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CounterPunch
September
21, 2002
From Above
Forgetting bin Laden
by
ADAM ENGEL
What cowards! I've never seen anything like it.
Send in the Marines to bomb 'em--or what's left of 'em from '91
-- back to the stone-age.
Bomb a city that was erected thousands
of years ago and has endured countless Saddams, but only one
U.S. of A. Bomb the hospitals where children receive aspirin
for cancer--if they're lucky--and old men, who'd be candidates
for quadruple by-pass in New York, might have their hearts massaged
before they stop. "Dual use" nitro-glycerin pills,
balm to hearts in pain, became, under sanction , or perhaps just
bad translation, "bombs on the heartland's planes."
Blast the widows hanging laundry. Smoke the lanky shepherds'
goats.
But of course, we weep like the sky is
falling when the sky is falling. When death comes from above
-- to us; when our towers fall and our thousands die, and centuries-old
New York staggers to its feet, bewildered, front teeth shattered,
and cries for "Justice," which the President, heretofore
branded with a scarlet asterisk (due to his questionable ascent
to power) interprets as "Vendetta!"
The asterisk mysteriously fell off Dubya's
letter cardigan and he grew bold. He even visited New York for
a day and led the cheers for "U-S-A! U-S-A!" As if
it were 1980 again and the Russians were still worth beating,
or better yet, our alleged ex-boozer and failed CEO was the star
of the show this time, first-string Quarterback and not the sideline
cheerleader he'd been at Yale. Once it grew dark, of course,
he high-tailed it out of town, our Ground Zero Groupie, while
his on-camera pals, the workers, went on with the wretched task
of cleaning up what remained of the Pylons that once graced greeting-cards
from here to Timbuktu. Oh, and pulling fleshy matter from tangles
of debris--they did that too.
Well, Bush Inc. certainly showed those
Afghans. Those Tally Bans. The nerve of them dressing up women
like lampshades and letting Hitler hide out in fortified luxury
caves à la Fred Flintstone! The Evildoers must be dead
by now, after all those booby-trap snack-packs dropped from heaven
like care packages from the Sumerian Sky God himself (Hey, wasn't
Iraq in Sumeria or near Sumeria, or thereabouts? Oh, never mind).
But maybe the Evil Doers survived. It's
hard to tell with so many body parts scattered about like...body
parts (shades of Ground Zero, no?) and all those weddings and
Bar Mitzvahs and what have you. What did they expect, firing
rifles in the air, like Appalachian mountain-folk, like bumpkins?
Take somebody's eye out with one of those things. Imagine Brave
Pilot Johnson coming home with a glass eye, or no eyes. I've
Zero Tolerance for casualties -- on our side -- though it's embarrassing
sometimes, these shooting-fish-in-a-barrel wars. Death from above.
Way, way above.
Anyway it won't be like that with our
old, nemesis, Saddam, and the Iraqis, fighting for their very
lives. Of course we'll have to soften 'em with air mail. True,
Baghdad stood for millennia, and they even mentioned it on "I
Dream of Genie"--more than once, in fact--it was that famous,
but don't you worry, we'll grind it fine as Espresso roast before
we dare send in our boys...
But again, you never know with these
terror types. You don't know where they'll hide or what weasel
hole they'll pop out of and BLAM! Like Viet Cong (remember them?)...
But that was many men on the moon ago.
Things changed. We have the technology. We can make them better
than they were. Better, whiter, more democratic. After we blast
their brains all over the Gulf and wicked old Saddam screams
"Uncle Sam!" in Arabic, just like we did with that
other guy, the guy who looked like Charlie Manson. The guy who
murdered thousands of innocents, September 11, 2001...
Wow, it seems like another life ago,
with all that's happened on the News this year. A lot of oil
under the bridge, and in and out of Enron. We've been laden with
too much info-data and detail, I think. Because, not only don't
I remember the giant, bearded Evil-doer, captured and in chains,
screaming "Uncle Sam!" in Arabic, I hardly remember
him at all.
I don't even recall his name.
Adam Engel
writes and lives in NYC. His most recent and engaging project
was providing editorial consultation for the book, She Comes
First: A Grammar of Oral Sex, by Ian Kerner. He supports a war
on terror because fear is a bad thing and should be eliminated,
so long as nobody get's hurt in the process. He can be reached
at asengel@attglobal.net.
Today's Features
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master
Jean Chretien's New York
State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
New
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to Subscribers:
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- DC's Best Political
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- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
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September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master
Jean Chretien's New York
State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
Vermont Breakfast
Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
to Silence
Pro-Palestinian Voices
Salam Rahal
The Rape
of a Nation
Richard Falk
& David Krieger
War with
Iraq:
It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
Can Fight Corporate Crime
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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