Global Shock Jock

Looked at realistically Osama bin Laden's intervention in our presidentialelection was undoubtedly an act of immediate organizational weakness, notstrength. Had he had been capable of orchestrating the bringing down of anotherAmerican tower or its equivalent, he certainly would have done so, but it was noless ingenious for that. His last major intervention, his self-scriptedaction-adventure film in real time, The Humiliation of America, cost hisorganization hundreds of thousands of planning dollars and 19 suicidal believers(plus the price of airplane tickets, box-cutters, and mace). Still, those 19followers and the almost 3,000 dead from the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, andUnited Flight 93, which never made it to Washington thanks to the heroic actionof its passengers, was clearly a cheap enough price to pay in his eyes for thenotoriety he instantly achieved.

On the other hand, his new intervention -- the video seen ‘round the world– must have cost but a few riyals. All that was needed, after all, washome-video equipment, a lectern, a brown cloth for a backdrop, and Osama'selegant Halloween costume, described in theNew York Times as "traditional white robes, a golden cloak and aturban." ("I'll take the sheik outfit for $39.95!") In terms ofprice, impact, and horrific effect, however, it's already the real-worldequivalent of that bargain-basement horror-film success The Blair WitchProject, and it was even released on the eve of Halloween. In this video areechoes of so many other horror films in which the dead return to life, thevampire is not slain, the zombies walk yet again. Remarkable.

Let no one say that Osama isn't a thoroughly modern man. His timing was TVperfect. He has, as they might say in Hollywood, a golden gut and the purestinstincts of a network programmer. And he's an incredible ham -- or at least aman willing to change roles as well as costumes as the opportunity arises. Inthis video, to judge from the transcript (see RHS), he's abandoned the role ofIslamic true believer (and of course mass murderer) to take up the bloodlessrole of rational critic. As a friend of mine said, he's joined the Capital Gang-- or is it the Peshawar Gang? Osama as pundit.

He offers a reasonably detached assessment of our President's actions and hisown, suggesting that the Bush administration learned its ways from the corruptMiddle Eastern regimes with which the Bush family was long associated. ("Wehave not found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of theresemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled bythe military and the other half of which are ruled by the sons of kings andpresidents. Our experience with them is lengthy and both types are replete withthose who are characterized by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation ofwealth.") He considers the Patriot Act and election fraud in Florida likeany TV talking head. ("So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedomsto his son and they named it the Patriot Act under the pretences of fightingterrorism. In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as stategovernors and did not forget to import expertise in election fraud from theregions presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.")He analyzes why the President acted as he did. ("All that we have mentionedhas made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.")

Then, like any good TV critic, like, say, Tom Shales of the WashingtonPost, or perhaps like one of those generals from some recent American warbrought in to analyze the way the present one is being fought, he offers hiscritique of how the President played his role on September 11, 2001: "Itnever occurred to us that the Commander in Chief of the armed forces wouldabandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great horrorsalone at a time when they most needed him. But because it seemed to him thatoccupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its buttingwas more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting ofthe skyscrapers we were given three times the period required to execute theoperations."

Calm as he appears, he might as well be a global shock jock. ("Staytuned --from Karachi, Jerry Springer interviews Satanic worshippers directlyafter the local news.") What a bizarre way to complete a three-year cycleof global madness. This single figure off in the middle of nowhere has onceagain managed, like the Wizard of Oz, to magnify himself until he fills everyscreen in sight and drives events, as he has for three years. After all, he wasthe one, as he puts it, who "provoked" George Bush into becoming the"war president" of both men's dreams on 9/11/2001.

Now, as the clock ticks down to the last moments of the President's firstterm, Osama has reappeared in a way that will prove unforgettable. If youremember, there was much speculation on the Internet, but also in the mainstreampress not so many months ago about whether the Bush administration had Osama inthe bag for a pre-election trick-or-treat. Top American officials were shuttlingin and out of Pakistan with increasing regularity; intense pressure wasreportedly being exerted on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border where hewas reported to be hiding out; rumors flew that the Americans were closing in onthe perfect October Surprise.

Well, they were right -- after a fashion. His two-bit video is indeed theOctober Surprise of the campaign and, whether Bush is elected or defeated, noone will ever be able to prove that Osama wasn't responsible. He certainly won'tregret seeing George Bush win the election, but he may not care either way. Whathe undoubtedly does care about -- in true shock-jock fashion -- is the attentionhe gains by the surprise of what he says.

So now we can claim we lived through those endless orange alerts and the restof the homeland security hysteria all for a home video in which the man wholoved the Taliban to death has suddenly decided that he, too, will join thesweepstakes contest our President started after 9/11 to spread"freedom" around the world by force of arms. ("We want to restorefreedom to our Nation and just as you lay waste to our Nation so shall we laywaste to yours.") Once again, as with al-Qaeda in 2001, as with the mostextreme elements in Iraq this year, we see the dance of the fundamentalists,Islamist and American, which has mesmerized the world; and once again Osama binLaden has stepped onto the dance floor and put his hand out for a partner.

Perhaps the only bright side of our most recent Osama moment -- to speakpurely personally -- is that all those conspiracy theorists out there willfinally stop writing in every time anybody connects Osama to 9/11, demanding toknow what the "proof" for this could possibly be. Now it has beenoffered on a platter by the man himself. As we edge up to this presidentialelection, we can only say: What a tawdry spectacle is our world.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is a co-founder of TheAmerican Empire Project. He is the author of TheEnd of Victory Culture among other books.

Copyright C2004 Tom Engelhardt