I used to love it in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy melted the witch. Everybody sang and danced and then Dorothy was returned to a world of comfortable normalcy; but even as a child I had a nagging feeling that her problems weren’t entirely over. After all, her family was still so dirt poor they couldn’t even afford color TV; and then there was that small matter of the bounty on Toto for biting Miss Gulch.
We’re kind of in the songy-dancey stage of the War on Terror at the moment, and it’s amazing to see how much joyful significance people read into the surgical elimination of Osama Bin Laden. I’d have been more in the mood had it happened ten years ago before we leveled Iraq and tens-of-thousands of people became collateral victims of the “hunt for Bin Laden.”
Like Dorothy’s return to Kansas, our black-and-white reality check will come with news of the very next casualty in our branded “War on Terror.”
I know. It isn’t called that anymore; but you can’t unring a bell, as the saying goes.
Unfortunately, we must accept the fact that, even though Bin Laden is dead, he probably accomplished his goals well-beyond his wildest imaginings. Consider what might be the Al Quaida “checklist,” if theirs was a somewhat more sophisticated organization:
1) Cause many thousands of Americans to die needlessly check!
2) Generate an overwhelming environment of paranoia check!
3) Undermine our essential liberties check!
4) Diminish American world prestige and influence check!
5) Add layers of crippling bureaucracy to essential services check!
6) Re-ignite cultural wars among America’s diverse peoples check!
7) Push America further right toward Islamist-style values check!
8) Brutalize us further in the eyes of the Islamic world check!
9) Destabilize the American economy check!
10) Unleash a wave of domestic xenophobia to further marginalize America in the eyes of its world peers and keep us ungainfully occupied for decades.
check and double-check!
True, we haven’t yet removed ourselves from their holy regions (which was, after all, what started the whole mess in the first place); but it’s purely a matter of time before the simple economics of the thing finally force us to withdraw. Remember the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Remember what happened to the Soviet Union in the economic collapse and social discord that followed that fool-hearty adventure?
Worst of all, we gave Bin Laden and his pals these victories, one by one, of our own free will; because all were the collateral impacts of allowing the Bush White House to work on our emotions in order to aggrandize what were abhorrent criminal assaults on the 9/11 targets. Simply by calling them “acts of war,” Bush at once dignified the perpetrators into nationhood, and set in motion a chain of events that lead inexorably to undermining the foundations of our own liberties and values.
I will not do the partisan thing and say he did so cynically or as part of any conspiracy. I’ll leave that to other, less cool heads. There has been too much of that heat developing over the past ten years; so much so that it is now rebounding on itself into a massive delusional distraction, shaped by all sides. Rather, I will assume that Bush did so naively but in good faith; and the people followed like sheep.
Like Dorothy, I wish we could just click our heels and put things back to the way they were.
“There’s no place like home!”
…think alike:
http://www.minorheresies.com/e…
I am totally in accord, Sue. When I heard the news I did not jump around pumping my fist in the air. We have so damaged ourselves that it doesn’t feel like a victory at this point.
“Yeah, I told Bush and then Obama I would repo bin Laden’s ass for 10 grand. And bring him in alive, so we could find out a few things. But instead, they sent in the Fucking Rodriquez Brothers, and now we’ll never know things. Like what happened to the dead aliens he got from the CIA, and how much money he got from the Saudis to fuck us over, and what his fuckin’ credit rating was in all these off-shore banks. Regular Fuckin’ Terrorists. I hate ’em. It’s hard to keep track of what the hell’s goin’ on in this country, and connect the dots. That’s why I take a lot of speed. And when I’m driving down the highway at a hundred-per, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, I’m thinking: It took these dildo-dipshit-assholes almost ten years to catch up with this guy? You know how many cars I could repo in 10 years? The trouble is, Sue, nobody’s got a ‘code’ anymore. You’ve gotta have a code. Like: I Will Never Let What I Hear And See Either On TV Or In Real Life Make A Fuckin’ Difference In My Ultimate Pursuit Of Finding The Truth And Getting A Commission For Doing It. That’s my code. Trouble is, I haven’t gotten anywhere near the money these government and corporate fuckos owe me. In decades! If there were only some way to find out how much they owe, and make them fuckin’ pay! Anyway, I’ve gotta go now. There’s a ’64 Malibu some little old lady owes payments on. I hate repo’ing cars from little old ladies. They’ve always got this weird shit in their trunks. And those fuckin’ air fresheners hanging from the rear-view windows.
Have a nice fuckin’ day. Day, Night? Who gives a shit.