Ooh, I'm So Scared, Osama!

OK, forget the stupid thing I just wrote. This is better. I have a new strategy for dealing with terrorism: sarcasm.

Osama bin Laden just released a tape saying that he directly ordered the attempted attack on Christmas Day, and that the attacks will continue as long as we keep supporting Israel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. You know what, Osama, you're seeing more pathetic every day. You're seeming less like a criminal mastermind and more like an angry little man sitting in a basement writing insane letters to the editor.

First of all, the underwear bomber was a bit scary, but let's keep things in perspective. He was caught. He was just another Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. And even if he had blown up the plane, well, at the risk of sounding like a horrible human being, it's one plane. Out of the zillions that fly every day. Let's keep our heads about this and realize that the odds you'll be a victim of a terrorist attack are infinitesmal.

I point this out because terrorists depend on the outsized paranoia of their enemies to do their thing. In fact, that's their stock in trade. If terrorists could accomplish big attacks, they would, but they can't, because they're a small bunch of back-assward freaks living in a hellhole. So they do relatively small strikes that they know will cause large amounts of fear. So why play into their hands? Be fuckin' cool. In fact, be rude. Ha ha, asshole, you can't even get an underwear bomber to do any damage. Man, you suck!

We can look to the examples of other nations that regularly suffered terrorist attacks. The IRA would regularly explode cars on London streets. The English kinda sorta got used to it eventually. They would kinda be like, "Oh, that's terrible! Right nearby, huh? So ... that means the Piccadilly line will be closed, so I should probably take Victoria up to Bakerloo ..." Point is, they eventually stopped giving the IRA the fear that they needed to be effective.

I don't mean that we should let up on our anti-terrorist efforts. Not at all. Our government needs to keep working hard to prevent terrorist attacks. I'm just saying we don't have to show fear. Let's be frank -- fear coming from average Americans will accomplish nothing. Remember the color-coded chart and the importance of duct tape? Please. The mere fact of the 9/11 attacks made us all as vigilant as we need to be to tackle underwear bombers or report truly suspicious activity. That's all we need. Anything beyond that just causes paranoia and leads to the sacrifice of our fundamental values, such as the one about not torturing people, the one about giving people their day in court, etc.

The way I see it, the Bush administration wasn't thinking much about terrorism before 9/11. Hell, you can hadly blame them for that -- no one was. But when those planes hit, holy shit were they spooked. Way too spooked for their own good. In later years, they very well may have prevented a few minor attacks. But they also hurtled us into an unnecessary war in Iraq, which resulted in a much larger loss of life than any terrorism attack. They also sacrificed a lot of our values, destroyed our reputation abroad, spent insane amounts of money -- they were basically chickens with their heads cut off. They were a bunch of pussies freaking out. Which of course is exactly what the terrorists wanted. Greater strength of purpose and less panic would have resulted in calmly finishing the job in Afghanistan and making a few smart, measured precautions at home.

So anyway, now we should be concentrating on not allowing al-Qaeda to think that they have a say in anything. It's like how you deal with a spazzy kid prone to tantrums: He just wants attention, so don't give it to him.

A good recent example of overreaction was all the hulabaloo over housing Gitmo guys in American maximum-security prisons. Senators were freaking out, saying no way in my backyard! As if these al-Qaeda schmucks are some sort of Bond-esque supervillans who would drill their way out of a maximum-security prison and then go blow up the local Piggly-Wiggly. They're nothing more than a few maniacs who don't speak the language, have no local network, and won't understand what's going on around them.

And let's not forget that the regular folks in maximum security prisons are not exactly a bunch of cream puffs. I'm more scared of the white guy who eats people's faces than I am of some religious nut from Saudi Arabia who was a pawn in someone else's plan. Plus, I'm betting terrorism suspects will not be the most popular people in prison. The Aryan nation might enjoy making them their bitches. It actually might be cruel to put the terrorism suspects in with those guys.

Anyway, the point remains -- vigiliance is necessary, but not paranoia. They got a big fluke victory on 9/11. They're not actually that strong. We need to fight them, but also need to be cool when they try to shake us up. That will rob them of their only ammunition. Meanwhile, because they're such freaks, they'll continue shooting themselves in the foot by bombing Arab cities and killing anyone among them who's not a super right-wing nutjob. They aren't smart enough to gain any moderate allies and grow any bigger. They'll always just be a noisy little pack of lunatics. Best to just laugh at them, beat them down, and give them enough rope to hang themselves.