Look At The Silly Monkey!

Apparently there are still people out there who want to blow up American airplanes and kill innocent people. I'm stunned. You mean, Bush's War in Iraq didn't solve the problem?

For five years, the Bush Administration, talking heads, and political pundits have been patting our government on the back, telling us that hell - since we haven't been attacked on U.S. soil in five years, Al Qaeda is seriously weakened and our Great Leader has done an excellent job protecting us from another 9/11. We're safer than we were five years ago. Yes, most cargo containers that come into the United States are not checked at all. Sure, only 10% of checked baggage that goes into our airplanes is actually screened. But don't focus on these little details. Look at how many "terrorists" we're killing in Iraq and Afghanistan! HEY, WE KILLED ZARQAWI!!!

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of "South Park" where lawyer Johnnie Cochran (God rest his soul) sues Chef for harassment because Chef was "harassing" a major record company by seeking to obtain credit for Alanis Morisette's (fictional) hit song "Stinky Britches," which Chef claimed she stole from him. Rather than argue the actual merits of the case, Mr. Cochran resorts to his legendary "Chewbacca Defense," which goes like this:


Cochran: Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe that his client wrote "Stinky Britches" ten years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Gerald Broflovski: Dammit!

Chef: What?

Gerald: He's using the Chewbacca Defense!

Cochran: Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests."

(The video is hilarious - here it is.)

Later in the episode, Mr. Cochran has a change of heart and offers to switch sides and represent Chef pro bono. He makes another successful use of the "Chewbacca Defense," this time to defeat his "former client," the record company. In his closing argument, Cochran tries to distract the jury from the lack of merit in his case by suddenly producing a monkey and shouting:

"HERE, LOOK AT THE MONKEY. LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY!"

This causes a juror's head to explode.

Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed country, we have been listening to the Chewbacca Defense for the past five years. Over and over again, our government has fed us false information about the nature of the terrorist problem, the reasons for our war in Iraq, and how safe we are from another attack.

Here are some examples of the Chewbacca Defense that we have been hearing from the Bush Administration since 2001:

The terrorists hate us for what we believe in. They hate us because we believe in democracy and freedom, and they don't.

Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before we invaded in 2003.

Iraq was close to a nuclear weapon before we invaded in 2003.

We will be greeted as liberators by Iraqis. (Cheney gets special credit for this one - he only said it 10 times on "Meet the Press" before we invaded).

We are fighting terrorists in Iraq.

There were connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda before 9/11.

Mission Accomplished.

Suicide bombers are brainwashed fanatics.

The United States bears no responsibility for the terrorist problem, and if you think otherwise, you are unpatriotic and are an apologist for terrorists. You should be ashamed of yourself.

All of the above are myths that are perpetuated by our government to demonize Arabs, oversimplify the terrorist problem, and justify our conduct in the world and the expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars to fund it.

LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY!

The truth is much harder to deal with, isn't it? Let's focus on the mindset of suicide bombers and the 25-50 people who were about to get on airplanes and blow up ten of them over the Atlantic on August 16th. Or the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11. The Chewbacca Defense tells us that these people are all crazy nutjobs who hate America for its "freedom" so much that they are willing to die for it.

LOOK AT THE SILLY MONKEY!

Maybe we should look a little closer at this problem. Before you can defeat your enemy, you need to understand him better than he understands you. You need to know what his goals are, what he is about. What he wants. Then and only then, can you find his weaknesses and beat him.

So.... look at what Bin Laden is saying. I know it's a little hard to find an unbiased depiction of ALL of Bin Laden's words in this country, because all you get on the American news are censored snippets and pieces of each speech, but there are plenty of books on the subject that you can read, like "Imperial Hubris," written by Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the CIA's counterterrorist bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999. Peter Bergen, who is now a CNN analyst, has also written two good books about Bin Laden and the terrorist problem.

To put it simply, we are being attacked because of our policies, not because of our freedom. The people who are attacking us, who want to kill Americans, are doing so because they want us out of the Middle East. They want U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, out of Iraq, and out of Afghanistan. They want U.S. and multinational oil companies to stop stripping Middle Eastern countries of their natural resources, particularly oil, and sending the profits to the West. They want oil wealth to be retained in the Middle East in an effort to better the lives of Arabs, rather than allow us to have our gas cost $2.00 a gallon. (Those days are long gone, btw). They want a Palestinian State and for Israel to leave the occupied territories. And last, but not least, their ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic Caliphate from Spain to the outer reaches of Asia.

So no, it's not about them being jealous of our freedom. That's the Silly Monkey talking. They have clear reasons for the pain they are trying to inflict on us. There is a goal in mind. Islamist terrorists are not simply fanatics, as much as we would like to believe otherwise.

Do these people have a fucked up sense of right and wrong? Of course they do. Anyone who would commit mass murder for a political goal is missing a conscience and a sense of humanity. They need to be stopped, arrested, jailed, or killed. But that's only half of the equation. Like chemotherapy, by catching and killing these people, you are only treating the symptom. The cancer will still kill you eventually. So, besides treating the cancer, you need search for a cure. In this case, we will only find a "cure" to the cancer of terrorism by understanding it as much as possible and addressing the root of the problem: poverty, disaffection, and unjust and shortsighted American foreign policy.

Terrorism is a tool of the weak. Hijackings, suicide bombings, blowing up airplanes, knocking down buildings - these are military acts by small groups with limited means. Groups who don't have large armies. Who would be defeated if they had to fight on a clearly-defined battlefield. Militarily, terrorists are outnumbered and outclassed. All they have are their political goals, their intelligence, their training, their bodies, and their willingness to sacrifice their lives. While Islamist terrorists often pursue military targets like the U.S.S. Cole, it's much easier to attack "soft targets" because these are not heavily defended, and the results can give them the "spectacular" event that they want: thousands of deaths for the world to see. This is why subways and airplanes will continue to be attacked by terrorists and why Islamist terrorists will continue to strive for the Big Enchilada: a chemical or nuclear attack in an American city.

While I am sure that there is a certain group of suicide bombers who are brainwashed, it is folly to think that they all are. It's a little difficult for us in the West to understand how or why someone would intentionally sacrifice their own life for a political cause. We love life too much. This is because for the most part, our lives are pretty good and full of promise and possibility. I mean, we even have an all-volunteer ARMY for crying out loud. It doesn't get any better than that. We simply can't understand the martyr mentality and this is one of our biggest challenges in this war.

It's pretty obvious that much of the Arab world is currently enmeshed in a culture of martyrdom, where suicide bombers are revered and honored as heroes. Picture a six-year old Arab boy who grows up going to frenzied rallies where suicide bombers are celebrated as much as Michael Jordan, Roger Clemens, and Tiger Woods are by six-year old American boys. Picture that Arab boy growing up hating the West, hating Israel, seeing the war in Iraq as an unjust invasion of an Arab country. Viewing the death and destruction of Arabs day after day on Al Jazeera. Maybe a member of his family has been killed by an Israeli or American soldier or bomb. See him go to school in a madrassa where a hatred of the U.S. and Israel is hammered home each day. Picture that boy as a 20 year-old with years of this inbred in him. Is it that hard to imagine that his hatred would grow to the point where he would be willing to detonate a bomb on an airplane or subway? How about a nuclear weapon in an American city?

This is what we are dealing with, not "crazy" fanatics who "hate our freedom." We need to start understanding these people so we can do something about them besides whistling in the dark and hoping we catch them before they get on an airplane or a subway. They only have to be right once to kill thousands of people. We have to be right every single time to stop them. It's impossible.

We got extremely lucky this week. If a British Muslim didn't tip off the police, we would have been dealing with another 9/11 in a few days. Thousands of people could have died.

Unfortunately, it's the American way to deal with a problem only when we have to. Only when it's in our face and people have already lost their lives. It is unbelievable to me that only NOW, five years after 9/11, we are starting to pay attention to liquid explosives on airplanes?? It's a fucking joke - they had to have known about this problem before. Doesn't an iPod look an awful lot like a plastic explosive? Why aren't they banned? No, let's wait until a terrorist tries to use one, then we'll do something about it. Why are we only scanning 10% of checked luggage? How long before this is taken advantage of by an enterprising killer? Does that have to happen first before someone decides maybe all of it should be checked?

Americans are lazy, complacent, naive, and foolish. We have so many comforts in this country, that we have been lulled to sleep. We are not paying attention to a very grim reality that is on the horizon. We need to start cutting through the bullshit we keep hearing from our President, start being more vocal about fixing this problem and changing our disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East. We need to elect leaders and a President -- Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green Party, it doesn't matter -- who will listen to criticism and hear what other countries have to say, rather than simply "go it alone" and play Cowboy until the political winds shift. It's our responsibility to elect leaders who will make the development of alternative energy sources a major priority. It's a national security issue now. We need to elect farsighted leaders, not myopic ones who might play a little better on television during an election.

If we keep looking at the Silly Monkey and listening to the Chewbacca Defense when we should know better, we deserve what we get.