There are too many of them to count. They’re all lined up outside my office - lined up to buy T-shirts. Colorful shirts, aren’t they? They have pictures of stealth bombers and bald eagles on them, and they have printed slogans like “Turn the Sand into Glass” and other such bullcrap that calls for airstrikes on the Middle East.
Nine out of ten people who are buying these ridiculous shirts just don’t fucking get it. They don’t care who the United States retaliates against, just as long as they get to watch some sort of explosive retaliation on CNN. Explosions - Yay! Cool rockets and helicopters and tanks! Ooooh…lookit that Patriot missile streak into the night sky!
Ask any one of these people who exactly the U.S. should retaliate against. Most will say “towelheads” or “ragheads” or some equally idiotic thing, because they’re too stupid to understand the diversity of the peoples of the Middle East, much less understand the differences between a Middle Eastern ally and a terrorist. They don’t want to understand things like this. “Kill 'em all,” they say. “Let God sort 'em out.”
Excuse me, fuckwads, but that’s exactly what the perpetrators of the attacks want America to do.
Say what you want about Osama bin Laden, but he’s smarter than the fucking idiots who are buying anti-Middle East shirts and bandannas and shit outside my office. Yes, Mr. “Nuke All The Arabs” that’s what I said: He’s a terrorist asshole, but he’s smarter than you. He has successfully tricked you into behaving exactly the way he wants you to behave, and he’s probably sitting in a bunker someplace laughing his fucking ass off, because he knows that idiots like you are playing right into his trap.
Understand this, dipshit. If we indiscriminately carpet-bombed the piss out of the Middle East like you want us to, the entire world would align against us and Osama bin Laden would get exactly what he wants. He wants everyone to align against the U.S. because he sees us as a great evil.
I can’t believe I have to explain this to you, Mr. “Turn the Middle East into Glass.” I’m ashamed that I live in the same country as someone who has relatively free access to information, yet can’t take the time to understand what’s really going on when so much is at stake. Right now, you’re a bigger threat to the American way of life than Osama bin Laden is. He needs stupid American people like you to have a knee-jerk reaction to his attacks in order to succeed. In other words, you’re not part of the solution. You’re part of the problem.
So quit waving that flag, Mr. “Send in all the Stealth Bombers.” We’ll let you wave it when you can demonstrate definitively that you place some value on human life, and that you understand that countries don’t go to war just for entertainment value or to satisfy bloodlust by bombing the wrong people. Take your “Bomb Afghanistan Now” T-shirt and throw it in a drawer. Take it out in 10 years and reflect on what a total asshole you were in the weeks following the terrorist attacks. Only then will you understand.
