Well, it looks like our good friend Osama has released a new tape for the world to freak out about. Amongst his comments (out of a 70 minute tape) is that there needs to be a “truce” settled, and that America’s security is so bad that he could get us at any time.
But, fortunately, the Bush Administration is there to let us know that everything is going to be juuuuust fine.
“Clearly the al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run. They’re under a lot of pressure,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.”
Well that’s good to know.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find this situation to be incredibly convenient. Right smack in the middle of all of the scandals the Bush administration is running into, all of a sudden an enormous audio tape from Bin Laden just happens to show up, just to remind us all that there is terrorism out there in the world. I don’t think it would be a surprise to anyone to find Bush on TV in the next day or two telling the world that we need to “stop worrying about bipartisan political attacks and unite to fight the war on terror”. It couldn’t have happened in early December before Abramoff, Alito, and the NSA blew up. It couldn’t happen after. It happens now.
So far we’ve been told that Osama is dead two or three times, and each time he manages to come back to tell us that he’s still out there, he’s still scary, and he still wants to sweep in and take your children in the middle of the night. But now he comes in the form of an incredibly long-winded audio tape. No more videos, apparently he lost his camera, so now we have a voice on a tape that CNN described as “muffled”.
Amazingly, America reacts the same way each time. Osama “returns” from death to scare us and Bush can come out and tell us all that we need to trust him and give him all of this power so he can protect us. Then he dies and people cheer, knowing that Bush has saved us. Then he comes back again and rather than questioning the president, they cling to him again asking for help. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to suggest that these tapes could be fabricated just to keep us in fear at all times, just so Bush can comfort us and we can hand over some liberties.
Of course, it’s peculiar. We’ve got McClellan, who truly does deserve a punch in the face, telling America that we don’t negotiate with terrorists, but the strangest thing is that we only take that approach when there is truly no threat. We’ll talk tough Clint Eastwood against a weaponless and basically inert Iraq, or against a speaking “Osama”, but when it comes to Iran, what’s the president’s opinion?
Asked if he expected sanctions to be imposed on Iran, Mr Bush said he was “not going to prejudge what the United Nations Security Council should do What you’re seeing is the evolution of a proactive diplomatic policy.”
Of course. We have to be careful when the threat is real. Talk tough against the ineffective enemy, shrink down against the one that can hit back. It’s easy to tell if we should be worried or not. If Bush’s cronies are telling us we’re gonna git ‘em, there’s nothing to worry about. If we have to be careful, panic time.
