When President Bush announced that United States troops would be sent into Afghanistan to hunt down bin Laden and bring him to justice for the masterminding of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon, I found myself actually becoming surly. When Bill Maher publicly questioned the need for the war effort, I almost immediately leaped to respond angrily on a Free Republic thread devoted to that topic.

It’s amazing what the onset of war can do to you. I’m the type of person that should feel, on balance, grateful for what Maher has done for the D’Souza wing of the conservative movement, but such feelings tend to evaporate when he expressed doubts concerning one of the few war initiatives on the part of the United States that was just.

When people do these kind of things, they tend to employ psychological strategies to forgive themselves afterwards, just as certain strategies are used when in the heat of hate. One of them is the “mirror mirror” technique.

You might have heard of this. At its simplest level, it is a sort of clownishness used to mimic an authority figure for the purposes of making them look like an idiot. At a more intellectualized level, it’s not dissimilar to what is known in game theory as the “Nash Empathy Principle” (NEP): always make any move in a game you’re in after putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and asking yourself: “what would be the best move available to ‘me’ had I been on the other side of the table?”

Since you’re in a game to make the other person lose, it’s not hard to see the connection between the NEP and hate. Hate, an emotion with a well-known connection to love, involves the use of one’s social skills for the purpose of later attacking one’s enemy, not to get to know them. Operating under hate makes you like a spy in an enemy country.

Based upon the above – the acid test being the verbal knocking-over of a pundit whom I should respect (and, to some degree, still do) – I qualify as a hater of al-Qaida. So I might as well apply this hatred to the thought question which you can think over too: how would al-Qaida get revenge for the recent cleanout in the Middle East – or, for that matter, how would what’s left of Saddam Hussein Ba’ath party?

The first step would be to assess what worked against the United States in the past – and to see that, we need to turn to the Cold War. Physical conquest of the U.S. is impossible; such a dream is no more than a fantasy. As far as physical intimidation of the U.S. through terror is concerned, that’s what was tried in September 2001. The result was not only a crushing counter- response, but also the calling-forth of genuine sympathy from parts of the world usually cool to the goals of the United States. Neither of these work.

Now: what did work against the United States in the past?

The most obvious point to focus in on in the Cold War was the evaporation of the prestige the United States held in the First and Third World in the 1960s. The image of America changed from a defender of freedom against Communism to that of a big, aggressive bully, and the world adjusted its stereotypes accordingly. You should consider that the supposed “limp-wristedness” in Washington during the 1970s was in part a result of the necessity to live down that newly-acquired bad reputation.

Let’s assume that Cold War diplomacy is a game. This implies that the loss of international influence in the 1970s was the result of an excellent move by the U.S.S.R in the 1960s. The Communists got the U.S. government to fumble the ball they had previously carried well.

How would old Moscow have done it?

The obvious trigger point is the Vietnam War. The conduct of it not only put the United States in the world’s doghouse, but also led to the self- expulsion of France from NATO in 1966. Given that de Gaulle was a professional soldier – a general – and that the United States had taken over the holding of the dam from France in Vietnam, the issue which split France from the rest of NATO was most probably the prosecution of that war. de Gaulle might have delivered a criticism which triggered a are-you-for-me-or-against-me reflex from the Johnson Administration.

Given that the previous Kennedy administration was probably proud of the decision to bump off South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem in October of 1963, a chance remark comparing de Gaulle to Diem might have torn it.

Obviously, the use of the CIA by the Kennedy and Johnson Administration was ham-handed. Indirect evidence shows that it was one of the later propaganda points used by the Communists after the handling of the Vietnam War began to look like the handling of Apollo 1. How did the Kennedy and Johnson teams fall into that tough- bully mode?

The answer: baiting by Kruschchev’s forces. Their impression of Kennedy was that of a trust- fund boy out of his depth. Some of the more pious Communist might have sincerely believed that his daddy bought the Presidency for him. So the Communists sized up Kennedy as a weak kid with an blustery attitude, and treated him as such.

This move, originally, was for the undoubted purpose of making the Kennedy team roll over, especially with respect to Cuba. But what they found was that Kennedy’s team, with their emphasis on “toughness’ sincerely believed, could be baited into reckless action. That discovery undoubtedly changed the U.S.S.R’s characterization of the United States from “unreliable fair-weather friend” to “world bully.” The former didn’t work all that well, but the latter definitely worked.

Applying the NEP to the above suggests that al- Qaida would be in the best position it could possibly be if they, or their secret allies, could bait the United States into taking aggressive action on the world stage. Something that could be believably spun as: crusade.

That’s one move that would be the most advantageous for al-Qaida. But there’s another.

According to them, the United States is a “Jew State.” Anti-Israel propaganda involves putting Israelites in a can’t-win situation: the most well-known example of this is “Zionism is a Nazism.”

This propaganda can’t be built upon by al- Qaida too effectively: the Communist milked the “United States is a Nazi State” vein beyond the point of dry. But there’s another variation which involves the same kind of loaded-charge trap directed against the Jews – a hoax that can trip up both Israel and the U.S.: reactionary.

The Jew sees him-or herself as an agent of progress in the world: such is mandated by their faith. The United States is a nation well known for being on the forefront of progress: such is shown by its history. So a potential value-bond exists between Israel and the U.S. which can be used by al-Qaida.

Just add the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you- don’t element and spread all over the non-aligned world this smear: The United States is the fount of Jewish reactionary bullying. This combines the Kruschchev move – proven successful – with one geared to al-Qaida’s goals and needs, and links to the natural hope among Muslims that the Islamic world will once again be the progressive world, as it was in the 9th and 10th century, at the very least.

Would this be believed? If the collapse of Communism was triggered in large part by the impression of Communist rulers as hypocrites, or as good critics but tyrants nonetheless, then it will be. The successful smears made against the U.S. by the U.S.S.R will still be floating around under a different form.

So how to make the United States walk into it? Simple. Make the U.S. act like a reactionary bully.

Even an amateur such as myself can think of an easy way to do it. The dark side of a business society is disguised envy of success: we all know it’s there. A lot of America’s folk traditions involve the squelching of such envy.

But every now and then, it spills out, displaced or sublimated in the usual form: a revolt against perceived injustice.

Now here’s the potential squeeze play. The United States is progressive in the scientific and technical fields which are at the leading edge of material progress: many of these require a high I.Q. to participate in. At least one of them – biotechnology – requires a Ph. D. in the relevant scientific field to play.

Note that the high-I.Q. type has mannerisms that are sometimes grating, especially if these mannerisms are carried up into the pinnacles of wealth and prestige.

Can you now see the move that would benefit al- Qaida from the above? Fomenting hatred of the new, progressive info-class. Launching a “domestic crusade” against “pig-pinheads.”

[This ends the hate fest for me. Time to wash out my soul with soap].