Saturday, October 30, 2004

Osama Bin Laden

In anger sometimes I imagine that I hate my president, George W. Bush. But I don't. Not really. I just think he's an awful president and a bad man. But I do hate Bin Laden.
I hated him when he murdered 3,000 people on Septmber 11th.
I hate him for surviving our attempt to destroy him. I hate his organization. I hate what it stands for. I hate that he's been so successful promoting his foul ideology and his methods of murder.
And I really hate it that he's campaigning for Bush.
Because that's what it is. This video of Bin Laden is a very clever psyop designed to rally the more primitive and fearful among us to the side of Bush. And I'm deeply afraid it will work.
I really don't think it's an exaggeration to say that 4 more years of Bush are for more years when we get our butts kicked by this bastard and his twisted friends. To someone like me, the fact that Bin Laden is alive (and healthy!!!) confirms Bush's radical failure. Al Qaeda may not be an effective operational leader of his movement, but he does perform the function of spiritual leader, mascot, and financier. As such, his continued existence gives life to Al Qaeda.
I can make no specific claims of what a President Kerry could do to disrupt and destroy this man and his hydra-like movement, but I know (and if you think this is debatable, I have nothing to say to you) that there is no chance that he will give Al Qaeda the sort of gift Bush did by invading a Middle Eastern country that had few if any links to Al Qaeda. But I know Bush, having launched an ill conceived and poorly executed invasion of Iraq, is not to be trusted in this regard.

Al Qaeda and Bin Laden must be defeated, and they must be defeated decisively. George Bush, whose administration was incapable of guarding nuclear materials and high explosives from insurgents, has neither the brains, nor the good sense, nor the temperment to do anything but persist in a failure to do so. His governance has been defined by a profound laziness and unseriousness, irresponibly delegating responsibilities and passing the buck when not on vacation at his fake Texas ranch. When Bush has been engaged, it has been in a predictably reactive manner. This is not the man we want in charge of destroying Bin Laden and his allies.

John Kerry is an altogether different type of man. While the perpetual adolescents of professional punditry might get their jollies caricaturing his deliberative style as indecisive, they had no problem justifying actual indecision, as we found in Bush's dithering over stem cell research in 2000- what was obviously one of the more patently poll-tested and ultimately cowardly examples of fake compromise was widely regarded by the chattering classes as Solomonic in it wisdom. {What explains this? Could it be that our punditry is performed by overpaid, corporately sponsored, self-hating pseudo-moderates on one side and movement conservatives on the other?}
But back to Kerry. This guy killed some 20 Viet Cong during the war. Personally. He pulled a man out of the river. He returned from war, built an anti-war movement, and valiantly fought one of the slimiest villians of 20th century America, Richard Milhous Nixon. He successfully fought crime as a prosecutor. When he became a Senator, he was one of those who fought to bring the corruption of Iran Contra into the sunlight. He spearheaded the investigation that resulted in the dismantling of BCCI, a corrupt bank involved in everything from drug trafficking to Islamist terrorism. He saved a fellow Senator's life with the Heimlich maneuver. He used diplomacy and persistence to resolve once and for all the question of our POWs in Viet Nam and to normalize US relations with that country.
Kerry, with his strength of character, conscientiousness, and tendency to respond in crisis situations with prompt and thoughtful action, is perhaps one of the few most qualified to shut these bastards down.
That Bin Laden, this twisted fanatic, might succeed in hoodwinking enough fearful Americans to all-but guarantee the continuity of his own wrethced existence is infuriating.
Did I say I hate Bin Laden?