When we were teenagers, the Anarchist Cookbook was the coveted Holy Scripture of Mischief. Its hundred-odd pages of plain ASCII text floated around pre-internet bulletin boards, and ended up in backpacks next to Spanish textbooks, bologna sandwiches and nunchucks (sp?). The cookbook posessed sacred knowledge, from the mundane "how to scam a Coke machine into giving up all its quarters", to the divine "how to melt an engine block with iron filings and tin foil". It contained the recipe that Tim McVeigh used on the federal building in Oklahoma City during my junior year.
I was never BBS-savvy, nor did I take mischief as seriously as some, but I always recognized that the Cookbook represented all that was powerful about knowledge to a certain demographic. It was the key to bucking the "system" that felt so repressive, back before drinking and smoking were legal for us, before they stopped carding us for rated R movies, before girls gave us the time of day; when parents, teachers, and even strangers seemed to have so much sway on what we did.
For greasy kids in trench coats, even having a copy was enough to feel influential when in fact their powers were limited to the infinite but imaginary reality of their favorite role playing game. The Cookbook, strangely enough, had no advice on girls. Tells you a thing or two about its authors.
Nowadays, even writing about it has probably got my blog flagged on some NSA list. Talk about strangers having sway. It's enough to make you feel like a kid again. Just for the record, NSA: I'm not a terrorist.
This liquid-explosives-on-airliners affair remined me instantly of those greasy kids. The comicbook style of evil with which Al Qaeda continues to shock and amaze the world could only come from a kindred soul to those boys.
Look at the damage:
BOTH towers of the World Trade Center are destroyed, along with part of the Pentagon by running in to them with hijacked commerical jets. Thousands killed.
Trains are simultaneously targeted during rush hours in Madrid and London. Hundreds killed.
Plots are foiled for detonating dirty bombs, blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, and assassinating our leaders.
The Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid ensured that we'd have to go through security barefoot for the foreseeable future. Congratulations, Dick! Imagine all the athletes' foot and plantar warts chalked up as petty collateral damage to his explosive Reeboks.
More trains in Bombay. Hundreds more killed.
And now, the 24-odd conspirators being rounded up in London have ensured that carry-on luggage contain only dry items, that flying be even less enjoyable than it was. Here's a plot to blow up at least 10 transatlantic flights full of everyday people using mysterious cocktails of mouthwash and Aqua Velva with IPod detonators.
Whether they pull it off or not, the question I've been asking since 2001 is just plain, "why?"
Hamas and Hizbulah are far more understandable than this. Side with them or not, they have a specific enemy, specific demands, and specific grievances. They are men with wives and kids, fighting on a real battle front.
Compared to those groups, Al Qaeda seems like the undirected, self-destructive anger of a very sullen, disturbed fifteen year-old. They'll stop at nothing just to be noticed, to be important, even at a terrible price. It's a completely self-absorbed mindset to the end, terminating in oblivion over the Atlantic, or into the side of a building.
The boyish fantasy of 72 virgins sitting on a cloud waiting for them on the Other Side shows unequivocally just how desparately these guys need a girlfriend.
The Cookbook of Forbidden Knowledge continues to float through the ether. As long as the trenchcoat set stays fifteen and virginal, they'll crave these ludocrous capers as personal justice for the unnamed wrongs of the world.
To torture a metaphor, our grizzled, manly leaders don't know what to do when the neighbor's lanky kid throws a tantrum and sets fire to our lawn. Having always been part of the cool crowd, always been winners; they just can't relate. All they can do is throw punches or put the kid in a full nelson. But the kid just doesn't listen. His parents are never home, and when they are, they either don't care, or they're afraid of the kid themselves. What can be done?
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