Bo Dietl is a frequent contributor to the MSNBC Imus In The Morning show, which is actually a simulcast from the radio program. I watch it on a fairly regular basis. Imus gets away with a good lot on the show that a good many people wouldn't even dream of doing, even if they wanted to, which you suspect a good lot of them would. Dietl, a regular, is as much a character as is Imus himself. A former New York Police detective, he has gone on to amass a considerable fortune as a private securtiy expert and businessman. He appears on quite a few programs, in fact, as an analyst, and has written a book, "Business Luncheatations", in which he gives advice on how to get ahead simply by selling yourself to the rich and powerful. Of course, in order to get the kind of access he describes you all ready have to be fairly successful (to say the least) to start out with.
He is very irascible, and can be quite abrasive. He may be an easy person to admire, but not so much to like. He comes across as a person who pulled himself up out of the dirt and clawed his way to the top the hard way. As such, he is his own most ardent admirer. Though he was a cop, he drops names of people with whom he is intimately connected, and intimates that his closest friends and allies may have ties to the mob. Sweet.
But just yesterday, he may have started to go just a little too far. He has gone through this kind of thing before, where he starts out talking about the war on terror and Iraq (which he has now come to oppose although in the beginning he was an ardent proponent of it). Like Imus is wont to do, he gruffilly and angrily dismisses the Arab/Muslim fanatics and terrorists as "towel heads" or "ragheads", and makes no apologies for doing it. Sensitivity is not Bo's strong asset.
Funny thing is, I agree with him on this. Why pussyfoot around the issue and worry abut political correctness when it comes to people that would as soon cut your throat as look at you. He, like I, am resentful of the people who stress that we ought to approach the issue of terrorism with the attitude of trying to understand our enemies to the point that we should go so far as to sympathize with them to some extent, perhaps even open a dialogue with them. Try to reason with them. Try to appease them, in some fashion, and certainly come down hard on any abuses, real or imagined (or made up) at places such as Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
When Dietl starts opining on this issue, he takes on a frenzied, near maniacal personna, and you can tell that he, like myself, is as angry at the American leftist apologists for the terrorists and "insurgents" as he is with the Islamic Fascists themselves.
Yesterday, he took it to the point of advising a strategy to deal with the insurgents. We should get on Al-Jazeera, he stressed, and show a bunch of soldiers dipping bullets in pigs blood. We should then let it be known far and wide that, when we shoot an insurgent, these pigs blood soaked bullets will be what will penetrate their bodies. Therefore, they will go straight to hell. No paradise. No seventy-two virgins.
Of course, this is ridiculous as a strategy, and I can barely believe he was truly serious, angry though he was. It would be too easy for Bin Laden or another Al-Queda leader to issue a "Fatwa" to the effect that such an artifice by an "infidel" would not preclude a good Muslim from going to heaven, and that would probably be that, if it were even ever necessary to begin with. Moreover, such a tactic would serve merely to inflame even more Muslims against us. There are enough of them, and they are bad enough, as it is.
But that's not even really the point. What really struck me more than anything else about this childish and idiotic outburst, was that MSNBC cut it off, practically in mid-sentence, and jumped five minutes ahead of schedule to the last segment of Imus's simulcast on the network, showing what had occurred "earlier on Imus in the Morning." Typically the last segment of the show before the next hour goes into the MSNBC morning news segment.
In an effort then to prevent Muslims and Arabs that might be watching from becomming offended, and possibly to prevent their leftist apologists and maybe a politician or two from trying to make an issue out of it, MSNBC proved Dietl's point. Political correctness has become so rife, so rampant in our culture, that this country, the country that prides itself on freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed by the Constitution and the First Amendment, is collectively afraid to open it's fucking mouth about anything, about any person or subject, out of the fear that it might offend somebody.
Arabs and Muslims, of course, as is the case with most other minorities and special interest groups, are free to express their offense, and are free to demand-and more often than not get-an apology, whether or not one is deseved or called for.
I don't know for sure how valid the war on terror is anymore. In fact, I think we all ready lost it, a long time ago.
