BIN LADEN? WHERE’S WALDO?

This afternoon a blond White House reporter who appears on the Washington Week show on PBS asked at the White House briefing: "Why can’t we find Bin Laden?" . Jim Lehrer later in the day asked the same question on the PBS Evening News.

Mahmoud Fandi, a very perceptive Fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice in Houston told the uncomprehending Jim the truth.

The Arab World believes that the all-powerful USA cannot find Bin Laden because IT DOESN’T WANT TO!

The Arabs are under the impression, at least at the level of the Arab Street, that the US runs the world employing unbelievable cunning and implacable strength of will to achieve ruthless goals. The hunt for Bin Laden is simply a sham affair, designed to allow Americans to invade Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to grab power and wield influence. We want him scampering, or limping, over the Bora Bora Mountains for as long as it takes to conquer the Middle East.

You can find people in the White House Press Corps like Helen Thomas, who believe it. And even Al Gore sounds like he believes it. But anyone who has worked for a while in the "world’s unipolar government" understands how feckless, hapless, and self-defeating most attempts to establish policy in the Middle East, for instance, become in the implementation stage.

Lefty moonbats and political smoke-blowers can have a field day with our policies in the region and elsewhere, but trial and error, especially error, are the rules of the game.

I hark back to when in the day[Spoiler: interesting and true anecdote with possibly little relevance follows:]

During the several years I lived in the Middle East employed by the State Department, even the Arab elites believed in the Machiavellian misdirection and subtlety of the American government.

Once, when I was in the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia, the hapless Jimmy Carter left his personal briefing book in his official government palatial residence. A follow-up squad by the Embassy discovered the Eyes Only Briefing Book and began a long and hazardous trip through excessive security to the Airport where Air Force One was just ready to leave for a stop in Aswan, as I recall, with Anwar Sadat. The Briefing Book, which presumably also contained materials for the Egyptian stop, got to the plane through feats of derring-do that only an old Saudi Hand could understand, especially because in addition to the clueless mindless Saudi Royal Protocol Security, there was a clueless, mindless Secret Service android-roboto security who were also impeding those from the Embassy from reaching Air Force One.

Afterwards, however, the Embassy Staff did a thought-experiment on how Saudi senior government officials would have regarded the Briefing Book had the documents fallen into their hands.

First, the only way that the book was left behind was on purpose, since the US doesn’t make mistakes.

Second, the "planted" briefing book would be read as a cynical and duplicitous attempt to mislead the Saudis into believing our good intentions were real. The Saudis would have read the bland innocent language of the Briefing Book as though it were a cover for a second set of books that contained our real agenda for the funny folks in the Muddled East.

Finally, since the book would be regarded as a deliberate deception, the Saudis would base policy initiatives [although the listless Saudis rarely initiate more than pan-Islamic talk fests] and specific objectives on the premise that the Briefing Book was a sort of Malleus Maleficarum in reverse, directly contrary or at least misleading as to America’s real policy goals in the region.

The Arab governments now understand that the US is misguided [in their eyes] but sincere in wanting to install Democracy throughout the region. They believe it will lead to more Islamic Republic replications, but they believe we are sincere.

Only the Arab Man in the Arab Street, and a few delusional types [like a lot Europeans, many Democrats & the moonbat international press, and maybe half the other people on the planet] still believe that there are two sets of books the US is playing by.