Where, oh where, is Bin Laden

Bin Laden has now become a cold case file.

Once again, the world seems to have swallowed Bin Laden and his where abouts are totally unknown.  We have a tape from one of his high ranking capos, but nothing from the elusive Saudi terrorist himself.

 "We just don't know where Osama is," Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao says. And, inspite of a $25,000,000.00 bounty, none of his followers are talking either.

This puts a damper on Bush’s vow that we will capture Bin Laden, and the US reports that the US is hot on his trail is nothing more than wishful thinking. U.S. State Department counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black who made the statement "If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking", is beginning to look like one of those 1-900 number television and telephone psychics who charge by the minute for pure bunk. One of Bush major campaign promises is that we will have Bin Laden. 

How do you find someone who is well funded, well connected, and well protected?  There is a lot of show & tell condemnations in the Arab world about Bin Laden, but still underneath the faзade there is a deep seated respect for the man who humiliate Bush.

Like Zapata of Mexico, Bin Laden is a folk hero amongst the Arab world who sees a US bend on imperialism and the absorption of the Middle East into the empire of the American Right way.

Will Bin Laden ever be found – no, he will not.  He will make sure of that, leaving nothing but a legend and a saint as he is seen by his followers.  The number of his devotees and followers is growing daily and sucking the US deeper into the Middle East quagmire of contradictions and religious fervor.  Bin Laden learned US history very well as the tactics he is using come straight out of the American Revolution. 

Can he and his minions be induced into a straight on fight – if he could, he could be defeated.  But he is not that kind of a man and neither are his legions.  Personally, I think he is a coward, but would I do anything different if I was in his position.  Little to lose, everything to gain.

Could he persuade one of the countries that harbors him into issuing a declaration of war against the US.  No, that would be too simple for he knows the US does not have the man power to respond.  The US does not have conscription and reintroducing it would bring all hell in the US as the protests of arm chair heroes would hit the streets, something Bush really doesn’t want.  But, it would bring about the full blown war machine in the fray and it would be too easy for the mess to get out of control and in the end, the Middle East would be sucked up into Pax Americana.

How many American right wingers would allow the draft to come back knowing that they or their children would be sent overseas to die – it was amazing how many people switched sides during Viet Nam when their kid came back in a coffin.

Bin Laden is winning though, make no mistake about it.  Every time there is a hint of some sort of action in the US, we go willy-nilly spending millions internally to thwart an attack.  Bin Laden sends Ashcroft and Rumsfeld into apoplexy, the threat level is raised and America plunges deeper into the fear factor.   We institute more laws that circumvent our privacy as the words innocent until proven guilty become meaning less.  New laws that give the government wider and more sweeping powers to arrest and detain for something as simple as protesting what is happening here in the US.

He is watching as America is turning on itself, watching the US polarize, and neighbor watching neighbor with growing suspicions and a president who is becoming more of a dictator than an elected official.

He is winning against America, if even just by simply disappearing. He is watching the US spend money it doesn't have and watching the US slip further into paranoid delusions.

Michael Berglin