Continuing the thread from the other day, this is a good day to take stock on what has happened in this country as a result of the attack upon the U.S. nine years ago today. I think we’ve all realized by now that there is no way for the extremist movement responsible for those attacks to “win” in a conventional sense. They have neither the economic power nor the military might to defeat the U.S. and its sphere of influence in an outright war.
But there are two things they can do: (1) discredit us to our political/economic allies, and to those we wish to be allied with, and (2) create a kind of cultural cancer within in our society that causes us to do that work for them.
In a sense, this method reiterates the attacks themselves, but on a far larger scale. The radical group that drove our own airplanes into our own skyscrapers was turning our very technological power against us. In what to us (certainly to me) was an unspeakable horror, civilian airplanes were turned into living bombs, which were used as detonators to convert our tallest buildings into even larger bombs — with the only victims being civilians.
So it is clear that our enemy, knowing we are vastly larger and more powerful than they are, choose to operate by a kind of Jujitsu. Basically, they use us as their weapon. And if current events are any guide, it seems they are succeeding.
The United States of America, arguably the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world, is in danger of doing what its enemy does not have the power to do — turn potential allies of the U.S. into enemies of the U.S. That’s the real prize, and it’s horrifying to see our country playing right into this game.
To pick up the thread from the other day, the fact that so many people in this country are mislabeling a community center by pacifist Sufis as some sort of radical mosque is a phenomenal P.R. win for the Taliban and its allies. What better propaganda, what more perfect proof could be presented to the Muslim world that Americans don’t know the first thing about the 23% of the world population that is Islamic? You can almost hear the groans of despair among liberal and moderate Muslims around the world, those who have paid so much, often with their lives, to fight the very theocratic extremists we are at war with.
And on top of that, in what must be a kind of wet dream for the Taliban, we’ve got idiots like pastor Terry Jones wanting to burn peoples’ bibles. If you had to assign a dollar value on how much the Taliban would be willing to pay Jones for doing exactly what he is doing now, how much would it be? Well, let’s think about it. The U.S. is spending, by latest estimates, roughly $133 million dollars per day on the war in Afghanistan. If Jones’ stunt is worth, say, ten AWDs (Afghan War Days) for the Taliban, the Taliban should be paying him around $1.33 billion.
Of course any American citizen idiotic enough to burn islamic bibles at a time like this is clearly not intelligent enough to organize a wallet, never mind knowing how to keep a bank account, to it’s not clear how the Taliban would get the money to that dribbling idiot even if they wanted to. But they sure must be happy to have him on their side!
The best we can do at this point is to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. Cut out the idiotic protests of community centers built by people who hate the Taliban even more than we do. Let the world know, in no uncertain terms, that three hundred million people in this country — whatever their political affiliation — are utterly disgusted by buffoons like pastor Terry Jones.
And come together as a nation on this day of remembrance to denounce those politicians in this country who can’t be bothered to know the difference between one Muslim and another — whether that politician be Sarah Palin or Howard Dean.