Really, all of the good jokes are gone at this point.  The ones about the crotch bomber, or the underwear fire guy, or the exploding jock strap dude, or the one(s) about nobody being able to tell if a bomb actually went off in Detroit, because holy shit look at this place.  The Nigerian man accused of attempting to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 into Detroit will go down in history as the most embarrassed would be terrorist ever to try and blow up his own scrotum.  For those who before would have said, “There isn’t anything funny about an attempted act of terrorism,” well, that was before this guy burned his nuts off, like an idiot.  But don’t worry, there are still plenty of people who are worried enough to suggest some “pre-emptive action” in Yemen might be in order.

My first reaction to the growing group of individuals who would like to nuke Yemen was one of mild amusement.  “Of course,” I thought.  “Let’s attack another country and put troops there, for freedom, & etc., while fighting two or seven other wars.”  Obviously, we haven’t had very much luck attacking the countries where terrorists originate (read “Afghanistan”).  It’s that whole pesky terrorists-don’t-care-about-their-country-or-nationality-or-family-or-anything-as-much-as-they-care-about-their-nutty-facist-religion thing that prevents us from getting a real lock on where these fuckers are coming from.  We can wipe out every single terrorist in Iraq, or Yemen, or Myanmar, or Tajikistan, or Kansas, or wherever, and next week there will be another impressionable, young (or irascible, old) body to take his or her place.

Which brings us to point #1: Sadly, America will fall.  Now, before you turn your nose up too high at what I just said, let me make some disclaimers.  I say this not out of partisan rancor or to make a political point.  There may be some cynicism involved here, and I apologize for it, but if we maintain our present course the United States will be a short-lived experiment in Democracy.  We cannot fight a war in every country in the Middle East and maintain troops in every country in the Middle East.  That would essentially make us colonizers.  And last time I checked, even Great Britain had given that up, and they were joined at the hips with colonialism for like, hundreds of years.  I have no idea how, but we’ve got to figure something out, quick.  And by “something,” I mean “a way to make it possible for multiple poor, institutionally corrupt, religiously fundamental, countries and governments to eradicate extremist terrorism from their infrastructure while somehow maintaining a legitimate administrative government that slowly but surely would come to the aid of people aiding the aforementioned extremists so that they would not have to resort to supplying bloodthirsty religious zealots with aid and succor in order to make enough money to feed their families, or buy an iPhone.”

As your Wonkette has so kindly (and eloquently) pointed out in two posts, the entire plan of the vast network of terrorists that is neither very well organized nor particularly successful is to draw the United States out as thinly as possible so that we crumble from lack of cohesion.  They don’t have to be very good at what they do in order to cause the United States and other superpowers to spend massive amounts of money and manpower on extra security screening at airports and yet another support network for yet another military base or secure location in yet another country.  As a country (or as some see it and as the reality now presents itself, an Empire), we cannot sustain this kind of action for long without serious social and economic repercussions.

Point #2: We will not stop terrorist attacks, ever.  This does not mean we must not try to stop them. But it does mean that it’s not necessary to strip search every single person that gets on an airplane.  From all reports, our terrorist surveillance program is actually relatively successful.  I would say that, when dealing with a global population of 6.5 billion, the FBI, CIA and their equivalents in countless other allied countries have done a relatively good job at keeping us safe.  Do they need to keep checking our shoes?  Probably.  Do we need to move to full-body scans for every person that passes through the security gate?  Jesus!  No.  Just speed up the information transfer between security agencies.  Please.

Read Part II here.