New World Disorder, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

March 25, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 1 Comment

In the late 1970s, my father had an idea for a movie:  someone tries to throw the Super Bowl by planting a bomb in the stadium.  He pitched the idea to Norman Mailer at a party, and Norman loved it.  He said that if we wrote it up, he’d pitch it to Sly Stallone.

My father, like every other human who has ever met a writer, suggested that I take his idea and write the treatment, and we’d split the money.  Which sounds fine on paper, but it meant that I had to 1) figure out who the characters were; 2) figure out how to get a bomb into the Super Bowl and 3) figure out how the Good Guys would find it in time.  In those pre-Internet times, it wasn’t easy to do research on illegal gambling and explosives.  In those pre-cell phone times, it wasn’t easy to figure out how to set off a bomb at a highly dramatic time in a game that was in the midst of being played.

As you may have figured, Stallone never bought the treatment.  I don’t know if he ever saw it.  Mailer paid us a thousand dollars, which was kind of him.  In any case, that started my fascination with bombs and the people who use them.  I’m still trying to figure out how they think.

In my movie treatment, the people who used the bomb were thugs and gangsters.  I think that description applies to the people behind the Brussels attack.  I think that description applies to Daesh and Al Qaeda and Boko Haram.

These guys claim their organizations are religious, and the Mafia claimed to be a social club.  In fact, both are interested solely in money and power.  Which is why it is ineffective to wage a conventional war against them.

Please note that I’m not saying that we leave the terrorists be.  I’m only saying that the way to combat them is with weapons other than armies.  By the way, I’m also not saying this is an exact analogy.  The Mob is not the same as Al Qaeda.  But Al Qaeda is more similar to the Mob than it is to an army.

For example, let’s say we completely bombed out every terrorist in the Middle East.  There is nothing left but smoke and  glass.  Who would sign a surrender?

How would we know we’ve cut all communications among the terrorist cells in Europe, Asia, and the Americas?

We wouldn’t know.

Law enforcement and, maybe, spies (which I’m only suggesting because my knowledge of spying comes almost entirely from James Bond movies) would be much more effective. Not be perfect, but better.  There are still too many people in law enforcement (and, probably, espionage) who think all Italians (or African-Americans, or Latinos, or Irish or Russians) are gang members, and who fire their guns accordingly.

It’s interesting that the Republicans seem to think that banning or closely monitoring minority populations is a great thing to do.  If anything, that would be more likely to create more terrorists by alienating Arab-Americans and Muslims.  It’s particularly ironic that the strongest advocate for this tactic is Ted Cruz.

The most effective things would probably be to coordinate all law enforcement agencies across state and national borders, and to monitor the sale of products associated with terrorism.  This means fertilizer, nail polish remover, cell phones and guns.  Strangely, it would probably be easier to pass laws that require a person to register for bullshit than for AK-47s.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases also worries about terrorism that doesn’t use guns or bombs, especially if that is what is behind this.