Christian Fundies: Take Oklahoma and Leave us Alone

Subscribers to Foreign Policy can read "The Next Generation of Terror" by Marc Sageman.

The article strikes me as credible - basically saying that al Qaeda has been reduced to not much of a threat. We have to credit the Bush Administration for not totally failing at everything because al Qaeda is now less of a threat.

However, the Bush Administration's incompetence means that there are far more people who would love to execute successful terrorist attacks against the U.S. The War on Terror has weakened al Qaeda while creating far more enemies. This strategy is like starting the rest of your house on fire to starve the fire in the kitchen of oxygen. I love unwieldy analogies.

At any rate, there is a good chance that the next attack will come from a group of people who are not making phone calls to Afghanistan or Pakistan, who are not really connected to al Qaeda but are inspired by them.

As for what they want to achieve, well, like most religious crazies, their creations suck.

The few times its aspirations have been translated into reality—the Taliban in Afghanistan, parts of Algeria during its civil war, and more recently in Iraq’s Anbar Province—were particularly repulsive to most Muslims.

Which makes me wonder ... I wonder if we would just hand Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of Texas to the "Christian" conservative warriors, would they leave the rest of us alone? Maybe they would stop trying to force the rest of us to live by a moral code they preach (but mostly ignore as well - check out divorce rates among the loudest "Christian" conservatives) if we gave them a bit of terrority to set up their Evangelical Caliphate.

Back to the article - it points out that the Republican response to 9-11 (which has largely been unchallenged by Dems) is rather counterproductive. The Bush Administration has declared a high profile war on these small-minded cave dwellers and massively publicizes the few near-victories his administration has achieved.

Each of Ashcroft's asinine press conferences validated the al Qaeda chickenfuckers by making it appear that they truly were a major threat (on par with the nuclear weapon toting commies, if you listen to the rhetoric) when they are actually a small rag-tag group of assholes who got lucky because the Bush Administration considered China a bigger threat than terrorists and put a higher priority on ballistic missile defense than anti-terror intelligence.

It is equally crucial not to place terrorists who are arrested or killed in the limelight. The temptation to hold press conferences to publicize another “major victory” in the war on terror must be resisted, for it only transforms terrorist criminals into jihadist heroes. The United States underestimates the value of prosecutions, which often can be enormously demoralizing to radical groups. There is no glory in being taken to prison in handcuffs. No jihadi Web site publishes such pictures. Arrested terrorists fade into oblivion; martyrs live on in popular memory.

The only fear I have with trials of high profile terrorists is the temptation for their comrades to take hostages and attempt to trade prisoners. I hope that whoever finds Osama puts a few rounds into him, pisses on him, drowns him in liquor, and strikes a match. Good riddance.

In a just world, we would do the same to Bush - a man who did 20x the damage to this country in response to 9-11 than the attack did.