

Because the one thing he DOES NOT want is for the US to start feeling secure by foiling a bunch of plots, which is far more likely now since Bush is sort of paying attention, or at least his henchmen are. Everytime a terrorist group is exposed (either by success or failure), a part of that group gets exposed and the forensic teams roll up that operation. Only attacks that serve a critical function are worth undertaking.

Which is why our “allies” have been getting hit. Al Qaida doesn’t want the world supporting the US. That makes it harder to bleed us out. So they attack turkey to crush the minor support we received, and Saudi Arabia, and Spain (successfully) and possibly England (which teeters on the edge of withdrawal) and Australia (through Bali). Those were worth the risks, and somewhat successful at isolating US further (especially since we’ve done such a good job of isolation all on our own).

So, we haven’t had an attack in 5 years. So what? We haven’t stopped an Al Qaida attack within the US in 5 years. They haven’t tried. They haven’t needed to – Bush gives them everything they want already.

Katrina might have exposed our soft underbelly though, so perhaps they will see great things can be done in the future. But I doubt it – it is hard to point to a negative impact on our economy from Katrina, and in fact we pretty well demonstrated a willingness to walk away from destruction entirely. We haven’t rebuilt the trade center, or NOLA, and there is no reason to believe we’d spend a lot of effort repairing anything they hit, even if it was nuclear. Why bother? Their strategy is fine – keep republicans in power, keep our army bleeding money and troops in the middle east, and wait a decade.

“defeat from the jaws of victory for Bin Laden “should be “seizing defeat from the jaws of victory for the US, from Bin Laden’s perspective”

sigh. Too many errors, no edit button, typing too quickly at work. Oh well.

Put differently, 9/11 mobilized conservatives against radical Islam even as it mobilized liberals against conservatives.

Another point here: It wasn’t 9/11 that mobilized liberals against conservatives, it was conservatives’ collective reaction to 9/11 that did that. (And just last night, Brother Bush was preaching against “extremists who… reject[] tolerance, and despise[] all dissent.” Sigh.)

Zimmy:

But the big hits take a lot of planning and are difficult to execute – hence, from 1993 WTC attack to 9/11/2001. eight years to get that one the way he wanted it.

Minor nitpick: The ’98 embassy bombings and the 2000 Cole bombing. But from context, I think you might have only been counting attacks that took place on Western ground/waters.

Speaking of clucking, Kurtz last ‘graph was all gossipy name dropping about how much attention teh Kool Kidz were paying Mueller for his ‘controversial’ position. This is the true meaning of his poke at K-Lo — he knows she’s just an attention-whore like he is, and joins her in wishing he could think of something so outre as to get to be the subject of this month’s cocktail weenie chatter. What a self-important douche.

Ah HAH! Bloggofascist is commenting from work! I’m gonna tell! (As soon as I get home from work, that is.)

Muslims are the new commies

That’s so disappointing. Here I thought us polesmokers were going to replace the Maoist hordes as The Great US Bogeyman, but alas. We queers are just bench players, maybe getting an at-bat here and there. Except for SpongeDob, Peter LaBarbera and their ilk, we’re not considered even close to being able to bringing down the US.

Damn.

Lieberman leads Lamont by 13!

Including a 31 point Lieberman lead amongst the 2/3rds of voters who didn’t vote in the primary and a 16 point Lieberman lead amongst Independents.

Lieberman’s gonna win this one in a landslide.

And If Rumsfeld steps aside, Lieberman would make a fine Secretary of Defense.

I don’t think anyone in Britain regards themself as British first – anyone seen the British soccer team lately?

anthony – I didn’t know there was a British team.

And however much the Three Lions failed to live up to expectations, they still have by far the best team on that island…

Yeah Ianua, they’ve got this chant that goes
Brit-uh-ain! Brit-uh-ain! Brit-uh-ain!

Wait a second. I thought existentialism was French.

Totally, totally off topic, and I completely apologize – especially considering that Retardo has gotten me all hot and bothered by bringing up the Daniel Pipes/Richard Pipes connections (both blood and insanity), but I just have to point this out.

For everyone out there who thinks that no one takes Michelle Malkin seriously, she’s currently getting front and center mention on the blogging section of the GOP website.

http://www.gop.com/Blog/BlogPost.aspx?BlogPostID=2360

Shit….on closer inspection, it looks like they’ve blogrolled LGF.

I’m hoping that my general sense of exhaustion means that my eyes are playing tricks on me. Are they?

That leads perfectly into an essay I’ve been sketching in my head called “Battlestar Galactica Republicans.� I promise it’ll rawk.

Cool ) Will it be Battlestar Galactica with the hot blonde as Apollo or the original version?

So, we haven’t had an attack in 5 years. So what? We haven’t stopped an Al Qaida attack within the US in 5 years. They haven’t tried. They haven’t needed to – Bush gives them everything they want already.

Precisely. Why bother with another attack? Al-Qaeda got everything it wanted on 9/11. The Iraq war was like a shiny gift with a bow on top for bin Laden. They’re getting exactly what they want– American prestige is being damaged, they’re slowly bleeding us economically, they’re crippling our military… No need to waste the resources on another 9/11-style attack.

The neocons and bin Laden have very similar goals.

“Blarg! It is a mystery… I see another “Wingnuts in Party Hats” coming on.

Gary Ruppert said,
September 13, 2006 at 0:50

And If Rumsfeld steps aside, …

Allow me to translate for those who do not speak ‘Ruppert:’
“steps aside” = resigns in disgrace

But, yes, who better to carry on in the Rumsfeldtian traditon than Holy Joe himself ?

“Conservatives tend to see the United States, Western culture, and even civilization itself under assault from a barbaric totalitarian force in some way connected to Islam.”

Conservatives tend to see the US, Western culture, and even civilization itself under assault from EVERYTHING, including teh Gay, wishing people “Season’s Greetings,” sexy cheerleaders and birth control pills.

The fact is, conservatives are a bunch of scared little candy-asses.

Steve: In sharp contrast to this finding, only 7% of British Muslims consider themselves “British first,â€? as compared to 81% who consider themselves “Muslim first.â€? You read that right – SEVEN FUCKING PERCENT.

Well, that’s a Hell of a poll question. You go poll self-describing Christians in the U.S.A. and ask them, “Do you consider yourself ‘American first’ or ‘Christian first’?”

For that matter if you ask me I’d say I’m an atheist before I’m an American.

This is not at all to say that being an American is a negligible thing, but one is a personal decision, the other is only a historical contigency. Talking in counter-factual hypotheticals here, if you’d been born on the other shore of Lake Erie you’d be a Canadian but you’d still be the same person, right? But what about if “you” professed a completely different religion? would “you” be you?

blegh. shut up steve.

WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES THOSE ASSHOLE’S LIVES MEANING

Mmm… I love to take fat latin inches up the bum dry.

How shocking to consider the possibility that we are not the center of their universe.

Actually it’s not a mystery. We haven’t seen sniper style attacks by men willing to die because the suicide mentality doesn’t go that way.

Suicide bombers, a prominent Jihadi whose name I forget said, only need a single moment of courage.

A sniper would have to be a genuine fighter, one with a soldiers drive to complete his mission. And they are much less willing to simply go out knowing they are going to get killed alone and in a strange land.

Slightly off topic, but my fear had been something along the lines described. A twenty man team, that is, a team the size of the original 9/11 crew, could wreak havoc during rush hour in any major metropolis that has bridges and tunnels. A car bomb in the tunnel, ambushes set up along the approaches to the tunnel to take out the police who would rush to the scene, while killing everyone in the cars locked in place by the tunnel blast.

For a change, I think the Jihadi recruitment approach is working in our favor. The suiciders, thankfully, don’t do that “fight to the last man” thing.

Is this site planted here to make fools of us all are you all just fools? my God i am more scared of ignorant Americans then of terrorists. the reason “they” have not attacked is because “they” need to set up Iran to get nuked. “they” needed to pass laws to make sure the american people could be spied on, jailed adn tortured when the same motherfuckers responsible for 9-11 do it again and finally having a nuke up their ass, the people take to the streets. “They” need to have another cousin or brother in charge of security somewhere to blow us all to hell so that “they” can go into their underground bunkers with 6 year old and some wine and play nuclear holocaust. “they” are going to end your ridiculous blogging and stupidity. sadly YOU will be reason the rest of us get nuked to?

in case you do not have the balls, i will be more then happy to tell your children when they asked how we lost the real war, that you did jack shit to take down your governmetn because you are all about kicking ass when it is some third world country.

by the way you sorry ass excuses and ungrateful citizens that do not egin to appreciate the sacrifices of our troops, no enemy arab is going to kill our troops. when the insance monsters nuke iran with just one bunker busitng bomb 3 million people will die and those farther away like AFghanistan will be poisoned with depeleted uranium. we have 20, 000 troops there.

there are 450 targets. there goes the 140, 000 in Iran and whereelse they are in the middle east.

you stupid fucks … this is not about killing just arabs. if you cannot defend your troops when they need it you should be beheaded. smell teh civil war.

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/8-Sept-2006.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060810&articleId=2942

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/18/gardiner-iran

“In the month following last year’s 7/7 London bombings, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. Implied in the contingency plan is the certainty that Iran would be behind a Second 9/11.
This “contingency plan” uses the pretext of a “Second 9/11”, which has not yet happened, to prepare for a major military operation against Iran, while pressure was also exerted on Tehran in relation to its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program.
What is diabolical in this decision of the US Vice President is that the justification presented by Cheney to wage war on Iran rests on Iran’s involvement in a hypothetical terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred:
The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War , The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)
Are we to understand that US, British and Israeli military planners are waiting in limbo for a Second 9/11, to extend the war beyond the borders of Lebanon, to launch a military operation directed against Syria and Iran?
The Commander in Chief is Killing Our Troops with WMD and Will KILL 20, 000 American troops who will automatically die in Afghanistan if we attack Iran. “But straightforward estimates based on empirically determined scaling laws show that anyone within the roughly 3W0.6 km2 area covered by the base surge would receive a fatal dose of radiation.3 (W is the explosive energy yield in kilotons of TNT.) For a typical third-world urban population density of 6000/km2 those estimates imply that a 1-kt weapon would kill tens of thousands and a 100-kt weapon would kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

[…] is about the nature of neoconservatism. Unlike traditional conservatives, the neocons aren’t stupid; like traditional conservatives, […]