Osama Wants Me For A Sunbeam

We've awaited with bated breath the new Osama bin Laden video, and he's burnished his image. With newly dyed beard, he denounces American-style capitalism, globalism, and those damned subprime mortgages; disingenuously praises Noam Chomsky (who wouldn't last one week free in a country ruled by him); and urges Americans who wish to end the Iraq war to -- embrace Islam. You infidels, you. Go out and buy that prayer rug, post haste. No more Playboy magazines.

Well, there's much wrong there, and it isn't hard to pinpoint. But who's to argue with the promise of 70 willing virgins upon one's death as a martyr? Or with such an example of Islamic virtue as bin Laden?

What's a bit of collateral damage anyway, to you pragmatic American types? It's just a few thousand more damned souls going their ordained way.

As much as we are dealing quite nastily with myriad fools here in this society, it's important to realize that foolishness and evil, of the worst kinds, are very much global phenomena. They can even be a bit worse in some other settings.

Crossposted at Manifesto Joe