Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

My terrorist manual

It has been said several times in the past weeks that we don't have a manual to help us deal with our current terrorist crisis. Consider the following a rough draft.

Things NOT to do to protect yourself from terrorist attack.

• Don't burn down businesses belonging to Moslems unless you are prepared to burn down all businesses belonging to whatever church was attended by Timothy McVeigh. Baptist, perhaps.

  So far, we have read about Pakistanis, Hindus, and Sikhs being attacked or insulted throughout the country. The types of people who do these things are not patriots -- they are the same people that loot stores and houses during earthquakes. They are the shoplifters, drug addicts, purse-snatchers, racists, and sneak thieves of our society.

  If you attack or damage the property of Moslem-Americans, you are one of them. You should have yourself neutered and hire a minder.

• Don't rush down to the store and buy a handgun.

  Have you bought a gun yet to protect yourself from the hoards of suicide bombers? Some guy in Virginia did that very thing and his 3-year-old shot himself with dad's new family protection device. Gun sales are up all over the country, ammo too. In the next few months you will see the concomitant number of accidental deaths, family homicides and suicides.

  People are such idiots. When was the last time a terrorist crawled through your bedroom window? Now is the time for tighter gun control. Have you considered the fact that the gun-show loophole is just as easily exploited by a terrorist as it is constantly by criminals?

  Did you know that a terrorist supporter in Michigan recently purchased assault weaponry that ended up in the hands of the Lebanese Hezbollah? By the way Charleton, Osama and the boys send their thanks.

• While you are praying to God, take some time to analyze the role of organized religion in the midst of the chaos.

  Is terrorism the Moslem Crusade that matches the Christian Crusades of medieval times? In spite of religion's culpability, Christian book sales are through the roof. Prophecy books are sold out.

  Church attendance is way up. Attending church as an answer to terrorism is like sitting in a rain forest swamp to cure your malaria. It was religion that caused this bloody mess. While Moslems are shrieking about Islam meaning peace, the Taliban are putting Westerners on trial for their lives for proselytizing Christianity.

  Both say they pray to the same God. Praying for peace is like asking Santa for a Rolls Royce. Santa isn't going to give you a Roller; you have to work for it. Same goes for peace. If God exists, he obviously doesn't care.

• Things to do to combat terrorism:

  Make a big donation to the Chittenden Bank fund to help out families of firefighters and cops who died in the line of duty in New York. Let's show that Taliban that while they are blocking food at the border that is meant for their citizens we are supporting ours with government and private support.

  Advise your government to be careful about whom they support in Afghanistan. A representative of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan claims that the Northern Alliance is worse than the Taliban. Their web site notes the monstrous abuses that the Taliban have wrought against women.

  Their spokesperson on NPR states that the Northern Alliance was even more brutal to women when they were in power. Nobody really wants to hear this but listening trumps shouting every time.

  We need to proceed with caution here. Our attempts at nation building have been somewhat flawed in the past. (Re: Shah of Iran)

  Write to Jim Jeffords, Bernie, and Pat Leahy. Tell them that we want to go slowly, covertly if necessary, in our war against terrorism. We don't need pyrotechnics and mountains of bomb-mutilated peasants to prove we are the baddest country on the planet.

  What we need are terrorists, on trial, held up for the world to see. Terrorist martyrs might think twice about hijacking an airliner if they are caught before they had a chance to murder and then had to wait fifty years in a smelly cell before Allah airlifts them to heaven and the seventy-seven virgins as per the promise of the Mullahs. After fifty years in solitary, the heavenly virgins will probably stay intact.

• Be patient with our program to defeat terror. It's going to take time.

  Have faith in the men surrounding the President. Donald Rumsfeld our Secretary of Defense, despite a history of Republican Party membership, is proceeding with intelligence and caution. If he could get President Hopalong to stifle the Dead or Alive talk, we would all rest easier. Dead or Alive jive will capture the headlines. Rumsfeld's program will capture the terrorists.