Linda S. Heard, Arab News
 Republican spin merchants play to childish fears with their new television ad. This time, the stars are big, bad wolves, while a chilling disembodied voice says: "Weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm". And while viewers are presumably shaking under their blankets, Vice President Dick Cheney warns: "If we make the wrong (election) choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again". Was this a moment of clairvoyance from the man, whose allegation that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years..." became a self-fulfilling post-invasion prophecy? Was this an inspirational comment from the man who once insisted Americans would be feted as liberators of Iraq? Or, does it represent just another dirty trick in the mucky game of modern-day American politicking?
| It presents the opinions of a lot of us who've been paying attention, Linda. We can hunt them down and slaughter them like dogs wherever we find them, or we can sit home and wait for them to come to us. |
Tom Ridge, head of the Orwellian Department of Homeland Security, and his multicolored alerts provide those wolves with fangs. Last summer he warned that Osama the elusive troglodyte was directing pre-election terrorist attacks from his hidey-hole. No mention as to when, where or how, and so it's back to hiding in the closet again.
| Since nothing happened, there was no danger, right? |
Let's face it. Bush's survival as president and a self-described "war president" to boot depends on America facing either real or imaginary enemies.
| I'd say we have enough real ones not to have to worry about the imaginary ones... |
The "Sept. 11 nineteen" were the ones who attacked but they are inconveniently dead. The eccentric Bin Laden served as the perfect personification of "evil" to oil the road to Kabul, only to be replaced by George W's personal bogeyman Saddam Hussein, his father's nemesis. So now that Saddam is watering plants in his jail between penning romance novels, another "evildoer" had to be paraded. This time, it's the alleged one time Osama follower Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
| Since he's running his own major international terrorist organization in affiliation with al-Qaeda and he's in the habit of lopping people's heads off on camera, it's kinda hard to argue with the fact that he presents a danger, isn't it? Though I'm sure you will... |
There is some dispute as to whether he is actually alive and still sports a wooly balaclava, but the purveyors of fear are sure about one thing: He scoots around the so-called Sunni "Triangle of Death" planning his dastardly agenda amid women, children and babies. And so nefarious is he that he always manages to evade the smartest of US missiles, leaving his ashen toddler cohorts and their terrorist mothers scattered over craters, while their mendacious fathers and husbands invariably ask between howls of grief "Abu Musab... who? Never heard of him".
| Don't forget the dead puppies, kittens, baby ducks, and fluffy bunnies, Linda... |
Will they ever catch up with him? Not likely.
| Eventually they will. Possibly he'll be killed in a shootout or a bombing, more likely he'll be collected like Sammy was, hiding at the bottom of somebody's outdoor toilet and begging not to be killed... |
At least, not until there is another contender for scary terrorist mastermind in the offing. Who will they come up with next time? They've already ran the gamut of a one-eyed mulla, a menacing millionaire with a failing liver, a daft would-be shoe-bomber who forgot his lighter, and a one-legged or is it two? Jordanian decapitator.
| Don't forget Ron Jeremy, collected in Pakland... |
We mustn't, of course, forget the rotund Shiite cleric and his rag-tag, gun-toting army. The next face of evil incarnate will have so much to live up to.
| I'm sure they'll produce corpses, though... |
May I suggest they turn to the movies of Federico Fellini for inspiration? A mad cannibal midget might be nice.
| I don't think we've had the cannibal yet, but we have had the midget. Haven't you been paying attention, Linda? |
How about a syntax-mangling member of the Skull and Bones, who used his daddy's connections to run the world and re-arrange it in his own image for the benefit of his cronies? Too far-fetched...
| No. Too hackneyed. Lefties have been running with that one for the past four years, and it really hasn't gone anywhere. |
I know. Perhaps Fox will come up with a new reality show 'The Devil's Apprentice" when contenders would efficiently run terrorist training camps instead of Planet Hollywood. Take away the emotionalism and the hype and the reality is this. Americans have a far greater chance of dying in a road accident or from a heart attack or as a result of a hurricane, fire or flood than during a terrorist attack.
| Yes, but road accidents, heart attacks, hurricanes, fire and floods aren't the result of the actions of international terror organizations intent on subverting and destroying our civilization. |
I don't include American military personnel or mercenaries masquerading as contractors in other people's countries here. If they stayed home and minded their own business, then they would not be at risk. Helping the Iraqis reconstruct their country, indeed! How about stuffing their pockets with filthy lucre while Iraqis remain vulnerable and jobless.
| Ah, that filthy lucre. It's the root of all evil, isn't it? By the way, you didn't get paid anything for writing this piece, did you? |
It's been three long years since the Sept. 11 attacks, yet the Bush administration unashamedly evokes those images to ensure its re-election.
| Three long years... Time to put it behind us and move on, is it? Just forget it. It was a fluke. It'll never happen again... These aren't the droids you're looking for... Move along... |
It uses Sept. 11 to play to the fears of Americans and shroud its hegemonic ambitions. It has even ran clips of Sept. 11 victims and their caskets in their campaign ads so as to manipulate the emotional and patriotic strings of prospective voters...
They should run them every day, Linda. They should run them because the national attention span is short, and because it's short, it's susceptible to claptrap from leftist fifth-columnists like you. They should run them because there's a loose alliance of murderous religious fanatics who adhere to no recognized laws of warfare, who're perfectly happy to slaughter not only American troops, but also women and children, and yes, puppies and kittens and baby ducks.
Look at the images of Beslan, Linda: the little kids and their Moms and Dads went to school and didn't come back.
Look at the images of Madrid, Linda: people sitting on the train, coming home from work, without a political or religious thought in their heads.
Look at the images from the Nord-Ost theater people who went out for a show and didn't come back.
Look at the images of the Bali bombings, people who went out for a beer and never came back.
I know you don't want to, Linda, because it was ever so long ago, when we were all much younger, but look again at the images of the World Trade Center: almost 3000 people who went to work in the morning and didn't come back.
None of that's anything we should be concerned about, because it didn't happen here, right? And Bush is evil, right?
I think we can tell which side you're on Linda. It's the Neville Chamberlain-Marshal Petain-Vidkun Quisling side. You're comfortable with dictators and you're perfectly content to see most of the world ruled by bands of roving fascisti, as long as they don't kill you, personally. You prefer to be ruled, rather than governed, and you'll do what you have to do to get by, won't you? |
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