I don’t know about you, but sometimes I carry an RPG and other military grade weapons in my purse when I leave the house- just in case a spontaneous, natural terrorist attack erupts at the nearby Consulate. Just hanging out on a warm night with some of my closest friends. Perfect.
Other times, I wear a fitted vest embellished with bombs and shrapnel. I’ve been having a heck of a time finding a detonator to match the scalloped trim on the vest, but I know there’s one out there. Patience.
Oh, and daahling, here’s nothing like fashion evolution- from Semtex to IED (such a shame my pink Semtex booby trap it has to go on the underside of a car; who can appreciate its stunning, explosive beauty when it’s hidden just so?). Both are rudimentary in their lines and design, but where they lack in style, they leave an impression with all the resulting blood and body parts scattered about the landscape. Poetry.
If that blood and those body parts were scattered about the 50 United States of America, day-in-and-day-out, with no relief in sight, perhaps America would not be so distant in her attention to the terrorist and their Cause. We are not living and dying by RPGs, bombs, and IEDs. We only watch that kind of life on a flat screen TV in HD with surround sound. That kind of life is reserved for those other places…those other people.
If suicide-bombers were blowing up local buses and markets all about us, perhaps America would not be so slow to recognize the difference between political unrest and jihad. That kind of life on American soil is unimaginable. Eh, work place violence and random movie theatre massacres, we can handle; but that suicide-bombing kind of life, well that only happens in those other places…
Not even September 11, 2001 could shake America’s veneer of political correctness with a side order of denial. We say to each other, “Shhh! We’re not supposed to say, ‘Muslim’. Hush! If we give money and offer our friendship the people will change their minds about us and will like us. Quiet! Of course the only reason every Islamic country is rioting is because of that YouTube upload.” You know how those people are…
From the infamous Iran hostage terror attack to this most recent Benghazi terror attack, time has a way of healing by way of amnesia and that’s not a good thing. These attacks came and went and September 11, 2012 is going no differently, except now death comes with damage control. After all, when an Ambassador is assassinated it’s hard to explain it away…at least it should be hard. We offered the ever effective diplomatic superlative condemnation, “The United States condemns in the strongest terms…we will work with said government to bring to justice the killers…blah blah blah.” Check. We launched an FBI investigation (never mind the crime scene hasn’t been secured the past three weeks). Check. The director of National Intelligence confirms we didn’t have any actionable intelligence to warrant any change in security or protocol. Wait. Why the adjective, “actionable”? The Ambassador did have security, didn’t he?
Are America and her mighty leaders waiting on a pink perfumed, “Dear John” letter from the terrorists? We act like we didn’t get the Benghazi memo, or any memo for that matter. The terrorists told us they were coming. They keep telling us they are coming, but we keep thinking those people in those other places cannot possibly mean what they say, what they want to do. To them, we are those people in those other places. We are a people who live in a nation which isn’t Islamic and any nation which isn’t Islamic is an offense and a dishonor to Allah. That is simply all there is to it.
“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this breaking news: The NFL referees will be back on the field today…and now back to our regularly scheduled life.” Seems Americans were more outraged with the replacement referees. Who can blame us, it’s a problem closer to home. That is simply all there is to it.
By: Cynthia Shaffer
Cultural and Political blogger
