When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden Part 1

When you ride ALONE you ride with bin Laden.

BY BILL MAHER.

I dedicate this book to my partner in crime, Sheila Griffiths, and to my friends Michael Viner, Kim Dao and Billy Martin, who also contributed mightily to achieving my completely unreasonable demand to dedicate this book to my partner in crime, Sheila Griffiths, and to my friends Michael Viner, Kim Dao and Billy Martin, who also contributed mightily to achieving my completely unreasonable demand to get the book idea I thought of in June out in get the book idea I thought of in June out in November. November.

Also, I am forever in in the debt of the talented artists who brought to life the images the debt of the talented artists who brought to life the images you you see in these posters. As my agent never stopped telling me, "a picture is worth a thousand dollars." see in these posters. As my agent never stopped telling me, "a picture is worth a thousand dollars."

Acknowledgements

There are a few people I'd like to acknowledge for making making this book possible, and this book possible, and they they are. are.

George Was.h.i.+ngton; Abraham Lincoln; James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; John Adams; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson; General Ulysses S. Grant and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And everyone who who worked worked so so hard hard on on this project of establis.h.i.+ng a free nation and keeping it free. Without their hard work, dedication, brilliance this project of establis.h.i.+ng a free nation and keeping it free. Without their hard work, dedication, brilliance of of mind- mind- and and most of all, courage-a book like this simply wouldn't be possible. most of all, courage-a book like this simply wouldn't be possible.

Introduction.

When the shock of September 11, 2001 wore off and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. went back to what it does best-pointing fingers and renaming things-the phrase we heard over and over with regard to our intelligence agencies was "connecting the dots." The FBI and CIA failed to "connect the dots," the strands of information that warned a real war was about to start with a sneak attack.

But plenty of dots aren't being connected by the average citizen, either, and that's what this book is about: how we all can connect what we do on the home front to quicker victory here with fewer of our servicemen overseas.

Traveling the country, I find that people want to do more here at home, but are at a loss as to what. Even when the government issues a Terrorism Advisory, it's maddeningly vague-"Terrorist alert today! Code Burnt Orange!"

"And what?" I always want to say, "Bring a sweater?"

Of course, there are reasons why the American government no longer helps us make war-related connections, mostly having to do with where those connections might lead us politically. There's a World War II-era government poster that reads "Should brave men die so you can drive?"-a question we might well ask ourselves today. But don't count on the government to ask it, not in an age when campaign contributions from oil companies are so important to getting elected.

And so we're on our own-but that's 0K. Because if the government won't tell you what time it is, I will. In the pages that follow are the posters I believe the United States government should be making and plastering everywhere, like they did in World War I, World War II and the Cold War. We see in posters from those eras a government unafraid to call upon its citizens to curb travel, save tin, buy bonds, plant a victory garden-whatever it took to make those connections for people, so the average Joe knew what he or she could do to help the war effort.

Of course, this is a very different kind of war, and what we can do to win it is sometimes very different from how other generations pitched in. But the common thread from then to now is the idea that civilian support can be the deciding factor in a war, provided people know what to do. Loving my country as I do, it is my sincerest hope that this book will help.

Make Them Fight All of Us

If you've already given blood and sent a charitable donation directly to Julia Roberts so she can personally hand it over to a World Trade Center victim, and you've already made the tough personal sacrifices outlined by our president- shop, travel, and go out to eat-you may now be asking yourself, "What more can I do to help the war effort?"

What we can all do is show a willingness to change. And I'm not talking about simple, superficial change like putting a flag on our cars or refraining from criticizing the administration. The concept I'm talking about is sacrifice. Some people do it for their families, some people do it to get rock-hard abs, but not many of us seem willing to do it for America.

Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The tact that you can't have everything YOU want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American. We'd rather sacrifice virgins than our SUVs: "I'll guzzle as much gas as I want-this isn't Europe!" Sure you can, Captain America, but just try to imagine a World War II-era American saying, "I'll use as much d.a.m.n gas and tin as I want-and while we're at it, screw your victory garden!" They'd call you "Axis a.s.shole." Somehow, America morphed from a nation that embraced rationing to one that practically impeached Jimmy Carter for having the nerve to suggest we turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater. Even in the wake of an event SO invasive and frightening as September 11, not one person in a leaders.h.i.+p position in America asked anyone to really give up or rethink anything. Pandering to a spoiled citizenry had become so ingrained, it remained in place even as buildings and complacencies crumbled. "Keep shopping!" the president told us, letting the political chips fall where they may.

"Shop till they drop!"

Yes, we were asked to do very little, and we responded. That's the bargain we tacitly make with our presidents: we won't ask too much of you, if you don't ask too much of us. Especially in these past two decades of unprecedented prosperity, we Americans have come to love win-win situations: risk-free investments, no-pain dentistry, the high-fat diet. We've grown accustomed to success without effort. In operations like the Gulf War, Somalia and Yugoslavia, we got the lowdown on our "war" from the nightly news while continuing to work, golf, build our stock portfolios and enjoy Frasier. It's not that we don't care-it's just that we'd prefer flot to get involved. We're more supporters than doers, great at the symbolic stuff like flags, ribbons, and benefit concerts. (Sitting through Liza Minnelli is too a sacrifice!) Nothing is really our problem-especially when you're talking about an outlay of time or money, or, G.o.d forbid, something that causes stress! By Thanksgiving 2001, we were right back to "how to cope" and "things to make yourself feel better." After a hard day of stimulating the economy we congratulated ourselves for getting through this trauma without letting the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds change the way we live!

You hear a lot of that: if we stop bowling or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g or whatever it is we wanted to keep doing anyway, then they win! And we pretend we're dumb enough to believe that this extends not just to our American virtues, but also to our flaws. We convince ourselves that even our shameless waste, our unchecked consumption and our appalling ignorance of anyplace in the world except our own little corner must continue-or they win! No, when you become smarter and less gluttonous, you win. We all win!

And all of us can, if we want to, have a big hand in winning this war. In World War II, the axis-the original one, not the cover hand working today-had to fight every American, and they knew it. Civilians, and the level of support they give their protectors, make the difference in war time-a lesson we learned, or should have, in Vietnam. We'd bomb a bridge, and in hours the North Vietnamese townspeople had built a crude but usable replacement. It was sheer h.e.l.l for our guys because they had to fight the whole country.

Likewise, American citizens today could make things a lot more h.e.l.lish for Al Qaeda and all the other als out there if only we'd get it on a practical level that we're in the war too, just not on the front lines. Israelis understand that and we eventually will too, but not until our government and our media start helping us make those connections between what we do and how it can help our troops- and ourselves-stay out of harm's way.

When Sacrifice Was Cool

Perhaps the most threatening of all the connections we're not making these days is the one between terrorism and one of the great loves of the American life, the automobile. Each of us in our own individual high-performance, low-gas-mileage vehicles, exercising our G.o.d-given right to drive wherever we want, whenever we want at 0% financing and practically no fuel cost, inadvertently supports terrorism.

When we don't bother to conserve fuel and when we treat gasoline as if it were some limitless ent.i.tlement, we fund our enemies, like a wealthy junkie fattening the wallet of his dealer. Maybe not directly-it's not like you'll find Ayman al-Zawahiri making your change in the Plexiglas booth at the Exxon station. But he may as well be, because YOU can bet Al Qaeda funds their most ruthless operations with money they get from people who sell their oil to Exxon before Exxon sells it to you.

The countries that have the money to offer large cash awards to the families of suicide bombers, or to send little boys to madra.s.ses, the prep schools of hate, are getting that money from people using lots of oil.

Of course, conserving oil by carpooling may sound like a neat idea, and maybe on some level we get it that we'd have more leverage with these terrorist-funding nations if we weren't beholden to them. But actually doing it means we'd have to drive out of our way to pick somebody up and that'll take time and he'll probably wanna talk and I'm not much of a morning person and what if he spills some of his d.a.m.n mochaccino on my taupe, brushed leather seats?

And there's the rub. We are hopelessly, romantically, singin'-in-the-rain in love with our cars. Rather than carpool or improve ma.s.s transit to ease traffic and commuting time, we'd rather live in the car and make it more like home: state-of-the-art sound systems, cruise control, telephones, bigger built-in receptacles to hold more food. No wonder Al Gore was ridiculed for suggesting we find a way to phase out the internal combustion engine within 25 years. You'd think he asked everyone to turn in their car keys right then and there, taking away our freedom to come and go as we please and trapping us cruelly in our homes with our spouses. But Gore was right when he said it was a matter of national security.

We used to make that connection, because the government endorsed it. An original 1943 wartime poster warned Americans, "When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler!" Oil was regarded as an essential weapon during World War II, and it is certainly no less so today.

I chose "ride alone" as the t.i.tle of this book because it not only pays homage to a time when sacrifice was cool, but also warns us in a larger sense what happens when we ride alone. We've become a nation of individuals, accustomed to "getting mine" and "looking out for Number One." Even the Army's recruitment ad shows a soldier running alone and tells you you'll be "an army of one."

But we're locked now in a bitter fight for the very way of life that allows us such indulgence, and victory clearly hinges on whether we ignorantly continue to "ride alone" or rise up once again to stand together.

So remember: when you ride alone, you ride with bin Laden. And that's not an easy smell to get out of your car.

The kitchen is Closed

After September 11th I never much liked the trend of everyone and his brother wearing the hats and jackets of the NYPD and FDNY. Only the people who do the job should get to wear the hat. Would you wear someone else's Medal of Honor?

Yes, it's a tribute, and sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people. But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn't ours. As long as we keep talking about what they did, we don't have to talk about what we're not doing.

And one thing we're definitely not doing is paying the people who do the very difficult jobs we don't want to do. According to the Department of Labor statistics, the national annual income for firefighters in 2000 was $34,000; for police officers, $37,000. The Department of Defense statistics on basic pay for an active duty officer in his first two years was about $25,000. Soldiers living on or near the base in America often need to use food stamps to get by. Teachers in their first year make an average salary of $28,000, and often buy cla.s.sroom supplies out of their own pocket because there just wasn't any money in "the budget."

"No money in the budget"-we hear that, shrug, and go on, as if it's a cosmically unalterable fact. Corporations do it with their budgets, too. I've seen it in show business. One day, no more coffee and doughnuts for the crew. "The Budget" didn't allow it anymore, like "The Budget" was handed down by G.o.d himself and brought directly from heaven on a golden chariot by those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who pulled their ads from my show, Federal Express.

Claiming "the budget can't allow it" reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o'clock and they say "The kitchen is closed." For years I would hear this, and think, "d.a.m.n, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I guess it's Denny's again."

And then one day it hit me: kitchens don't close. Just as at home, at a certain point in the night, I stop usinq the kitchen-but at three in the morning, if I want to, I still have the ability to go downstairs and "re-open" the kitchen. By turning on the stove and opening the refrigerator! Restaurants are not banks; at the stroke of ten an enormous airlock doesn't seal off the kitchen and render the preparation of food an utter impossibility. impossibility.

No, kitchens can open and budgets are what certain people say they are. The budget comes from somewhere. There's a line extending from it, like a trail of breadcrumbs, and it leads back to people voting, or not voting, or voting stupidly. Budgets are made by politicians. Or corporations. But that's kind of the same thing. One makes teachers pay for pencils, one takes away coffee and doughnuts. somewhere. There's a line extending from it, like a trail of breadcrumbs, and it leads back to people voting, or not voting, or voting stupidly. Budgets are made by politicians. Or corporations. But that's kind of the same thing. One makes teachers pay for pencils, one takes away coffee and doughnuts.

Because it wasn't in "The Budget," Budget," some things have to get cut. some things have to get cut.

Yeah, some always do. But for years until the accounting scandals of 2002, it never seemed to be the year-end bonuses of already wealthy CEOs, often in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That would buy a lot of coffee and doughnuts.

This is a country that is the richest in the history of the world-a country where middle-cla.s.s people now commonly use maids and limousines, luxuries that when I was a child were the appurtenances of only the wealthy, never people I knew. It is also a country that is always reluctant to raise the minimum wage because, my G.o.d, the cost of the arugula salad at Le c.r.a.p might go up from eleven to thirteen dollars, as if anyone who'd pay eleven dollars for a salad would notice.

So what's the connection we need to make here? Again, it's one we really know, the one between how much taxes we sh.e.l.l out and how much pay goes to the people we say are our heroes.

Does government waste money? Of course, mostly because we let them, and frequently even encourage them. (Back home, one man's pork is another man's jobs program.) We all think the government should get by on far less of our money.

But until that miracle happens, the ones who get screwed by tax whining are the cop, the fireman, the teacher and the soldier. We should think about that the next time we put on their hats.

The problem at the Airports

I hate stupidity but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it. For example, when America's television stars finally felt it was "emotionally safe" to hold the 2001 Emmy Awards-after a compromise of no tuxes and a somber tone-local news reports ignorantly raved about the preposterously inefficient level of security. They boasted that "even the most recognizable stars were required to present a valid photo ID." Which is exactly what's wrong with America's approach to security: we're so intent on presenting the appearance of evenhandedness, on not singling anyone out or hurting anyone's feelings, that we defeat the purpose. They're celebrating the fact that it appears as if they've left no stone unturned and I'm thinking-you have limited resources-leave a stone unturned! Sharon Stone, for instance. You can direct your manpower elsewhere because she's not a likely terrorist suspect-she's Sharon Stone!

Likewise, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has insisted that we must heed the lessons of 40s j.a.panese internment in not resorting to racial or ethnic profiling in our airports. When asked on 60 Minutes whether a 70-year-old woman from Vero Beach would receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim young man from Jersey City, he replied, "I would hope so," proving that the first casualty of war is common sense. "Pa.s.sengers should find all the evidence of equal inspection rea.s.suring," Mineta said.

Rea.s.suring? It's rea.s.suring to know that the people guarding our jugular have decided on a policy of suspending human judgment? Actually, having robots and nitwits check everyone equally is a sure recipe for disaster. It's a mindless, exploitable system of window dressing and posturing; it's procedure-bound automatons following prescribed guidelines by rote. It's randomness when we need focus. It's heads up a.s.ses when we need heads up.

And this is coming straight from the top. President Bush's response to a hissy fit thrown by an armed Arab-American Secret Service agent who'd been taken out of line and questioned before boarding a plane was that he'd be "plenty hot" if he found out the guy was scrutinized because he was Muslim. Which was d.i.c.k Cheney's cue to whisper in the president's ear, "Ah sir, that's what Ashcroft is doing every day." Sure, it's OK for Ashcroft to interrogate everyone who's ever glanced toward Mecca-his profiling was A-okay. In fact, if you whined about it and brought up civil rights you were just "aiding the terrorists." But at the airports, where we face the most obvious and imminent danger, we have become dangerously and inexplicably committed to placing pretense over results.

Somewhere along the line we became this oversensitive victim culture where it is a.s.sumed that no one is ever supposed to get physically or emotionally hurt. We can't approach or question anyone about anything for fear of hurting their feelings, making them self-conscious, and ultimately becoming the defendant in their discrimination lawsuit. Remember, we're not talking about beating young Middle Eastern men with rubber hoses or placing Arab-American families into internment camps. We're asking them to perhaps endure a few extra questions at the baggage check-in line so that we can all get back to the days when the most life-threatening thing on a plane was the Chicken Kiev.

The people who hate us target all Americans-black, white, young and old-but just because they're indiscriminate about going after us doesn't mean we must he indiscriminate in going after them. We've been brainwashed into believing that it's a sin to discriminate. But discrimination doesn't mean racism; it means telling unlike things apart. Iowa grandpas and nine-year-old girls from Ohio are simply not looking to visit "a painful chastis.e.m.e.nt upon the Western infidels." "Profiling," like "discrimination," has become a bad word, even though all police work is based on it, as it must be. If we stopped calling it profiling and started calling it "proactive intelligence screening" or "high-alert detecting," people would he saying, "Well, it's about time."

By the way, pa.s.senger searches are not only random, they include random acts of kindness. Screeners are being trained to smile and glance down at the tag on the bag and call pa.s.sengers by name: "Have a good flight, Mr. Samsonite!" At the Baltimore airport they've hired mimes and jugglers and other Cirque de So Lame Cirque de So Lame type entertainment to divert flyers waiting in long security lines. It's all part of our national policy of placing feeling good over actual safety.

It would be good if we could get with the program. It would be better if we had one first.

Ground Zero

The word people most often use about matters involving a nuclear exchange between warring nations is "unthinkable." Nuclear war is simply... unthinkable.

Yes, it is-which is why we need to think about it. Because it may he unthinkable, but it unfortunately is not impossible. It's barely into "unlikely."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the American people last year, "I think it's unlikely that they have a nuclear weapon, hut, on the other hand, with the determination they have, they may very well." And then, to make his point even more clearly, he actually physically covered his a.s.s.

The nuclear threat is real. Enemy sleeper cells almost undoubtedly reside amongst us right now-perhaps targeting reactors or building a device in a Bayonne, New Jersey bas.e.m.e.nt-and our best hope at foiling them seems to be to get Allen Iverson to kick in their door.

One of Osama bin Laden's proclamations in 1998 was: "We issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilian and military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country."

Gosh, is there anything this guy doesn't love about us?

On September 11, a whole city cared for 3,000. Like many people, I have had a love-hate relations.h.i.+p with New York City for many years, but on that day, you only saw the greatness. Strangers helping strangers, businesses offering their inventory to rescue workers and, in one touching scene, a cab driver stopping to pick up a black guy.

But, just for a moment, contemplate this unthinkable concept: what if the numbers were reversed? What if just thousands were left to come to the aid of an entire city?

I find it disconcerting to hear of the attack site in New York referred to as "Ground Zero," even though the first definition in some dictionaries certainly fits: "the target of a projectile, such as a missile or bomb." However, prior to 9/11, I don't recall ever hearing other non-nuclear missile or bomb blast sites referred to as "Ground Zero." Prior to 9/1l, the common usage of "Ground Zero" was the way it's defined first in Webster's, Webster's, "the point directly above, below, or at which a nuclear explosion occurs." We kept that term separate, to remind us that there is nothing like nuclear warfare-nothing. "the point directly above, below, or at which a nuclear explosion occurs." We kept that term separate, to remind us that there is nothing like nuclear warfare-nothing.

But a pain-averse culture wants to ascribe a term equal to their perceived distress, and Ground Zero sounds appropriately ominous coming out of Tom and Peter and Dan. Tres Tres gravitas. gravitas.

But ominous and gravitas are actually in the building now. So how about actually doing something about security instead of just appearing to? A new bureaucracy and a color-coded warning system seem like steps in the right direction, and I'm sure both programs tested very well with the focus groups. But we're not unveiling feel-good sitcoms for the new fall season; we're talking about our survival here. When the next fall season rolls around, I'd kind of like to Be There. Be There.

A Small Pond

In the months following 9/11, it was the question asked most by bewildered Americans: "Where the h.e.l.l is d.i.c.k Cheney?"

A close second, however, was, "Why do they hate us?" John Powers of the LA Weekly had what I thought was the best answer: "They hate us because we don't even know why they hate us."

The United States, as I will attempt to show in the last chapter, has acted with more restraint and non-violence than any other country in history with comparable pre-eminence--but we do ignore people. We are oblivious to suffering. We are cheap with charity if it's not close to our home.

All of which is not nearly as bad as rape and pillage and sowing salt in the earth- and attempts to lay all Muslim problems on "American foreign policy" is pathetic alibiing for not doing the hard work of fixing Muslim society. But what is it that drives haters crazy with rage? Many times, it's being ignored. To a person with pride, being ignored is often worse than out-and-out hate; it's that much more of an insult, that you're not even worth noticing. Or worse, that you deserve to he left in your own ghetto. You see it here in America: once the Persians or Arabs start coming to the disco in numbers, everybody stops going. That has to hurt.

(Not that it's all our fault: Middle Eastern men are just too aggressive with women. They came to the melting pot, but they brought that bad att.i.tude toward women, and girls just don't put up with that s.h.i.+t here. When you come to the melting pot, it's polite to melt a little.) I was watching Jeopardy (home with Mom) recently, and three whiz geeks who knew everything about everything ran the board and made my mother and me feel like idiots. But the Final Jeopardy category was "Countries in Africa," and all three bet nothing, confident that they were absolute ciphers on this topic. They were right; their answers were way off. I thought it said a lot about the American myopia that gets under the skin of have-nots, who comprise at least half the world. (Not that they really watch Jeopardy.) And that's just the insult. Then there's the injury itself. "They" hate us because they feel-and "they" are not wrong-that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of pa.s.sive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting American cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. here while promoting American cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on.

We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one.

We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book Nickel and Dimed Nickel and Dimed describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered. describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered.

So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?