You ain't Pat Garrett

"I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you....I truly am not that concerned about him." - Bush on bin Laden, March 13, 2002

"When he says he's going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it....I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously." - Bush on bin Laden, January 6, 2006

Let's set the table: Bush's poll numbers are abysmal. Three out of five Americans think we are on the wrong track. Seventy percent disagree with the idea we should be spying on ordinary Americans. And 61% of us have a negative view of Congress. If the GOP's goal is actually to destroy all government, they're doing a fantastic job.

Now, what does Bush usually do when things are going south? Blame it on someone else. Or, at least, give us a name and make us fear it. The more we fear the unknown, the less we concentrate on the crap coming out of Bush's mouth. So now, Osama's back. God forbid bin Laden dies of kidney failure and Zarqawi gets flattened by a carpet bomb; the Bushites would have to create brand new boogeymen for the simple-minded to piss themselves over the mere idea one of these fundamentalist idiots would strap on a bomb and walk into their Sioux Falls Wal-Mart.

I blame a lot of this on our American fixation on having a target for our ire. "If we could just kill bin Laden, this would all be over." Come on. World War II in Europe ended after Hitler was killed, sure, but the Soviets had occupied half of Berlin and we were knocking down the western half of the country and Austria too. It didn't take one man's death alone to solve that problem, so why do we con ourselves into believing it in this instance?

You want to know what makes these guys tick? Look at the Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells, Tom DeLays, and Rick Santorums of the world. These guys hate everything. They hate popular culture, they hate people based on race, religion, sexuality, gender, and so on. Except here, they are increasingly in charge.

In the Middle East, we are allies with places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. These governments stop their citizens from having free speech. Want to blame the powers that be for something? You can't. But you CAN blame it on America. And the press does. Repeatedly. And so do the psycho mullahs preaching hate, just like our fundamentalist ministers do. Between the religion you love and the government you hate, you get one message: Blame America. And you wonder why they're so damn hard to kill.

So, the next time some billionaire sheik is strolling hand-in-hand through the Rose Garden with Bush, realize one thing: he's contributing to a lack of democracy in the nations we are supposedly allied with. He's aiding and abetting the creating of discontent that makes the terrorists we fight.

Think of that the next time he stands there like some old West lawman promising to "kill 'em all." And remember one other thing. Pat Garrett was seen as a weasel, a traitor who turned on his friend. Billy the Kid became the folk legend. Please, let's not get our nation seen as the asshole here.