"Even if the terror chiefs could somehow be contacted in this apocalyptic scenario and persuaded to bury the hatchet, the lack of command and control imposed by the cell structure would prevent them from reining in their minions. [Editor's emphasis].
"The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure" are also its downfall. "Therefore," Wretchard concludes, "the 'rational' American response to the initiation of a terrorist WMD attack would be all-out retaliation from the outset."
It's hard to tell if he's being ironic or just exhibiting the hard right's usual lack of imagination when it comes to military strategy. Wretchard's main point, however, is irrefutable: Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Islamists will save not only the West, but Islam as well.
Whether bin Laden has drawn up post-Apocalypse plans or, like the administration with Iraq, contented himself with flying on a wing and a prayer, no one knows but his inner circle. But relegated to the afterlife, Islamists are likely to be met there by Muslims whose ire finally matches that of their revolutionary brethren: "What in Allah's name happened to that Islamic state you promised us?"
At this point it behooves us to recall the popular nuclear-age fantasy about the last-man-on-earth. Perhaps the urge to repopulate the earth with the last woman is not just a staple of Western science fiction. Maybe it's a deposit in our collective unconscious into which Islamists have tapped as well.
One need only recall the words of Richard Russell, the former senator from Georgia, when voting for more nuclear weapons. "If we do have to start over with another Adam [also the first Muslim] and Eve, I want them to be Christians [Muslims]."
Maybe your eschatological Islamists suffer from that much-flaunted syndrome that nobody really understands unless they suffer from it -- the death wish. However, that usually necessitates doubling back to the erotic. Let's cut to the chase then and examine death on a grand scale as a sexual experience.
Whiling Away the Houris
In his article "Nuclear War as an Anti-Sexual Group Fantasy," psychohistorian Lloyd DeMause cites a 1987 article by Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
She reported her observations of the nuclear-war-policy boys club, which, no secret, is spiked with terms like vertical erector launchers, deep penetration, and, as one military adviser called detonating the bomb, an "orgasmic whump."
"I thought," Cohn said, ". . . someone [might be] embarrassed to be caught in such blatant confirmation of feminist analyses. Of course, I was wrong."
Sexually frustrated and/or repressed, Islamic men have got to be at least as susceptible to this as Americans in the military and defense. The more pent-up the orgasm, the more it looms, in all the glory of its mounting potential energy, like a bomb waiting to go off.
They're not the only ones who will lose their nuclear virginity though. The victims of their attack will be the object of the ultimate deflowering.
DeMause, meanwhile, points out that in periods of prosperity not only progressive but libertine attitudes surge to the forefront. These shifts in the established order cause widespread anxiety.
Furthermore the guilt incurred when the public is forced to confront its suppressed urges is intolerable. We've all known middle-aged women who think Brittany Spears is responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization.
In response we ship out the nation's id in its most vital respository, the body of a young man often equally ambivalent about his urges. While he's invited to work out his complex with bloodshed, should he die, his blood sacrifice cleanses the body politic of its sinfulness.
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
I would like to add that actual war and especially destruction by a powerful weapon has a temptative streak which lures in the immature minds. Those minds are very immature now both among the US power elite and ( I presume) among the power elite in some Nuclear Virgin countries. It is true that men are more prone to it because men ( I do not want to be sexist here) are much more prone to deliberate madness than women; men are, in fact less mature as humans for a long time. It is also true that the symbol means more to people than the actual effect and that many people still follow the Mao's mantra 'Rifle brings power.'. At the same time we, the US by our own immaturity and malice towards others had created a backlash of the same kind, when mature forces are silenced by madness ( as they are here now).The Afghanistan destruciton by us was exactly that and why would Bin Ladin ( even if he is guilty of 9/11) care? We just proved to those people that we deserved destruction because we are as immature as a low-level terrorist.
I am extremely concerned that idiotic, childish and immature attitude towards war, the chromium- blood projections are so popular now especially among the power elite that we would not even notice how ' we will all fry together when we fry' as Tom Lehrer sang in 1960s.
by
Mark Sashine (50 articles, 19 quicklinks, 242 diaries, 3434 comments)
on Friday, September 1, 2006 at 8:56:55 AM
Mark, I'm reading James Carroll's new tour de force, House of War. The first part of the book chronicles how the US followed England's lead in moving from target bombing in WWII to area bombing, thus paving the way for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As with all history, as you well know, all these decisions were driven by the personal complexes and character quirks and flaws of the protagonists.
Yes, I agree that inherent in the desire to use an atom bomb is men's death wish. There's no orgasm as explosive as one's own death by explosion. And, as we age, many of us (Cheney) seek to bring the whole world down with us. On that cheerful note, I'll wish you, Mark, and all OpEdNews readers a good day!
by
Russ Wellen (58 articles, 1029 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 335 comments)
on Friday, September 1, 2006 at 9:13:17 AM
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