By : Mr. Osama bin Laden, Managing Partner and Recruitment Director, Al Qaeda Charter Flight Diversions & Caveside Training Camp Getaways, LP (A Limited Partnership Organized and Existing Under the Laws of the States of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria)
Last week, America abruptly changed course by electing Mr. Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of the United States. For years, I have attracted many followers because it has been so easy to paint America as a bullying, hostile, imperialist, conservative, oil-hungry empire led by a small-minded, petty, ignorant, typically American, oil-hungry white male pedant. He even came from Texas and wore cowboy hats on his days off; could it get any easier for me? But now America has a well-educated new leader who is the same color I am. It is much harder for me to hate this man; after all, our names are also quite similar. Only a consonant separates us. Time well tell whether his policies will offend me, but truth be told, it does not look like they will.
Under George W. Bush, America took an openly hostile stance toward my homeland and my religion. American foreign policy in the Middle East was heavy-handed and insensitive. Bush's Vice President even had stockholdings in a major oil excavation company, allowing him to personally benefit from American military involvement in the Middle East. Under Bush, America began military operations in several Muslim nations and maintained a military presence in the Nation that houses our holiest sites, Saudi Arabia. How could I not attract followers with such a cast of villains to work with? I just had to point out that Americans don't live in the Middle East, yet here they were bombing, invading and destroying lives. Did the Americans like it when the British invaded their homeland? No. They fought a guerrilla war against the imperialist invaders. I have applied the same principle against America over the last few years. America gave me all the material I needed to keep my operations extremely popular. Hate fuels my work, and it was easy to hate Bush's America. But now I fear that Obama will be hard to hate. The future of my organization is in jeopardy.
Have I actually won? After 9/11, I knew I had made Americans' lives miserable by making them endure inane security checks, searches, suspicion and reduced civil liberties. I wasn't fortunate enough to kill any more Americans after 9/11, but the damage was done. I knocked Americans off their high horse. For once, they felt the fear that so many Muslims now feel in war-torn regions in the Middle East. No longer could they simply go blithely about their business. Now they had to look over their shoulders and wonder whether a foreign enemy might strike. Before me, Americans never had to endure that fear. They merely reaped what they sowed. They tried to avenge the 9/11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but those wars have not brought them victory. Indeed, those wars have exhausted America and thrown her into economic turmoil. Now most Americans simply want to leave Iraq and go home. That suits me fine. When they elected Obama, they showed that they do not want any more foreign escapades in Iraq. To that extent, I won. I caused the Americans to abandon their expansionism in the Middle East and elect an anti-war President.
Why should I hate President Obama? He says he's out to get me. But I really doubt that he will invest much national treasure into his promise. After all, Bush spent America dry on war, and still he never found me. True, he wasted most of his effort in Iraq, but he never stopped pouring funds into the hunt for me. Obama, on the other hand, says he wants to decrease America's military budget. He talks about universal health care, more education, more schools and more unemployment benefits. These are domestic endeavors. Obama, then, wants to help his own people. That is fine with me. Why should I hate America if it simply minds its own business? I attracted so much support because for years America ignored its own people and focused all its energy on foreign adventures in Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. America found itself hated because it meddled in other countries' business. If America stops meddling and starts trying to understand other countries' perspectives, there will be no reason for other countries to hate America.
Obama is almost the same color as I am. You think that doesn't matter? I had no problem attracting support against America because everyone thinks that America only elects narrow-minded, stodgy, warlike white Protestant cretins to be President. President Bush confirmed all those stereotypes. He reinforced our cynicism about American rulers. White Protestant Americans have particular views about the world, and we could accurately guess that they would be hostile to Islam. But Barack Hussein Obama is not 100% white. True, he is partly white, but his father was an African named Hussein. Genealogy does not lie. Africans named Hussein do not act and think the same way as the descendants of North American Puritan Protestants. American Presidents act the way they do because they descend from the Puritan Protestant value system. But Obama does not descend from American Protestant blood. He has values other than thrift, shortsighted "hard work," secularism, commercial success and cultural intolerance. He was not born into privilege and has experienced America's injustices first-hand. He knows about America's great hypocrisies and will do his best to combat them, not perpetuate them. He does not come from America's myopic mainstream, and he has no incentive to defend that mainstream. All America's past Presidents came from that mainstream and benefited from it. They had every reason to defend it because it enriched them. Obama was born an outsider. He will not rule America with the same blind zeal for mainstream American values that marked his predecessors.
I built my organization on hatred for mainstream American values. Mainstream American values focus exclusively on commercial expansion and secular enrichment. They lead to overseas imperialism and cultural misogyny. These are the natural consequences of unbridled commercial hunger. Yet Barack Obama does not spring from mainstream American values. I fear that he will rule with understanding, compassion, tolerance and goodwill; and that bodes ill for my organization. My organization depends on continued American brutality, ignorance and intolerance. If America suddenly adopts a truly understanding course in foreign relations, there will be nothing left to hate except MTV, Dancing with the Stars, Britney Spears, Hollywood movies and rap music. As appalling as these things may be, they are not sufficient reasons to hijack airliners and slaughter American civilians. In the past, we could count on America to arrogantly ignore foreign cultures in its quest to conquer new world markets and obtain natural resources. We could count on America to bully, intimidate and even bomb countries that resisted her commercial overtures. Now, I fear that America will actually take a less aggressive stance on the world stage and focus on her own people. Without a villainous America, my organization will go out of business. We all have to retire one day, but I did not think I would be retiring at such a young age.
Perhaps I am wrong. Granted, I am making many assumptions about President Obama. Perhaps once he takes control in Washington he will turn into another shortsighted American thug beholden to oil excavation interests. But I seriously doubt this will happen. The fact that America elected a partially black man says that they no longer wish to do "business as usual." In other words, they do not want perpetuate the same old mainstream American values, because those values got them in trouble. It takes a lot for Americans to admit fault, and when they resolve to change their ways, something huge must have happened. I fear that America truly intends to change its ways. That means more domestic compassion and less foreign villainy. Rather than arrogantly projecting its power over foreign nations, it appears that America wishes to focus its energy on its own people. If this happens, I suppose I can count myself a winner. I will have played a role in curtailing decades of American interventionism. After all, if America backs away from foreign interventionism, I will be able to live in peace, secure in the knowledge that foreign armies do not occupy any Muslim lands. And if I live in peace, so too will the Americans.
Friday, November 14, 2008
A STATEMENT FROM MR. BIN LADEN
Labels:
9/11,
American Life,
Barack Obama,
Bin Laden,
George W. Bush,
International Policy,
Iraq,
Reflections,
Satire,
Terrorism
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