August 19, 2004, Welcome to my Nightmare (Part Sept)
As I feared, my cries to the ether went unheeded, and intense fighting has broken out (again) in Najaf near the Imam Ali Mosque, and two minarets and a clock have already been damaged.
I beg President Bush to simply give Moqtada Al-Sadr a place on the new puppet council and a full pardon and complete amnesty for anything he has ever done before-- no matter how heinous, on condition that he and all of his forces withdraw from that mosque within 24 hours. He is but one little man, playing to maximize his own power, and willing to risk the destruction of civilization to do it.
Sadly, even smaller men reside on Pennsylvania Avenue, and fail to understand just what it is Al-Sadr is setting us up for. Over in Pakistan, Usama bin Laden is watching this, thinking that Allah has indeed gone overboard to provide him with an adversary like George W. Bush-- a man who probably has done more to advance bin Laden's own cause than the entire Saudi Royal Family who has been sponsoring and orchestrating it and the Afghan Taliban who have been harboring it for years.
I don't know how to stop this. In awful Hollywood blockbusters, some hero would hop into a jet fighter and fly over there, land in the courtyard of the mosque and either blow al-Sadr away himself, or best, he and the former villain now buddy would stroll arm in arm out of the mosque, followed by Al-Sadr's militia. Or the hero might parachute out over the White House, crash through the window of the Oval Office, and convince the President to stand down here, because there's really a nuclear doomsday device under the Imam Ali Mosque, and if we storm it, we will destroy the world.
The problem is, there actually is such a doomsday device. The problem, as I keep saying, is that it won't detonate in less than the 22-minute attention span of the average American: it will take some years-- though well within the lifetimes of most people alive now. But the pieces of the doomsday machine are in place here: a reckless Yankee Imperialist with insane assistants (Rumsfeld keeps harping on "tactical battlefield" nuclear weapons), our good buddies the Pakistanis have merrily disseminated nuclear weapons technology to North Korea (who return the favor by merrily disseminating ballistic missile technology), Iran, formerly Libya, possibly Saudi Arabia, and three or four unnamed countries which would probably scare the bleep out of you if you know who they were. We have an Islamic world of nearly a billion strong that, despite sitting on immense natural wealth-- indeed, the black gook that keeps the world's economy moving-- represents just about the poorest and most backward members of the entire human race. And yet, its a proud people, who remembers slights against it from centuries ago, as if from earlier today.
All these elements need to put them together is just a little push-- say, the Crazy Yankee Imperialist picking a fight with some small scale meaningless peon, and in the process, willy nilly destroying the holiest shrines of Islam.
I hate to say this, but an election in November and a handover of power here in January may not be soon enough to stop this. Our current government in Washington simply looks at this from short term perspective: it wants to be able to have "a victory" against Al-Sadr-- print his picture on a playing card, and then draw an X through it, and assume its done, and the rubes in the Swing States will say-- "Yee ha-- our War Preznit sure kicks ass- we can't trust that FRENCH FAGGOT John Kerry to do squat."
What I'm saying is that if we finish off our insane destruction of this mosque (assuming we haven't already passed the point of no-return), the conditions for human planetary meltdown may have already been set in motion, and could not be stopped by any act of a rational successor to the current American President/Homicidal Psychopath War-Criminal MONSTER WORSE THAN HITLER, STALIN, MAO, POL POT AND EVERY OTHER DICTATOR AND CRIMINAL WHO EVER LIVED COMBINED (if, of course, he DOES go ahead with this insanity and gets that Mosque destroyed, simply because he will have singlehandedly set in motion the necessary conditions for the annihilation of the entire world).
The problem is, I may actually be understating the danger this presents. Please-- someone out there-- do SOMETHING. Offer Al-Sadr the presidency of Iraq or something-- but DO NOT DESTROY THAT MOSQUE. If there is a God, I pray that SOMETHING WILL BE DONE to protect most of humanity which really doesn't deserve what is about to happen to it at the hands of the aforesaid monster.
Comments
Well then.
I see that the meltdown is continuing apace. That W is having his problems, too.
Posted by They Call Me Mr. Crabcake at August 19, 2004 11:12 AM
Gee, once Najaf is gone, along with its mosques, maybe the arab fundamentalists bombing churches in Iraq will come to recognize what they did was wrong.
Posted by Just Wondering at August 19, 2004 12:53 PM
JW--
I guess when you (and your children) are slowly dying of radiation poisoning after the coming nucular war that we seem to be hellbent on unleashing, perhaps you can ponder the answer to that question, and of course, its relevance.
Posted by the talking dog at August 19, 2004 01:19 PM
Good plan. Maybe later we can bomb the shit out of the Dome of the Rock and the palestinians and israelis can go have a beer and a bacon cheeseburger.
Posted by julia at August 19, 2004 01:57 PM
Julia, you get it. A small triumph shall do.
TD, this bunch refuses to live in peace.
Why do all the current world hotspots involve Muslems - Israel, Iraq, India, Indonesia, Ichechneya, Iafghanistan, or is it just an "I" thing?
Also, I don't think the Sunnis are too upset about Najaf.
Posted by Just Wondering at August 19, 2004 02:58 PM
JW--
YOur knowledge of Sunnis Islam seems to be as deficient as your spelling ability. Imam Ali was Mohammed's son-in-law and cousin; this shrine is, besides being THE most important site in Shia Islam, is one of the the most important sites in Sunni Islam. The Sunnis are every bit as pissed we are there as the Shia. Jeez, I thought Hassan would have explained this to you.
Posted by the talking dog at August 20, 2004 10:41 AM