Fallujah and the Battle for the Presidency
"Your neighbour’s grandchildren will be fighting this stupid greed-crazed Bush-family war against the whole Islamic world for the rest of their lives if John Kerry isn’t elected to be the new president on Tuesday."
Hunter S. Thompson
After dropping off my daughter at the mental institution Friday, my drive into work was punctuated by Cape Times billboards proclaiming Hunter S. Thompson Writes For Us. "Assholes," I sneered. "Though well past his sell-by date, I know this much. The Good Doctor would not lower himself to writing for a limp-dick, low-rent street sheet like yours. He is a man of honour and integrity who will do many things, but writing for the Cape Times is not one of them. Whoever penned that headline should be dipped in lime and run out of town."
Okay, maybe I was being a bit harsh. All in all, our local print whores are not that bad. Dinner-table Gun Battle Kills Three remains one of my favourite headlines, epitomising life on the Cape Flats. Nevertheless, determined to trip up the paid hacks pulling off this particular fraud, I snuck over to the Cape Times site and, sure enough, there it was, Fear and Loathing of Bush Mafia — Gonzo Journalist Predicts Democrat Will Be Next U.S. President.
I smiled. Still exercising extraordinary reach, the Doctor confirmed my jaundiced view of IOL's duplicitous ink jockeys foisting syndicated trash onto Cape Town's dumb and gullible public as commissioned work. We (you and I) have had this article pointed to us by many far-better educated people than the whores and fools drawing fat paychecks from the Cape Times. We are, after all, bloggers and know the Good Doctor would not lower himself to freelancing for a Third-World instrument of corporate greed.
Well, okay, he would but so what? A man has to earn a living.
The point is that newspapers worldwide have been seduced into publishing the greatest political junkie of the Twentieth Century's prediction for Tuesday. What does it prove? It shows our newspapers to be dumb losers hell-bent on increasing circulation at all costs. They are prepared to publish the views of a man who has bucked the system and all trends by failing to predict the outcome of a U.S. presidential election for some forty years.
With Hunter S. Thompson's endorsement, John F. Kerry's campaign sank like a high-speed, gun-running cigar boat hitting a whale off the Florida Keys. The Senator will be yesterday's man when the sun rises Wednesday morning. His run will have ended in a cloud of spray, blood and blubber. Yes, I feel sad for my friends who have given their all to unseating the evil little drunk now residing in the White House but, as my good friend M. Scott Peck points out, nobody said life was fair.
You have fought the good fight my friends, but now is the time for you to—as the Doctor puts it, kneel down and be rewarded.
A heavily fortified city...
Despite these feelings of vindictive melancholia, my mood remained high. Like Osama Bin Laden, the Doctor knows his audience. Osama's October Surprise promises hellfire and brimstone for the good people of The World's Greatest Takeaway Democracy. My delight at receiving word from Osama was unbounded, not so much because he sees the streets of Middle America running red with blood, but because he adopts the Good Doctor's elegant style:
People of United States, this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan and deals with the war and its causes and results.He is nothing if not blunt.
But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real cause and thus the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred."But I am amazed at you." Indeed. Displaying anything but amazement, Bin Laden, who engages his global public with a shrewd appreciation of their idiocy, spells out the nature of his enemy, the Bush administration.
We have not found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. Our experience with them is lengthy and both types are replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of wealth.These are all things with which the Good Doctor, a man well versed in the law, is familiar. And Bin Laden has the occupiers taped. They are vermin and scum and he intends wiping them from the face of the earth. He will, of course, fail. Much like Dr. Thompson's prediction of a Kerry victory, Bin Laden is being hopelessly optimistic.
George W. Bush will turn the Middle East to a sheet of glass before admitting guilt or defeat.
But that is neither here nor there. These missives from the boundaries of our global village are superbly timed. In the Doctor's case, we know his epistle is motivated by a need to finance large cars, fast women and fat hotel bills. Osama, however, plays for higher stakes.
George W. Bush's return to the Oval Office is essential. Dubya is unique. He is an original and Bin Laden is fond of him. No U.S. president before Dubya has so thoroughly defiled what was once a Proud Highway. Bush has stumbled its course, fouling the air with his arbitrary policy defecations, militaristic projectile vomiting and compulsive corporate binging. It has been an odious four years, but it has been thoroughly enjoyable.
Osama Bin Laden knows this, and wishes to see Bush continue his trashing of the presidency. A peaceable man with kindly eyes, Bin Laden has no need of terrorism while The Son of The Great Satan is in charge. Given four more years, George W. Bush will destroy the United States himself, and the New Caliphate, with Bin Laden playing a benign Saladin, will come into being.
Teeming with foreign Rambos...
For now, though, Bin Laden has other fish to fry and it is here that, to appropriate the words of the once and future Caliph, I say to my fellow bloggers, "I am amazed at you." Though you might be working feverishly to install a new and more respectable neocon stooge to your Highest Office, why have you not linked Bin Laden's message to Fallujah?
I ask you this. What president of the United States facing difficult times at home has not launched distracting military offensives against collaterals around the world? None. They all do it. It is a risk-free tactic. Once the lapdog media settles down and the problems are buried beneath dead foreigners, there is not even a need to apologise for the aspirin factory.
Bin Laden knows this and, by painting George W. Bush a war president and foe worthy of insult and deprecation, he has given him his bump in the polls. But his endorsement is conditional. Listen.
...we fight because we are free men who do not sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our Nation and just as you lay waste to our Nation so shall we lay waste to yours.Fair enough. A couple of days short of Monday or Wednesday, when George W. Bush will feel the need to obliterate the mighty city of Fallujah and show himself to be the War President, Osama warns him off. If Bush goes ahead, he will slight Bin Laden's pre-election bump and lend his warning added weight.
Osama wants history to judge Fallujah, a heavily fortified city teeming with foreign Rambos armed to the teeth by the U.S. taxpayer, Bush's Stalingrad. Whether it will be adjudged as such or not, the vicious beating meted the U.S. Marine Corps in April ranks with the thrashing handed American troops by a weakened Rommel at the Kasserine Pass.
The Americans have never recovered from their defeat by Rommel's fleeing troops and Fallujah has rubbed salt into a wound deepened by countless failed military ventures over fifty years. The Americans have become the Italians of the Twenty First Century. Wherever they go, men spit on the ground and women and children laugh or throw stones at them. This has not gone down well in the Pentagon, a dark place filled with bitter losers high on hate.
In as much as the flattening of the towers of the World Trade Center served symbolic purpose, Failure in Fallujah enraged generals blind to their forces' inability to take a single Iraqi town or city in two years. Shipping professional British soldiers north (the Black Watch under PorridgeBoy), they have moved thousands of Marines into offensive positions around Ramadi and Fallujah and now await their commander-in-chief's order to flatten the city and the millions of highly trained foreign nationals occupying Fortress Fallujah.
Osama says, "...just as you lay waste to our Nation so shall we lay waste to yours."
Living in Sadr City, Tariq is a member of the Iraqi resistance and a veteran of April's battle.
"What battle?" he asked quizzically when I raised the April Rout.
"The Battle of Fallujah. The routing of the Marines in April."
He laughed and hawked a huge gob of phlegm into the dust of Haifa Street. "Well, there you have it. There was no battle. They're a bunch of pansies. We chased them off, hounded them out of town."
"Yeah, but what about next week. They've moved thousands of Marines into position and intend flattening Fallujah and Ramadi."
Tariq slapped his knee and roared with laughter. "So what? It's a PR stunt. If Bush or Kerry attack, they lose. If they don't attack, they lose. It's what we call a win-win situation. Besides, if they flatten Fallujah, I get to travel to the States."
"Eh?"
"For the next job."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
That is how it works in the victory business. You see it every time. ... Nobody wants to hire a loser. Right? They stink of doom and defeat.
"What is that horrible smell in the office, Tex? It's making me sick."
"That is the smell of a loser, senator. He came in to apply for a job, but we tossed him out immediately. Sgt Sloat took him down to the parking lot and taught him a lesson he will never forget."
"Good work, Tex. And how are you coming with my new enemies' list? I want them all locked up. They are scum."
"We will punish them brutally. They are terrorist sympathisers, and most of them voted against you. I hate those bastards."
"Thank you, Sloat. You are a faithful servant. Come over here and kneel down. I want to reward you."
Light Reading
