UW, if the USA cuts and runs, I don't think: < Unlike the Viet Cong, Al Qaeda will follow us home. >
Imagine Osama walking down Main Street, Peoria or Lebanon, Kansas. He'd look kind of odd. I'm not sure that he even wants to go to Disneyland, though I recommend it. The best thing is taking infants to "It's a small world". I've been through there many times. "Pirates of the Caribbean" is good too, but too scary for small children, a bit like being in Baghdad or Afghanistan for grown ups.
Even sneaking through Mexico disguised in burqas, your average Saudi or Egyptian jihadist would look somewhat conspicuous. The Mexicans might look unfavourably on it too as they don't want anyone spoiling the arrangements they have with USA Immigration Service. Pakistani Islamic Jihad prefers carnage in England [in gratitude for England allowing them in from their own grotty country].
The USA could get Kuwait's agreement to set up a big base there with a 99 year lease, like Britain did with Hong Kong. If Kuwait doesn't agree to that, then advise them that the USA is pulling right out and Iraq may settle any differences with Kuwait without the USA getting involved. Hong Kong became one of the best places in the world. Kuwait could do the same. Or, they could make arrangements with Iraq without the USA helping out.
I don't think the USA needs to worry about Al Qaeda invading the USA. Even regular tourists have trouble getting in and hordes are not bothering to try. One never knows when some deranged USA authoritarian megalomaniac will go off his tree. Our son nearly missed a flight because an absurd "carry on" ruling and another time, a TSA guy threatened to arrest me when I apparently stepped past where I was supposed to be so I could ask where the heck I was supposed to be taking my bags [which was far from the check-in, where I had been and apparently at some random number generator place]. I was apparently supposed to aimlessly wander about, lost, standing in random queues until my flight had gone, then be arrested and sent to Guantanamo for failing to leave as scheduled, making me an illegal terrorist immigrant. Questioning authority in the USA is grounds for arrest [and presumably, these days, no prosecution, but perhaps water-boarding and stress positions to force me to disclose my leaders' addresses].
Our dangerous daughter and scary 1 year old grandson were denied boarding last year because her passport apparently had a water mark on it [which check-in didn't pick up as a problem] so we had to waste a day driving back up to LAX to collect them. They had to spend $100s to get emergency new passports.
The USA really is quite a pain in the neck. And, ridiculously, it is to no purpose whatsoever. A year or three before 911, I considered warning the flight crew on a flight I was on, that people sitting one step behind the open cockpit door was a dangerous situation as with one step, they could stand up and be in the cockpit causing carnage. I didn't because I know that aircrew have the same mental stability and judgment of the unfriendly TSA moron and they would probably arrest me for threatening an airliner or something stupid. So I sat there and shut up about it.
Now, too late, they have shut the cockpit doors, put armed marshals on board, and confiscate toothpicks from passengers. They have obviously not heard of shutting the stable door after Islamic Jihad have bolted through it. There won't be another hijacking, because passengers will not allow it. The armed guards are more likely to cause the problem than terrorists. The terrorists will probably get jobs as armed guards and TSA personnel, letting their buddies through.
Anyway, there are many more ways to do things. I think simultaneous apartment building destructions would be a good idea for them. Or water supply pollution with Polonium 210, or spray some on buffet salads across the USA all at the same dinner time on Thanksgiving.
Mqurice |
