Let us put aside for now the notion of financially illiterate nostalgiacs for a vanished 7th Century caliphate hooting and gibbering over the US stock market slide, and focus instead up their declared preference for the candidacy of John McCain for president:
In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting credited al-Qaeda with having lured Washington into a trap that had “exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy.” It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.
“It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”
Because that’s been working for them so far. Having gone from basically running their own state-wide criminal franchise in Afghanistan to squatting in caves and mud huts on the Pakistani frontier, existing in a hierarchy where job security means being senior enough to avoid being shanghaid into self-murder on the one hand, and avoiding moving up the ladder sufficiently to draw the attention of the US intelligence community (complete with Predator strike) on the other, going from a position of relatively broad support within the Islamic community to being roundly condemned on nearly every side, from declaring the war for Iraq as the critical battle in their ideological struggle to getting their asses kicked six ways from Sunday by the very same people who once gave them shelter – armed, equipped and allied by the US military! – that whole “exhausting America” thing has been one series of unalloyed successes. Especially when you consider that, seven years into a two-front war that has raised military expenditures from 3% to a whopping 4.5% of GDP, the US found nearly a trillion dollars lying under the cushions to invest in mititgating the results of a financial meltdown wholly unrelated to AQ’s efforts.
People of good intent – and others as well – can and have disageed as to whether the war in Iraq was a critical element of the war on terror or a horrible distraction from it. But when it comes to Al Qaeda-actual, pretty much everyone agrees that hunting these bugs where they live is a good and useful thing.
What an absurd assortment of putzes.
Hooting and gibbering–at the risk of being called racist, that’s what a group of monkeys does. You can see it anytime down at the local zoo.
I do think that Al Qaeda is still a bit more dangerous to us than the inhabitants of the Chimp exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. But they (Al Qaeda) need to be made a severely endangered species.
Lex and friends … forgive me for speaking plainly on this elegant website, but I love that word “putz.” It takes a very highly civilized society to have two words for the same portion of anatomy: the well-known one for the well-known portion of anatomy in a happy state, and the word “putz” for that portion in a state of disarray, so to speak.
Don’t you agree?
Marianne
I find the military expenditure comment at the end an interesting one. A whopping 4.5%? Whoever said that needs to go back to the Korean War era and examine the Federal budget of the day…that was whopping, and not a whole lot of folks squawked about it.
Another point: ‘The One’ has repeatedly stated that he would go after UBL in Pakistan (or was that Pockistan?). We The People are making enemies under the current Administration’s flawed policy in Iraq, but under The One’s tutelage we would violate the sovereignty of Pockistan to ‘take out’ UBL. And that would be okay…everyone would understand…no one would be offended…and the region would be a better place for our having done it, not to mention the world.
I guess being an Elite with a vastly superior education enables one to better understand why that’s so, as this simple minded person with a vastly lesser education seems to be missing his point.
Someone help me. Please…
“…the US found nearly a trillion dollars lying under the cushions… ”
Don’t think so. We promised to spend a trillion, but we’re going to raise it by selling bonds. That is, until no one shows up at the bond auction. In which case we’ll print money. Inflation, no problem.
I do think it ironic that here you state (and I concur) that AQ isn’t doing that well at exhausting our resources, but in the next post you note that we’re burning through P-3s and, to quote, they’re not growing on trees.
No, I was aware of that irony – but that’s a matter of priorities, both within USG and USN.
The money is there (if an engineering solution can be found), but there’s a procurement lag on replacement aircraft and some concern about throwing good money at an aging aircraft.