Osama is counting on America's stupid people. And they might come through for him.

The BBQ Pit
1

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.

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They’re the same mentality as the tards osama recruited from, only bigger beer guts.

3

I haven’t seen any T-shirts with bloodthirsty mottoes on them, and I live and work close to the Pentagon.

The idea of wanting random death and destruction visited on Afghan civilians is horrible. I don’t know what may come of military action in Afghanistan, but taking joy in the suffering of the Afghans is just evil.

On the other hand, wanting America to do nothing and cower from the terrorists is pretty bad, too.

4

People are used to an identifiable enema… I mean enemy. They’re used to seeing an advesary in uniform, a nation as a whole being an agressor, the head of a country as a despot or some specific cause taking credit for a terroristic assault.

This time, who the f*ck hit us? Was it Islam? No, not entirely or fundamentally. Was it Arabs? Again, no, not as a whole. Was it Afghanistan? Not by a long shot.

For some folks now it’s hard to know just who the enemy is we’re fighting. It’s to date hard for them to realize this is a war completely unlike any we’ve ever fought before.

I’ve got great faith that later cooler heads will prevail but until then it’s the responsibility of sites like this and reasonable folks like yourselves to help them be mindful of the focus we must have as a nation. Hopefully, they’ll listen.

5

I just noticed that in an empty office on the other side of the building, someone taped a printout of the doctored photo of Osama as a 7-11 employee to the wall.

I thought that was pretty ballsy. Although the picture is humorous for a moment, is that really the statement you want to make by taping it to a wall for all to see?

Just a few doors down, someone else had printed out a cartoon with the essence of “The Eagle is Pissed” or some such.

Is the work place really the place for you to reveal your political ideology? I think it’s in poor taste.

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Granted there are a lot of knee-jerk reactionaries out there. Who would like to “kill 'em all” in order to get the ones we want. But, I think there are a lot of people who are frustrated with what appears to be inaction.

Like the OP stated, this is a new war. There is no easy target to attack in retaliation, we have to hunt and search for the perpetrators, double check intel, and make damn sure we hit the right target/s. All the while trying to keep our activities as quiet as possible so as not to tip our hand, and to not endager our people. On the surface, this looks like no action is being taken.

I think it shows a lot of restraint on our leaders part, and I think more people need to trust in their ability to “get the job done” without unnecessary casualties (both ours and theirs). Eventually we will read and hear about the battles won against terrorism; unfortunately (fortunately?) it will not be shown “live” on CNN. Instant gratification isn’t going to happen this time, it will take a while for justice to be served.

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The problem is, we’re gonna have to bomb somebody whether it’s necessary or not. Bush knows that if our bombs cause enough destruction somewhere in Afghanistan, that he’s got a large number of votes in his back pocket for the next election.

So we’ll never find out whether or not the bombings were really successful in fighting terrorism. This is why the goal is so broad now. We don’t want to only capture/kill bin Laden, but all the other (vaguely defined) scoundrels too. This gives Bush the flexibility to bomb someone regardless of whether bin Laden is captured. Bin Laden could come out of his cave and surrender this afternoon and we’re still going to bomb somebody.

I’m at the point where I’m not convinced any more that bin Laden is even responsible for the WTC attacks. I mean, think about it, since 9/11 the media has been reporting that he is the prime suspect. So it really shouldn’t surprise anyone if there is enough evidence that points the finger to him. So now all of a sudden, the media seems to making a huge deal about the fact Tony Blair (who’s a tool of the US) and Pakistan (who will be receiving huge amounts financial aid from the US) publically stated that they’ve seen the evidence and that they are convinced. It just seems way too fishy. We thought it was him the whole time. So evidence pointing towards him shouldn’t really be a big deal.

8

Pray for Colin Powell, he seems to be the only sane one.

As for binLaden, the primary reason we focus on him is probably that he is about the only name we got. The realm of Muslim loonies is closed to our usual intelligence gathering procedures. Guilty? Very probably, but I would still prefer that we treat this as a criminal matter and not a military one.

But considering the veritable wave of macho military posturing that resulted from 9/11, I am happily surprised that things are as relatively sane as they are. In my opinion “Landslide” George is a mediocre man, not big enough for the shoes he has to fill, but at least this: he has sense enough to know who to listen to. Of course, I’ve heard it said more than once that Colin Powell has an enormously commanding personal presence, so maybe thats it. Whatever, I’m grateful. He has saved any number of innocent lives by buying enough time for cooler heads to prevail.

However…if something else happens, all bets are off. And the odds on that are pretty scary.

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The problem is going to be precisely that - this more than likely isn’t the last attack. If we get hit again, well, things could get really, really hairy. Looking at the hit we took in lives and treasure from this one makes you wonder what our lives will be like if we get hit hard like this again.
And military action, while it may help, given that Osama is the one - and I think he is - won’t put a stop to this. I’m not really sure what will. There’s just no way to stop a suicidal fanatic.
Or at least I don’t know of a way. Ideas, anyone?

10

I say print out Opal Cat’s picture and tape it up.

THAT could be disturbing, however.

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No matter how this gets handled boys and girl, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

If we use military or some such force to attack, they will retaliate. And God only knows what they will do.

If we sit here with our thumbs up our asses, they will feel we’re conceding to their power. And then God only knows what they will do.

So you see folks, either way, we’re fucked.

Oh, and have a nice day…

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**
…from you? Then–what’$ your beef? :smiley:

[sub]I agree, “internet power broker” sounds much better than “t-shirt shop”[/sub]

13

I keep hearing that “Americans are so stupid they don’t understand the diversity in the Arab World” line far too often.

To what extent does the Arab World understand the diversity of the US?

My experiences with several European friends is that even they, being culturally closer to the US than the Arab World, really tend to lump all the people in a country the size of their whole Continent into one, nice, tidy demographic as well.

As an aside - I heard arch-arch-liberal Eleanor Clift say last night that we should “kill Bin Laden”. Next on the agenda, I will expect Fred Phelps to join Act Up!

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Lemme clarify… They’re lined up outside my office building, buying crappy T-shirts from the sidewalk vendors. I don’t sell T-shirts.

15

Favor unilateral retaliation? How long have you been a Bin Laden supporter, anyway?

16

I agree with the person who started this subject. I saw some teeshirts at Spencers Gifts but they were not obscene telling us to bomb anyone.

The intelligent people know how valuable Peace really is, and that we must do everything we can to keep it. Terrorism is hatred that is vile and devious and evil and it comes in other forms like city crime where its the criminal (terrorist) against other citizens.