What politics forbids, politicians foment—namely, absurdity.
The absurdity of uniforms. Absurd uniforms born of uniformity of thought, of Blackshirts and Brownshirts, of jodhpurs and jackboots, of green robes and black masks. The absurdity of maniacs writ short and tall, from the exuberance of a little Caesar to the exaltedness of the Führer to the exaggerations of the Lion Sheik; the latter shot and killed by Navy SEALs, his 6-foot-5 body buried at sea, with no marker to idolize, no idol to memorialize, no memorial to lionize.
What ended with the death of a fundamentalist began with the death of Islamic fundamentalism.
Its fires still burn—its flames may never stop burning—but its legitimacy died in twin fireballs of destruction.
Al-Qaeda died on September 11, 2001.
It died on a battleground of its own choosing, when it could have fought and conquered elsewhere, when it could have continued to shock the world without reprisals from the West, when it could have survived the might and fury of the enemy without ceding an inch of territory—neither in the mountains of the Hindu Kush nor the roads of Jalalabad—to the Americans, the English, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Spanish, and the French.
An attack against America is a guarantee of war by America.
Were we to recall our soldiers and retire our fleets, were we to declare victory without peace or secure peace without honor, we would still win.
We would win because irony is stronger than any iron curtain.
So long as tyrants outlaw satire, comedy, disagreement, and dissent, so long as dictators censor “The Great Dictator,” common sense will prevail.
Whenever anger toward evil turns to mockery of specific evildoers, it is only a matter of time until the last thing a tyrant sees is the smiling faces of America’s special operations forces.
“For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.”