THE DEVIL’S DUE

The trouble with demonizing one’s avowed enemy is that it makes it all too easy to underestimate him. If you are to defeat an enemy you must first know him and recognize his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Only then can you fashion a coherent plan to defeat him. For more than 15 months we have been after Osama Bin Laden in earnest. We have spent millions buying the limited loyalty of the coterie of Afghani warlords who have squabbled amongst themselves since Alexander the Great marched through there and founded Kandahar. We have offered rewards for Bin Laden’s capture that dwarf the annual expenditures of most armies in the region. Yet there have been no takers in a land of abject poverty and deprivation. We should be asking ourselves, “Why does this population ignore what is literally a Kings’ Ransom? What is it about Osama Bin Laden that immunizes him from the kind of human greed we know and respect so well?” Knowing the answer may well be the key to his ultimate defeat.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington is one who knows the answer and she made the mistake of speaking it out loud. Since he went to Afghanistan as our fair-haired proxy in the Russo-Afghani War of the 1980s the man who would be our prey has systematically built a debt of Afghan gratitude by judicious investment. He has founded clinics and staffed them. He has founded schools and supported them. He has armed Afghanistan’s guerilla defenders and supported the families of those who fell to the infidel invaders. He has done the things that the United States might have been doing had it not ignored Afghanistan as unimportant after the Red Army went home. The reward he reaped has been greater than the reward we have offered.

Patty Murray spoke of these realities out loud, words that the new political correctness of the right cannot abide. No sooner had the word escaped her lips than the hounds slipped their leashes. Frustrated that the blood that dripped from their jowls was that of one of their own, they bounded after this new victim with a will and with almost religious fervor. “HOW DARE SHE?” they howl and their baying returns echoes through the canyons of empty minds. “How can she say such things of the man who has killed so many Americans? Resign! Resign!”

Senator Murray should not be surprised at the reaction to her words. She is guilty of a far more grievous sin than the hubris that brought Trent Lott low. In the face of the new 21st Century political correctness she has spoken the unspeakable – the truth.