3237 Revenge may not be so sweet

Tuesday, April 3, 2011

I read the papers to find out who I am, so I can be it.
-- Steve Wozniak, Newsweek 2/19/96 --

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Ok, so lots of people are celebrating because ObL is dead. Ok. Revenge. (Not very attractive, people. I think the Bible says something about that?) And the US gets to beat its chest and roar that you may hide, but we will find you. And the CIA can take satisfaction that their black torture sites are effective. And Obama gets a boost with people stupid enough to be impressed by symbols.

But - ObL wasn't running Al Q anymore. Most cells are now autonomous. ObL had a particular beef with the US over our support of the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, and that was pretty much it. The current autonomous cells have their own agendas. Nowadays, ObL was mostly a figurehead, spokesman, and recruiting tool, and was revered as the founding father of a movement.

His death leaves a vacuum, which some middle-aged fool who thinks he's been ignored too long is going to want to step into. Or several fools who want to compete for the honor.

In order to acquire the acclaim, they'll need to pull off something big. Yeah, pissed off groups can do something like a dirty bomb in L.A., or put nasty germs or poison in the ventilation system of Grand Central station, or in the water supply of a major city (like the Ashokan reservoir - in the woods, in the remote mountains, with miles of unsecured shoreline, where fishermen are not carrying ID, and OMG! I may have just figured out why The Man never drinks water!). Any of those would be big, impressive, take out a lot of Americans --- but they wouldn't be photogenic!

If you want to get the admiration of all the other cells, you've got to do something that makes good TV. Something that will be played over and over. Like 9/11.

It will be big. It might take a year to decide what to do, to plan it, to pull it off. But most of all it will involve a big bang and lots of cameras. And this one will be a surprise to the US government. Suddenly the Mayan calendar worries me.

Al Q. was close to becoming irrelevant, you know? We just breathed new life into it.

Enjoy your revenge, folks. I hope it's worth what it's gonna cost.

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The wingnuts are, of course, screaming foul that they weren't allowed to taste the body. Last week they lost the birth certificate chewbone, so it's especially hard to take. They're not smart enough I guess to figure out why the immediate disposal of the body was necessary. We've royally pissed off the bad Muslims. It's kind of important right now not to piss off the good Muslims, too. We need them.
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