The Last Temptation of Osama
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett at 12:20 PM
¦"In Video Message, Bin Laden Issues Warning to U.S.," by Doughlas Jehl and David Johnston, New York Times, 29 October 2004, p. A1.
Not so much a warning as yet another offer of civilizational apartheid. Last spring Osama told Europeans they had 90 days to leave the Middle East or he promised to have all of them still there killed--one by one. This time he sounds a far softer note, in effect telling Americans it doesn't matter who wins the election, there will be no peace until America "respects" the security of Muslim states in the region: "Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security."
This is the same basic bargain offered by Osama all along: abandon the Middle East, and leave these peoples to me to do wish as I please. His national enslavement movement would replace the harsh, despotic regimes of today with even harsher, more despotic regimes of yesteryear (around 700 A.D., to be exact). Some offer, huh?
Of course, after the disruption of oil supplies from the Islamic revolutions he and his followers would bring, we'd be right back to buying the region's oil (actually, Developing Asia would be right back, as the US doesn't take even a fifth of the oil coming out of the Gulf), plus whatever narcotics Osama and his regimes would care to sell us. It would be a giant Taliban paradise financed by drugs and oil, where women could be treated as house slaves and minors their entire lives, and children would be outfitted with educations that served no purpose other than to ensure their long-time slavery to the cause.
I admit, it's a tempting offer on some levels. Why not let them have their way and just bargain for the energy on the far side of all that bloodshed? I mean, otherwise we end up protecting a lot of despotic regime we can't stand and who can't stand us and wasting our blood while driving wedges between our country and many of our allies. Surely, this would be the easier route, yes? Why go through all this suffering, this war, this sacrifice for people who seem to hate our very being?
Let's just help Israel nuke up big time (making it clear we'll forgive them in advance for any desperate measures they may end up taking) and tell the rest of those regimes to go screw themselves and deal with Osama and his crowd on their own. If Asia freaks on that basis, then let China and India and South Korea and Japan start defending those regimes. Sure, prices for everything we import will go up, but that will only motivate us toward hydrogen faster.
To hell with them all. They're just strange people we'll never understand anyway. Let 'em kill each other in droves until the end of time. We let the Russians and Chinese do it to themselves like crazy during their socialist phases, so why not do the same here?
Ah, that felt better.
Now let's get back to nailing the Neocons to the cross. This war is all their fault, really. If it weren't for their dreams of trying to reconnect the Middle East to the world, we could simply let the Middle East and all those hundreds of millions of Muslims slip right into the same God-foresakened status of Central Africa. We've had the Jewish Holocaust and plenty of others since--Africa's suicidal dive being just the latest. I say, let the Muslim self-inflicted genocide begin. Their civilization is going nowhere. It'll never catch up with globalization. We'll just suffer them for so long and then give up anyway.
Take Osama's offer, America. In your heart, you know he's right . . . about us. We're a selfish, greedy country, full of guns and self-hating polemicists. We're not built for this long-haul conflict. We just got lucky on the Cold War because it was led by the Greatest Generation. We don't have that leadership now because we don't want that leadership now. Bush is the most polarizing president in anyone's memory, begining to eclipse Nixon with this campaign. Neither he nor Kerry could ever hope to rule over anything but a severely divided and self-doubting nation after this election.
Take Osama's offer, America. Let the self-healing truly begin.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett |
