i guess the question for al qaeda & co is, then: do we (1) strike America as hard as possible while they’re in the midst of this financial crisis, or (2) do we forego the spectacular attack, and simply await the inevitable collapse of the kind of political will personified by GWBush?
i guess it depends on how they see the situation. there must be both reasonable *and* histrionic types who believe that the USA is strong enough to deal with all this, so they need a big hit to push them over. on the other hand, there must be many who see how much they would be exposed to USA reprisal even if our enemies’ plans were successful.
then, of course, it might be a political game – a question of which of these factions wins. i do not believe that these countries actually have political factions of any significant depth; i believe they give us this impression because we (and our capital) )are such suckers for the trappings of democracy.
in any case, i’d think there would be a significant number of enemies who might prevail by pursuing 2 lines of thought:
(1) they cannot miss this perfect storm: the babybboomer generation is in their last decade of power and influence (both communists and islamists think generationally, by the way). they now have their apotheosis in the white house. if they hit the US hard, they will then have the following reactions: the babyboomers will be stunned and confused, and obama’s strategy will be discreditted.
either way, the US will possibly have to withdraw forces because it will be very difficult to pay for them. this can be achieved if china & co. come up with a novel way of threatening our T-bills & etc.
of course this will hurt the economies of the enemy countries, but i believe that the threat of revolution in these countries is actually pretty fond – particularly when a distracted US will be in no position to chasten countries that massacre anyone bold enough to threaten the regime. the europeans are of course useless, and even more badly hurt by their decades of cowardice and dependence.
(2) i really think we have to look at the possibility that foreign powers would love – Love – to assassinate president-elect obama. the more i read about the kennedy assassination, the more i think that the obvious lesson is that if you kill the King of Camelot, you – an enemy – will benefit by a complete collapse into wallowing self-pity and paranoia.
and considering the quasi-paranoid divisions caused in this country by 9/11, and especially if the assassins employed their Arab-Muslim robots to kill Obama – the great posthistorical Hope – in the name of apostacy, or some such distracting bulls*it, and then all the goddamn news organizations would be wailing about “why do they hate us!?!?!” and all the libtards would be wailing about the CIA and chickens roosting and fascist Amerikkka, and all the black people could be instantly convinced it was some white conspiracy…
chaos!
i mean, what more ideal environment, what more ideal targets, what more recently-demonstrated reliable responses – what more could a clever, strategically-minded enemy want? how, if they actually could hit us, could they possibly resist hitting us now?
i’m sorry, i hope i’m wrong, but i think something big and bad is coming in the relatively short term.
