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Jewish World Review Nov. 12, 2001 / 26 Mar-Cheshvan, 5762
James Lileks
1. "The Anthrax Horror Gets Worse Daily!" For the small enclaves of DC
and NYC, perhaps. But the rest of the nation has absorbed the psychological
impact of the anthrax mass-mailing. The news that a rogue spore has popped
up in a take-a-penny dish in an Anacostia cafeteria does not set the
national heart thumping with fear any more. Next!
2. "We're not serious about the larger goals - no one's talking about
Iraq!" True, there's much demurral about Saddam's role. Perchance the
administration wants to keep Iraq guessing. It's a novel theory: don't spend
nine months telegraphing your punches. The administration says they're
considering domestic hate groups as a source, but this too might be a feint
- if the militias were really to blame, FEMA and the IRS would have gotten
flour sacks of anthrax on day one.
3. "The Air War Has Failed!" Only if you expected the air war alone to
knock the Taliban out of power. News flash! First wave of soldiers die at
Normandy! D-Day has failed! Look: the first phase of the air war took out
the Taliban's ability to put things in the air and knock our things down.
Once you have control of the skies, you can turn their HQs into pungent
rubble and convert the ammo dumps into explosions that can be seen from the
moon. The air war did what needed doing. The Taliban cannot grow SAM
batteries in caves, or easily replace the material destroyed. The airfields
aren't healing themselves. From here on in, it's a war of attrition. The
Taliban is a noisy, flailing corpse - deadly, yes, but dead nonetheless.
4. "Civilians are dying!" It's not news when civilians die in war. It's
news when they don't.
5. "Ramadan bombing will turn the Muslim world against us!" What will
they chant next - Additional Death to America? Will they start shooting up
more Catholic churches? If the Arab world has no compunction about killing
each other during Ramadan, neither should we. In fact, it's time to blow up
some mosques. The Taliban is reportedly hiding equipment in mosques, because
they know - despite their constant villification of US perfidy - that we are
loathe to bomb holy sites. Perhaps they need to be disabused of this notion.
Message: if you want your holy places open for business, don't treat them
like ammo dumps.
6. "The Pakistanis are rising up against us!" This story was absurd:
thousands of Pakistanis were reportedly streaming across the border, ready
to defend the Taliban. Some had guns; some had swords. Ooooh. Swords. Hope
they're not those special night-vision sniper swords. If the story is true,
then US planes ought to make short work of the first convoy. Let a rusting
column of buses and trucks bristling with buzzards be a lesson to the next
line of idiots. Y'all want to be martyrs? Take a number. Get in line.
One suspects that we will not bomb these convoys - perhaps out of
deference to Pakistani sentiment, or because it would be overkill to use
high-tech weapons on ululating simpletons armed with pointed sticks.
Remember that awful footage in the Gulf War, when US planes hit the convoy
of looters leaving Kuwait. People blanched at the carnage: Why couldn't we
have just given them paper cuts and sprayed lemon juice? Killing the enemy
is just so . . . unfair.
By this logic, the allies should not have attacked Berlin at the end of
the war because it was defended by Hitler Youth. By this logic, the US
should not accept the stated goal of the Pakistani volunteers to "drink
American blood," because it's highly unlikely that they mean this literally,
and even if they did, we must respect local customs, like vampirism.
The media has to have a spin. Their message is clear: even though the
President warned of a long, hard-fought war with many casualties, it looks
like we're not going to have a quick, easy, death-free campaign.
Imagine
10/30/01: Osama and the Genie
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