Al Qaeda: The Invisible Enemy, PART III
You can’t subdue an idea with a bullet or a bomb, this much I know to be true. And yes I realize a phrase like that is basically just the proverbial, neo-hippie psychobabble or at the very lest erstwhile idealism, but if a change is ever going to happen that sentiment will inevitably have to be accepted. I could have quoted any Albert Einstein saying and it still would have come off as erroneous malarkey to the brainpower muscle that in reality runs this show we call a country. However, before I get too fancypants preachy on your ass let me try to explain myself.
In the furious wake of the great and horrible 9/11 tragedies, arguably our country’s most harrowing hour, we made a succession of choices. In a way it was exactly what the “terrorists”, Al Qaeda and whoever else wanted us to do. We needed to decide that A) we had been attacked (which we most certainly were) and B) what the fuck would be our world-plan reaction for the next couple of decades. Our government decided that a proactive, preemptive war on all fascist states around the globe would be the only acceptable answer to the despondent query we’d been forced to answer, regardless of the scary fact that this type of thinking could do us in faster than any hijacked plane.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, we quickly made a list. I can’t possibly think that we’ll cross off all those names because I’m pretty sure our own state will implode before our war resources run out, namely young, semi-brainwashed soldiers willing to die. (This is of course dependent on the fact that we don’t kill the environment in the meantime, making earth uninhabitable and negating any political discussion for all eternity.)
My point is this though: what if this counteraction, the grand muscle flex of the Great Society, was exactly what Al Qaeda wanted of us? What if Al Qaeda (and when I say Al Qaeda I really mean the vague notion of Islamic fundamentalism in general) knew what our reaction would be and we’re willing to lose many battles in order to win the so-called war? Fore whenever we occupy a country or a war scandal comes out we’re slowly fueling a fire that one day we won’t be able to extinguish. In a way it’s the age old “Rome fell” argument, but I don’t think it has to be that way.
TO BE CONTINUED
