a cynic's guide to modern life
Commentary #5 11.25.02
Osama bin Laden: America's Goldstein
“The US has got to get Osama,” trumpets the NY Daily News. I don’t want to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist here, but doesn’t it strike anyone else as convenient that bin Laden has chosen this particular time, a time when the US is trying desperately to rally support for their latest crusade against the Muslim infidels and failing miserably, to speak out?
I’m
not going so far as to suggest the tape was faked, but I am extremely
suspicious of the timing of the tape, and some of the countries mentioned
therein. Apart from America
and Britain, the international community has been relatively cool towards
Dubya’s plans in the Middle East. And
sure enough, many of the countries mentioned are those who have publicly
opposed a proposed invasion of Iraq.
“You see!! You see!!
You’re next!” the States warns us.
Other
than solidifying power structures and gaining another foothold in the
oil-rich Middle East, the reasons that the government gives for the war
are so hackneyed that most people, just as when the dust settled from
Desert Storm, can see the obvious reasons why America has a keen interest
there. Public opposition to
the war is staggering, and if the people had access to the media, everyone
would realize it.
But
with a shrug of the shoulders, we simply let Dubya continue playing in the
sandbox. Imagine that. Four hijacked airplanes and 3,000 dead and we still haven’t
gotten the message. The
message? I doubt we even
seriously asked the question of why it happened in the first place.
The best our news media can do is say it’s senseless.
It is horrific. It is tragic. But
it’s far from senseless. An
attack so well coordinated and executed is never senseless.
It was a drastic reaction to decades of a hypocritical and violent
American foreign policy that supports her own interests whether they are
beneficial, malevolent or somewhere in between.
The
US has got to get Osama? My
first reaction is to say why? Osama
bin Laden is the latest Goldstein for the American media.
The shadowy figure that is always being relentlessly pursued and
yet never captured. Forgotten
for months at a time, he is brought back to the consciousness of the
American public when it’s convenient for him to be a menace.
He puts the face to terrorism, which by ideology and design is
faceless. It also doesn’t
hurt that his long beard and desert garb makes him the stereotypical
poster boy for Islam to Americans. So
long as the administration (I refuse to believe that Dubya has a
significant role in this presidency other than one of an endearing
hometown simpleton; the figurehead of his father’s political buddies
Dick Cheney and Colin Powell who are manipulating the strings) needs bin
Laden to distract the public from what’s really wrong – a failing
domestic policy... that is if they had a coherent domestic policy to begin
with.
So don’t look for Bush to capture the pesky bin Laden anytime soon. And even if he does, nothing much will come of it, since it has been well established that the Al-Qaida network is decentralized in nature, and completely capable of operating without an executive power structure. The victory will be triumphant and the speeches will be grand, and all the while the latest plots to kill innocent Americans will continue unabated.
Copyright © Don Porter 2002. All rights reserved.