A Sign of the Times

So, finally, we bagged OBL.  Dead after a firefight with U.S. Special Forces operators in Pakistan.  Bin Laden hiding out in Pakistan??  Whooda thunk it?

So we’re sitting in the DFAC this morning, me and my team of real wireheads, watching CNN on the big screen as we eat faux food.  And I read that bin Laden was killed at a mansion in Abbottabad.  Being the smart-ass that I am, I announce that Abbottabad is just down the road from Costelloabad.  Everyone looks at me like I’ve grown a second and third head.  Come on, guys, haven’t you ever heard of Abbott & Costello?  More blank stares.  This reminds me of the stares I got when I referred to one of the women at IJC as “the hostess with the mostest.”  Apparently they never saw Anne Jeffreys as Marion Kerby in the TV show Topper with Leo G. Carroll in the title role.

Then, as I related a few days ago, I had a tooth pulled by an Army dentist who was around my daughter’s age.  Boy, do I feel old.

So, on a more serious note, bin Laden is dead.  What does that mean, aside from celebrations at Times Square and Ground Zero, and cheering crowds gathering outside the White House (can you say “target-rich environment?”)?  In my wildest fantasies, I imagine young Pakistani kids at madrassas eating slop and being indoctrinated to become suicide bombers pulling up short and saying “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  I’m living in a hovel, training to blow myself up, and he’s in a million-dollar mansion, living in the lap of luxury?”  But in reality, the majority of those kids are too far gone down the indoctrination path.

In the meantime, we’ve been on alert here (and, indeed, throughout the theater) due to an elevated threat level stemming from the Taliban’s much-ballyhooed “Operation Badr” spring offensive, which was to start on 1 May.  Here it is, early on May 3rd, and, instead of hurling themselves at our perimeter walls, maybe the Talibs are starting to look over their shoulders a little more often, waiting for the impact of a Hellfire missile.  Even they get CNN in their caves, they surely know that Osama has a tag dangling from his big toe.  If the guy who evaded U.S. intelligence and military efforts for a decade has finally been taken out, despite all the efforts to keep him hidden and protected, how long can it be before they catch a bullet?

And now this from Afghan press reporting …

According to Pajhwok News, “the Ministry of Hajj and Islamic Affairs is working to set up a committee to monitor private TV channels airing programmes ‘against Islamic teachings,’ the minister said on Sunday.”  They’re specifically targeting “vulgar programmes which are against Islamic teachings and the Afghan culture.”  I can’t think of a single American TV should which could pass muster.  Barbara Billingsley showed way too much leg … besides, she used to say vulgar things like, “Ward, you were awfully rough on the Beaver last night.”  Donna Reed was way too liberated.  “I Dream of Jeannie?”  Not a chance, once again, way too much skin.  Progressing into the ‘70s and’80s, and on to the present day, it just gets worse.  Those boneheads probably won’t be happy until the only programming allowed features a bearded mullah reading from the Koran.