ASYMETRY WINS EVERY TIME

Umar Mutallab, the twenty-three year old son of Nigerian privilege, who apparently discarded all to burn up his legs in a failed attempt to blow up a US airplane Christmas Day, proves once again that it doesn't take the world's most powerful military to bring a country to its psychic knees.

Trillion dollar wars of conquest and the billion dollar security devices cannot safeguard America in the era when a lone fanatic, aided by a handful of co-conspirators and a handful of explosives, can find a weakness in our massive transportation infrastructure that funnels tens of thousands of persons in and out of America daily.

Mutallab, like his equally bizarre anti US fanatic, Richard Reid, who failed to explode a Paris to Miami plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe eight years and three days earlier, demonstrates once again that failure is almost as good as success when it comes to encouraging America to self destruct in its effort to control the world. Already, war hawks in Congress are ginning up possible pre-emptive military strikes against Yemen, where Mr. Mutallab supposedly trained for his fiery lap dance.

First we blast everything in Afghanistan except Osama bin Laden. Next we unleash shock and awe in Iraq and create three million casualties and refugees. Then we launch remotely guided bomb-toting drones in Pakistan killing hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent civilians anonymously. With Yemen now in the war party's gun sight, there is apparently no end to the new targets these folks can dream up to bombard, financed by borrowed money.

But most disturbing are the security implications of this latest scare. After the shoe bomber we were all required to take off our shoes before the privilege of boarding a plane. Now with the pants bomber.....oh, let's not even go there.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, January 7, 2010