The Fulcrum of Evil

So a bunch of Saudis broke into some pricey Saudi property, shooting their way through Saudi flesh to get to strategic locations where they were able to detonate their car-bombs, killing themselves, a few Americans and even more Saudis. The initial reaction by the Bush administration was outrage, along with a vow to bring those who plotted this slaughter to "American justice" (somebody get Bill Kurtis on the phone). The same goes for the blasts that rocked Casablanca last night. At least now, though, the world is safe from Saddam Hussein.

The general consensus by all governments affected by these horrific bombings is that they were al-Qaida jobs, probable enough. We should hope so, or else it means that yet another angry Muslim mob has targeted U.S. interests, and does not care if the means to the end involve brother-against-brother killing. As a result, all "non-essential" personnel were ordered out of Saudi Arabia, and all of this comes after a planned reduction to a bare minimum of our military presence there.

Common sense might have dictated that such redeployments would have been in order in the immediate wake of 9/11. Had George W. Bush not developed a fixation on Iraq that pre-dates the 2000 election, he might have responded more in accordance with all of those very impressive speeches. Since this White House seems to be coated with a thick layer of anti-intelligence Teflon, we went ahead and wasted hundreds of millions of dollars (and more important, months of time) pursuing a bunch of nobodies who posed a threat only to themselves and their Arab brethren, who had them geographically surrounded anyhow.

The amount of gravity the president tried to hang on Iraq became so obvious, after only a few weeks of fighting, that the administration had to shift their stated motivation from the old "weapons of mass destruction" argument to the more esoteric "liberation of the Iraqi people", which smells just like what it is. But the more the critics tried to tell us that the whole thing was a farce, the more Bush pinned his ears back and kept trudging stubbornly ahead.

No animal will do that unless he's got blinders on, and our strange unwillingness to keep our eye on the ball where al-Qaida is concerned allowed them the time to plot this latest atrocious (and coordinated) attack. Can I say that? Just look at the sheer amount of man- and fire-power that was used against Iraq. Direct that instead into wiping out al-Qaida, however you go about it, and try to decide whether or not we as Americans would be safer today from the likes of Osama bin Laden.

Check it out. We fought the wrong war.

Now only a couple of seasons remain before campaign season begins, and Bush the nation builder will have to stop his push for Middle East success as he tries to keep his job, despite a pathetic American economy, rampant unemployment and a deficit so high that even Ronald Reagan will remember it. In the interim, our military (since it is oiled and loaded and in place) will probably be used to sack the regime in Iran. Their pursuit of nuclear technology will be the reasoning behind the pre-emptive strike. Thus, candidate Bush will be able to say he has taken out two-thirds (he was always good at math) of his "axis of evil", and that should play well to his constituents.

Those blinders conceal one small thing. Along the way, with our grousing about North Korea and Iran "going nucular", we have learned to ignore the true source of those two thorns in our foot, and also the womb of the Taliban. The real purveyors of hatred toward the U.S. are in Pakistan. With its Islamic madrasas churning out young martyrs by the thousands, the one thing you can definitely say about terrorism is that it is not about to go away, not with such a prime breeding ground. Pakistan has also given enriched-uranium technology to both North Korea and Iran. But the official line on Pakistani President-General Pervez Musharraf is that he is "our good friend". The Pakis - Bush's term - have gone a long way in helping us root out terrorism.

So they take our money, while their people hide al-Qaida members in their lawless frontier, and the government rounds up a few people now and then to keep themselves in our good graces. And for every grown-up one that they hand over to the FBI, another little one is given to the mullahs for the dark side of Islamic indoctrination. And the martyrs keep graduating, and the bombs keep exploding. Before too much longer, the bombs might be bigger than anything seen since 1945. We might have asked the democratic government of India about that, as they continue to suffer terrorist attacks in the disputed mountain region of Kashmir, and find themselves deadlocked in atomic attrition with Pakistan. But we didn't listen to India when they tried to tell us about 9/11, so why should we listen to them now, or ever?

Especially when there are, you know, so many other things to do. Like cut taxes. And count oil receipts. A president has a busy schedule, and can't be all things to all people. But he tries. You know he tries.