Al-Qaeda: We Are The World, We Are The Children

As I may have mentioned before, al-Qaeda was a CIA scheme artificially grown in Islamabad. It means 'The Base' because it was the Base of CIA funding and weapons-dealing. Islamabad was once the biggest CIA station in the world, so big that I was recruited to go there. Wisely or not, I was more interested in girls at the time, operating on the hopeful hypothesis that getting laid was more fun than haggling over RPG prices. Guess I'll never really know.

Al-Qaeda is now an ill-defined brand, a concept run amok. It's twenty different things, and nothing at all. Its center is everywhere, and its circumference is nowhere. If kids in a tony suburb spraypaint 'Die, Honky' on someone's Land Rover, they're part of al-Qaeda. We all are, in the end. Stop eating at McDonald's, and you're on The List. How some governments respond to things they don't like may be related to why a couple of inept car-bombs failed to go off in London this past week, and why a couple of twits drove their green Jeep Cherokee towards the Glasgow Airport's automatic sliding entryway doors, then set it on fire. While they were in it. Therefore, all the adults in the Western World are supposed to PANIC. We must go out and stock up on Depends diapers so we can mess our pants sanitarily. The headlines call out: We are entering the era of the car bomb, Second day of terror, More arrests coming, and Run for the hills!

Maybe we could try holding off on the Depends for a while longer. A little confession: I personally have wanted to ram my car through the doors of more than one airport, but managed to restrain myself. If I'd broken through those doors as an understandable and perhaps overdue protest against the injustices of air travel, you can bet your ass my car, had I wanted it to, would've burst into flames right on cue.

So if this is Al-Qaeda, Al-Qai'ida, Al-Qaida, or how ever the hell they're spelling it today, might we not be at least somewhat reassured? Yes, there were threats. Farcical, odiously stupid threats which decent police work thwarted. Decent police work and military response, had it been allowed to proceed by the accursed Bush Administration, would also have thwarted 9/11, and 3,000+ people, including my former boss and his associates, would not have died. Instead, their charred, dismembered, desecrated bodies were used to help the Bush Administration hit its disgusting "Trifecta."

Even if 9/11 were legit, like the Madrid train bombings and the London bus bombings in 2005 were, the price of closing airports across the UK grants these idiots too much credence. Too much fearing of fear itself. And wouldn't you just love to be a tourist in England right now, trying to travel somewhere? Oh, yeah, that would be fun. Search my dirty undies, please! These latest ying-yangs were like Robert Reid, the loser who tried to blow up his shoe with a zippo. And failed. This idiot has us all, years later, still having to take off our f&*#ing shoes every time we enter an airport like it's some kind of Mormon temple or Japanese tea house. If this is Fourth Generation warfare and we're all embroiled in the Clash of Civilizations, let me tell you, we're getting our butts kicked by a bunch of morons. By Al-Queer-da. If we're not, then why can't I bring an honest tube of toothpaste onto an airplane? Here's a little historical perspective about implacable enemies from Kung Fu Monkey:

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

U.S. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

When Britain's intrepid WWII hero Lord Mountbatten got blown up by Irish Republican Army in Knightsbridge, I don't recall England threatening to nuke Dublin. I recall the main response was a group of kids created a punk band called 'The Exploding Mountbattens." There is peace now in Ireland precisely because the British decided not to bomb or otherwise demolish Irish people's homes and did not resort to massive use of force. They chose to treat members of the IRA as criminals. Not enemy combatants. And the IRA put al-Qaeda to shame, having the advantages of being home-grown and actually real. Britain's response to the IRA might have had something to do with England and Ireland's mutual victory being just about the only successful example of counter-insurgency by an occupying nation in the 20th century.

Is it just me, or do the United States and United Kingdom responses sound a lot like what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler used to take power and keep their domestic dissent in line: appeal to latent racism and prejudice; sacrifice minority groups to the maw of government ire; conflate outside threats; repeat the same messages, over and over. All Fear, All the Time. Welcome to Uh-merica.