AMERICAN CITIZEN SOLDIER

Mohammed Atta arrives at the gates of the Eternal Paradise of the Martyrs of Islam, shocked to finally learn of the events of the past four years that he helped to unleash.

Allah: Welcome Mohammed! I am very pleased to welcome you to the gates of immortality. As-salaam alaykum, my son.

Atta: Wa alaykum as-salaam. Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Glad to finally be here, Exalted One. Thank you again for the plentiful virgins. Wow, seventy-two!

Allah: They were to your liking, I presume?

Atta: Indeed they were. It took me many weeks to get through them all.

Allah: Wonderful, wonderful indeed. Mohammed, I hope you can forgive the considerable delay in getting you up here. The waiting list really has really mushroomed in the last three or four years. Martyr Madness, that’s what Abdullah has been calling it. What a sense of humor, that Abdullah.

Atta: …ah yes, a comical reference to American university athletics. Yes, we quite enjoyed watching the infidels play “hoops” when we partied -- I mean …when we plotted -- that last weekend in their sinful and disgusting city of Las Vegas. Great and Merciful Allah, if I may ask, where are the others who died so gloriously in Your name?

Allah: Others?

Atta: Yes oh Powerful One, there were eighteen other martyrs who struck with fiery precision at the heart of the Great Satan that day. I handpicked most of them myself.

Allah: [?]

Atta: September the eleventh, two thousand one? Nine-one-one? 9/11? I am sure it made all the papers…

Allah: Yes, yes… this date I know well. You must believe Me, I have been trying very hard to forget.

Atta: Forget? Why, oh Great Allah, why would You want to forget? We did it for You.

Allah: You must not do Me any more favors. Have you not seen the congestion up here with your own eyes? And do not even get Me started on the parking situation…

Atta: Please, Merciful One, I must know. Where are the others?

Allah: Very well. They are not here. You are the only one.

Atta: Not here? But how? Why? They gave their lives for the Glory of Allah! Why only me?

Allah: What can I tell you? You have the star power, my son. Even I do not have the clout to turn away a bona fide Muslim celebrity. How would that look? Your name has been all over the Muslim press outlets--al Jazeera, CNN, the New York Times, you name it--for years on end. Those other guys…well. I am sorry, but it really is all about who you know.

Atta: I see. Then it is true. America has been crushed, inshalla?

Allah: Ah yes, well umm… not exactly.

Atta: The Twin Towers of Capitalist Imperialism were felled in a hailstorm of fire and smoke, inshalla?

Allah: Indeed they were. Felled completely to the earth.

Atta: And their five-sided headquarters of military aggression, was it not devoured in flame and destruction, inshalla?

Allah: Yes, well… one side of it, anyway.

Atta: And the coup de grace, the focus of evil in the modern world--the White House of their weak and sniveling President Bush--smashed like so much kindling! Allahu akbar!

Allah: Umm… not so much.

Atta: Not so much? What does it mean, this "not so much?"

Allah: Yes… well, that flight didn’t go exactly as planned. The passengers rebelled and forced the airliner down over a Pennsylvania field.

Atta: Pennsylvania?!

Allah: It is large state just to the east of… never mind, it is of no matter. The point is that ultimately you have failed in your aims, Mohammed.

Atta: Failed, Magnificent One? Did we not strike a blow to the heart of America? Are they not reeling still from the unfathomable loss of life? Is their Evil Empire shriveling in response to our well-executed death and destruction and chaos? Are not all of the Holy Lands free of their foul presence? Are not the Jews in a panic following the Americans’ cowardly retreat from the entirety of the Middle East?

Allah: Umm… I do not know exactly how to break this to you, Mohammed…

Twenty minutes later…

Atta: But Osama promised us that America was a paper tiger! All fangs but no bite. He said they would withdraw to lick their wounds if we hit them on their own soil. He said American infidels are cowards at heart, that they are even afraid to die!

Allah: Mohammed, you must understand that…

Atta: This is not possible! Osama showed time and time again under President Clinton that all we had to do is attack them again and again and again…

Allah: Mohammed...

Atta: …and each time would bring us closer to our true goal of re-conquest of all the original Muslim Holy Lands…

Allah: Mohammed!!

Atta: …uniting all Muslims of the world in common cause, total destruction of all non-believers…

Allah: MOHAMMED!!!

Atta: ...yes, Great One?

Allah: President Clinton is one thing. President Bush the Younger is something else entirely.

Atta: I see.
But has he really led America’s military to conquer all of Afghanistan and Iraq and introduce their despicable American democracy there in only four years time?

Allah: Technically, it was less than three, but hey, who is counting?
It is of no matter; for the Jihad continues to this day in Iraq!

Atta: Really? Because You do not have to blow smoke up my ass, as they say in Vegas...

Allah: No, it is true. Many men are brought before Me each and every day. Every single one of them died gloriously fighting the Americans! You should see the pride on My face.

Atta: I see it, Magnificent One, I see it.
So, Saddam is indeed a fighter in the tradition of Saladin. He defies the Americans with much courage, no?

Allah: No.

Atta: No?

Allah: No.
Actually, they found him cowering in a spider hole…

Atta: [Sighs]
Great One?

Allah: Yes, My son?

Atta: Will our side prevail over the infidel non-believers?

Allah: I no longer wish to speak of this matter. Ask me again in a few years.
I must go now; you have no idea how busy I am. So little time, so many new martyrs to greet…

COPYRIGHT 2005 BUCK SARGENT

Posted by BUCK SARGENT on 21 August 2005 | Permalink