Is Osama For Obama?

It's always an interesting exercise, at election time, to speculate as to who not our friends and allies, but our enemies, might prefer as the next president. And this call has, historically, never been all that tough. The Soviets of old were notoriously in favor of the Democrats, starting with FDR with whom they got along so well, because the Democrats were perceived as being "soft on communism" and ever willing to capitulate and compromise. Well, that's not what the Soviets called it in public -- it was "socialists like us". No, that wasn't it either -- it was more like "not all Amerikanskis are capitalist running-dog bourgeois". Yeah, that about sums it up. The Chinese of a slightly later era were all in favor of the Clintons, for the simple reason that the Clintons let them have... well, pretty much the run of the store, including major weapon system components. At present, the Georgians are rooting for McCain and Palin, who have promised to defend them -- at all costs! -- against any further Russian invasions. On the other hand, American Jews are leaning toward Obama because of the Democrats' record on "social issues", whereas the Israelis are leaning toward McCain because, like Bush & Co., he has vowed to defend them -- at all costs! -- against "terror", which, freely translated, means "anything the Palestinians or those other filthy Arabs try to pull".

But when it comes to Osama and outfits like Al Qaeda, things get a bit more subtle. For one thing, Al Qaeda and other "terrorist" networks do not constitute a state or nation with clear nation-type priorities. They're less interested in traditional things like land and wealth than in things like getting us out of the Middle East, and our little dog too (i.e., Israel). So, well, you'd think that, in that case, they would favor Obama, who seems a bit less devoted to the Neocon/Evangelical idea of foreign policy and a bit more willing to engage in "dialogue". But that would be to forget that "dialogue" is a weapon of choice for people who already have a tangible, visible power base, and have something to negotiate with other than the threat of more terrorist attacks. For example, "dialogue" is something that Israel and the Palestinians might be capable of engaging in someday -- Israel having a military power base in the region and the Palestinians having a demographic one, plus a few more friendly neighbors than Israel has. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, wants mainly to increase its power and influence, and to add more pressure on us, and Near Eastern governments, to get us out of the area. And the way to do that is, number one, recruit more members -- and the way to do that is to provoke more conflict, and in particular more actions on our part that they can advertise as "atrocities". So who, on that basis, would they prefer to see in office? Why, McCain and Palin, of course. If our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were dreams come true for Osama, then an invasion of Iran would be a bonus beyond his wildest dreams. He could stop recuiting altogether, because young men by the tens of thousands would be knocking down his door begging to be admitted to the organization, trained as fighters, and ultimately made into suicide attackers so they could strike out against the infidel.

This is the perverse nature of things as they are today in the Near East, and of course we have only added to the distortions by our actions over the past few years. Christians who have lived in Iraq almost since biblical times are now being ethnically cleansed out of the country as a direct result of our presence -- and, I might add, with the full knowledge and tacit consent of our military and civilian authorities. One would expect the Evangelicals who were so gung-ho about this war to have a problem with this, except that -- oops! -- those Christians all happen to be Iraqi Catholics, so they clearly don't count. So our invasion and its aftermath is already having one historically significant effect, namely to turn Iraq into an entirely Islamic country. Isn't that the sort of thing that keeps Osama warm as he beds down in his cave for the night? And isn't that the sort of thing he could only want more of?

So forget all this noise about, since Obama is a crypto-Moslem, or at least a sympathizer, and not quite as joined at the hip to Israel as the Neocons are, the "terrorists" should prefer him as president. That would be just the latest mistake concerning their motives and methods -- the latest of a countless number, that is, stretching back years if not decades. You can count on them to want things to get a lot worse before they can be made better. The goal is to get us to pour ever more resources (money and manpower) into the area, get even more wasted and demoralized to the point of impotence or just plain giving up, at which point we leave and Israel is left all alone. I'm not saying this strategy of theirs is going to work, but that's what it basically consists of, so we should be prepared for many more years of paradoxes.