Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the
American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged
attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant
hours after his capture, has
allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from
... wait for it ... Yemen!
Yemen-trained terrorists on the loose in
American airplanes! At Christmas! Great googily moogily! It's a good thing our
boys are on the case over there right now, pounding the holy hell outta some of
them Al Qaeder ragheads! And to think, a few pipsqueaky fifth columnists had been starting to wonder why we were killing dozens of innocent
civilians on behalf of an authoritarian regime embroiled in a three-way civil
war on the other side of the world.
Well, now they have their answer, by
God! Alleged attempted terrorists allegedly trained in Yemen! What else do you
need -- a freaking warrant or something? We would obviously be justified in
nuking that desert hell-hole and everybody in it! Just think of it --
some guy with some kind of something on an airplane, right there in the
Heartland! You gonna stand for that? Exterminate the brutes!
And yet,
because we are good, because we are godly, because our heart is always in the
right place, even when -- as President Obama himself admitted in his noble Nobel Speech -- we sometimes make mistakes, we have
not brought down the full force of the iron rod that God himself has placed into
our hands for the chastisement and right order of the world. No, there will be
no nukes falling on the children of Yemen tonight. But boy howdy, they'd better
get ready for some sure-enough heavy ordnance -- fired from distant ships, from
far-flung bases and from computer consoles in leafy Stateside suburbs, where you
can bravely kill some alleged attempted somebody-or-other (and everyone in their
immediate vicinity), and still make it home in time to to eat supper with the
kids.
And it must be true, right? I mean, just look at how well-sourced
the NYT story is. "A law enforcement official" -- Police captain? State trooper?
G-Man? Traffic cop? -- said that the alleged attempted terrorist said he'd got
his "explosive chemicals" from Yemen. (Elsewhere in the paper, other unnamed
officials told NYT reporters that the alleged material strapped to the alleged
attempted terrorist was "incendiary," not explosive. But who cares? "Bomb,
Terror, Yemen!")
Of course, the NYT noted that "authorities have not
independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the suspect" (nor,
they could have added, have they independently corroborated that the claim was
actually made), but still, the completely anonymous "law enforcement official" said that
the suspect's claim "was plausible," and even added: "I see no reason to
discount it."
Well, it doesn't get more solid than that, does it? They
nailed that story down so tight you couldn't pry it open with God's own crowbar.
An anonymous source confirmed the plausibility of his own claim. Man,
that's ironclad. It's certainly good enough to light up the media firmament with
headlines linking "terror in the Heartland" with the empire's newest killing
field in a volatile foreign land.
And it turns out that the suspected
attempted terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was already on the radar of our
all-encompassing security services -- just like the last Muslim terrorist in the
heartland, Major Nidal Hasan. (And, for that matter, just like many of those
accused of carrying out the 9/11 attack.) As in almost all of these cases, the
question arises: Who is running whom? (For more, see "Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire.")
But
this query is precisely the kind of pantywaist handwringing that rightly goes
down in the flood of the he-man Homeland Security strutting that always follows
these incidents. As we noted here the other day, there's no time for depth, context,
history -- or even facts -- when the "frame" is screaming "Terror!"
In
any case, whatever facts about the case -- or rather, shards and splinters of
filtered information -- that are allowed to emerge from the depths of the
security apparat, you can be absolutely sure that, as always, the "facts will be
fixed around the policy."
And what is that policy? Why, endless war, of
course! The American war machine (which now dominates most of "civilian" society
as well) is like a shark: it must keep moving, and feeding, or die. "Terror,
Bomb, Yemen!"