God Called in Sick Today

And when other countries smell trouble, they turn to us for cover.

France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, Portugal, Spain -- they enjoyed hundreds of years of imperial control and the United States is their whipping boy.

Algeria is in a state of civil war because France didn't want Islamic fundamentalists to rule its former colony, and it still sticks its nose into the business of the Ivory Coast because the French can't live without cocoa. Israelis and Palestinians will kill each other if it, well, kills them because the UK divied up its land holdings and got the hell out of there without any concern for the long-term situation it was creating. (Not to mention that little Suez Canal incident.)

Wherever there are poor, marginalized humans, it's a good bet that people who weren't American once were there, cracking their whips, raping the women, and having a swell time of it. But we get all of the shit for the fallout and grudges over imperialistic and colonial acts we didn't commit. Other countries set in motion the hatred, anger, and cult of victimhood that permeates the Muslim world -- they just had the good sense to be targets when most Muslims only had sticks and stones with which to fight.

Arabs haven't gotten over the partitioning of their land by countries that weren't the United States. They're holding a grudge against the way in which Israel came into existence by mandate of a country that wasn't the United States. They're delusionally living in a glorious past of vast rule that didn't include the United States, and they still have a complex about a crusade that happened before the United States was a glint in anyone's eye.

But when the Islamic fundamentalist and Iranian housewife curse the conditions that surround them, they focus their rage on the United States.

Spin a globe, and wherever your finger lands, there's a protest against the United States going on. We're subjugating the poor. We're interfering in local politics. We're discriminating against followers of peaceful religions. We're spreading our materialistic virus, infecting millions annually.

Of course we are, and Osama bin Laden and his kind couldn't care less about it.

This year, my company sponsored a foreign intern, a 24-year-old from a socialist country in Europe. Narrow it down. Keeping in mind the tongue-lashing the United States has received for Americanizing the unique and beautiful cultures of the world, my co-workers tried to plan trips that would highlight how fascinating and diverse "real" America is.

We'll take her to the Met! To the Guggeinheim! To Killmeyer's! To the Museum of Natural History! To the Staten Island Ferry! To Chinatown! To the Mόtter Museum! Down the shore! We'll show her that America isn't all fast food and unsophisticated entertainment!

You know what the intern wanted to do? Shop at Niketown, eat at Taco Ball, and see a Bon Jovi cover band. She loves root beer and Wendy's -- two American products she can't get in her country -- and thinks dollar stores are the coolest.

So, we took her on a field trip to Jersey Gardens. Screw Ellis Island.

And now that she's home, you can bet she is participating in anti-America rallies, blames America for the seemingly retaliatory terrorist acts against non-American Westerners, and is writing a letter to her American host asking him to send Old Navy shirts, and help her get another internship here.

11 September was a tragedy, they'll say, but maybe you asked for it. All that these terrorists want is Western-style freedom, and refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol or allow the hundreds of millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa to benefit freely from the medication your pharmaceutical companies poured millions of dollars and thousands of hours into producing hinders their ability to achieve this lofty goal that in no way conflicts with their deeply held, traditional religious and cultural beliefs. If you left them alone and gave in to all of their current demands, they would never, ever, ever, ever hurt anyone again, and they would never, ever view appeasement as a sign that you're weak and ripe for the takeover.

Stop trampling on the rights of the downtrodden. Stop hoarding money. Stop sending Israel the money you hoard. Stop dragging us, the innocent people that Muslim terrorists harbor no ill will against, into your bloody battles. Instead, start being like us, with rampant unemployment, an increasingly violent and impoverished immigrant population that refuses to assimilate, and a social system collapsing under the weight of residents taking advantage of it. When that happens, Osama bin Laden surely will put down his dirty bombs and embrace you like a brother, and then we can all live in peace and harmony, with the Norwegians leading the way.

Pierre, Gόnter, Giuseppe, pull your Kopf out of your asino. Islamic terrorists are not going to stop attacking Westerners if the United States agrees to join the ICC, and they're certainly not going to stop attacking Westerners if you show how open-minded you are by demanding that Israel create a Palestinian state. Israel is an excuse to attack anyone who shows even a hint of support for it, no matter how tenuous the link. You sell clothes to Israel, and those clothes are worn by settlers who are occupying our land, ergo it is our ethical right and duty to kill you until you stop supporting these Nazis with your knitted apparel.

What makes you think a Palestinian state would stop the attacks? The more violent extremists -- and with each passing day, even some moderates -- want Israel and all Jewish people obliterated from the map. Give Palestinians a state, and you'll find a new breed of terrorists fighting for it all because 1500 years ago, Wahid al-Rakman's grandpappy claimed all of the land within Israel's original boundaries. It won't end.

The more you give to them, even if it seems morally just to do so, the more they'll want to take, even if it's morally unjust to do so. Every time you meet their demands, they'll find a new one.

Nothing you do will appease terrorists. That's why they're called terrorists. They terrorize. Your peaceful marches, your drum-banging, your circle jerk of tolerance -- it's comedy for them. Centuries of war have turned you into gelatin that avoids conflict at all costs, and it's turned them into embittered, hardened fighters who don't fear death because they genuinely believe there's an afterlife in which they'll be rewarded. Your secular tolerance is no match for their religious sense of justice, and they're taking advantage of that weakness.

The United States is more corrupt than you could ever imagine, but that corruption doesn't drive Islamic terrorists. They hate everyone who doesn't fit into their narrow worldview, and it doesn't matter if you're American, Spanish, Indonesian, or Turkish -- if you don't fall in line, you're a potential target.

Grenade attacks against Pakistani Christians aren't analogous to attacks against Americans, the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina or a Jewish social club in Morocco isn't analogous to a strike against Israel, and mowing down Shia Muslims outside of a mosque because of an ideological split that occurred over one thousand years ago is simply indicative of a religious atmosphere that needs to be lightened. If the fight is against Western imperialism, why kill Christians who are native to your country and experience the same desperate conditions? If the fight is against Israel, why attack Jews outside of Israel who may or may not support the state's policy?

You expect them to play the game like you would, like a Western society that has embraced self-analysis and largely removed the divisive shackles of religion.

You don't want the United States to impress its values and morality on the rest of the world, yet you ascribe your own values and morality to terrorists. They don't operate like you. They're not reasonable people. The causes they embrace might be noble on the surface, but they publically embrace them only to make the gullible support them. They don't care about the Palestinians any more than we do.

President Bush and his administration are short-sighted, short-tempered, fanning the flames of American paranoia, and not the people I'd choose to lead the United States or any other nation, but they're right on one point: You can't negotiate with terrorists. Muslim terrorists have operated since before Bush, and they'll continue to operate after he's gone. Short of our destruction or forced conversion, there's nothing we can do to turn them into happy terrorists.

Christianity, we're reminded, underwent a similar period of brutality and ultimate enlightenment. But in the Middle Ages, millions of unbelievers couldn't be killed in one fell swoop. The primitive technology allowed for a slow awakening to and embracing of secularism. We don't have the luxury now of Muslim scholars sitting around and navel gazing for centuries, attempting to figure out if martyrs get virgins or raisins in the afterlife.

Islam isn't just about religion to most followers, and you can't expect to appease Muslim terrorists with secular peace offerings. It's being part of something larger. When Christians in Sudan are severely persecuted, Christians around the world barely take notice. When a Christian in Sudan accidentally bumps into a Muslim, causing said Muslim to stumble a bit, the super-secret jihad phone goes off in every Muslim home and international rallies are organized within hours.

You won't encourage change in an entire culture by pacifying the most extreme elements, whether it's in the form of Osama bin Laden or Dyab Abou Jahjah. You won't encourage an evolution in thinking when you allow for double standards, such as Saudi Arabia forbidding non-Muslims from practicing religion in the Kingdom when we bend over backward to allow religious freedom in our countries. And while the United States has an equally long way to go in discouraging these practices, at least we recognize that a store clerk-cum-terrorist in Riyadh, who, if he can read, reads only religious texts and state-controlled newspapers, probably isn't acting on a deep understanding of complex foreign policies. Thanks to the terrorists you hope to appease, he just hates us.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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