War! (never been so much fun...)

This will not be World War II, fought somewhere else.

WORST CASE SCENARIO
You asked for realistic. I think this is realistic. That does not mean that I think it is 100 percent probable. But I do think it is quite possible (at least 25 percent) and I think we should all worry about it.

Scenario:

The reason that so many Muslims and Muslim nations are already mad at us is that regardless of how each of us perceives him/herself as an individual, in their eyes the U.S. is a Christian nation. This Christian nation has military bases established on Muslim holy ground, in Saudi Arabia. To them this is a military incursion, regardless of the fact that we have the Saudi government's cooperation. In the eyes of a Muslim in Pakistan or Indonesia, there must be some infidel spies in the Saudi government or this would never have been allowed. That makes it even worse because in addition to outright military action it looks like we have a very effective infiltration program already launched against the most holy Muslim country, the birthplace of Mohammed.

There are two billion Muslims on this planet. Because of our military incursion into Saudi Arabia, they're already thinking about the Crusades, that military campaign that was launched by virtually all the Christian nations of Europe against all the Muslim nations of the Mideast about 1,000 years ago. Christian soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered every person they could find in Muslim areas. Including people who weren't even Muslims. Their goal was to eradicate Islam from the face of the globe. They didn't succeed, but it wasn't for lack of trying or for lack of pure irrational religiously inspired hatred.

The Islamic world eventually got its act together and established some diplomatic and military might. They went out and conquered and occupied many of their neighboring countries, sort of the same thing the Soviets did, to build up a buffer zone between themselves and the Christian countries.

Then the most amazing thing happened, one of the periodic explosions of the Mongols passed through Islamic territory, and that particular wave of Mongols converted to Islam. Along the way they intermarried with the people they encountered, and the result was the people we now call the Turks. This new people, with the combination of the Muslim religion and the Mongol military might, established the Ottoman Empire, which at its peak extended from western China, through northern India, to north Africa and southeastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania), as well as a good chunk of the already Muslim Mideast.

For centuries Muslims felt secure because the Ottoman Empire was a good match for any European attack. Then about 100 years ago the Ottoman Empire fell, part of the mass warfare and confusion that consumed Europe before, during, and after World War I. All that remains of it is the nation of Turkey. But about the same time the USSR was formed, and the Nazis began rising to power in central Europe. The powerful Christian nations were too busy trying to destroy each other, so for a while they didn't even give the Mideast a second glance.

After World War II, an uneasy balance was established between the USA and the USSR. Anything the USA did the USSR automatically opposed and vice versa. The Russians managed to take over most of the old Ottoman Empire (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Chechnya, etc.), but the Arab Muslim nations, plus Pakistan and Iran, were safe. If the Russians started thinking about annexing Pakistan, the USA would sell the Pakistan army a bunch of weapons and send over military advisors. If the Americans got friendly with Egypt, the Russians would send engineers to Egypt and build the Aswan dam.

It was what a physicist would call "unstable equilibrium," but it held together for more than 40 years. Until Perestroika. The USSR fell apart. All those former Soviet republics that speak Turkic languages like Kazakhstan are now free Muslim countries (with their own dictators, of course). Whoopee. But the bear with the hammer and sickle is no longer standing there ready to automatically counter absolutely anything the USA does.

For a while it looked to the Muslims like the USA was going to be cool. We're not exactly a European country, so they were waiting to see whether we would pick up the old European tradition of annihilating Muslims, or follow our own path. Things looked good to Muslims at first. We gave Saddam Hussein a huge arsenal of weapons when he went to war against Iran. It was a war between two Muslim countries, but that didn't seem to bother anybody, at least we were giving weapons to Muslim soldiers.

When the Russian army left Afghanistan, the pro-Western militia we had put together to hold off the Russians -- a wacky little group that called itself the Taliban -- got to run the whole country. Islamic fundamentalism was back in vogue. Women trapped in their kitchens, no one allowed to listen to music or own a dog (man's oldest and most faithful companion, the multi-species community that in a way defines what it means to be human, is a filthy nasty scavenger after all). Beards on the men, veils on the women.

The Americans were starting to look OK. Still infidels and we're all going to hell, of course, but at least we're not going to cause any problems to the faithful Muslims.

Then all of a sudden Saudi Arabia, which was under a cloud of suspicion because they allowed infidel military bases on holy ground, tried to do something to reaffirm its commitment to Allah. They sent an in-law of the Saudi royal family named Osama out with millions of dollars, the quiet support of the Saudi government, and a huge troop of Saudi warriors who were willing to die for Allah. These Saudi citizens, under the direction of Osama and using the Saudi royal family's money, hijacked some airliners and knocked down three really big, important American buildings, killing a whole bunch of infidels in the process and guaranteeing themselves front row seats in heaven.

This was really cool. The Saudis had redeemed themselves in the eyes of the faithful, and the Americans were made to pay for the horrible sin of stationing Christian soldiers near Mecca. Of course it was natural to expect that the Americans would punish the Saudis for doing this and Arabia might get the crap kicked out of it, but what's one more war in the Mideast.

But that isn't what happened. The Americans have this really stupid guy in charge who doesn't really understand politics or much of anything else. Instead of attacking Saudi Arabia, which the whole world would have understood and considered natural, his tiny brain slipped a cog and somehow intertwined Saddam Hussein with the Al-Qaeda terrorists. Nobody else in the whole world could make this connection, but that hasn't stopped them from supporting Bush in his crazy logic.

So Bush is going to punish Iraq for something that Saudi Arabia did. It would be inconvenient to bomb Saudi Arabia so we'll bomb Iraq instead. In other words, he regards all Muslims as interchangeable -- kill 'em all and let Allah sort it out.

What does this look like to the average Muslim in the street in the Phillipines or Malaysia? The Crusades are starting up again! Christendom is going to try to eradicate Islam once and for all. We can't tell an Iraqi from a Saudi, and we don't care, we're just going to start killing until there are no more left.

In a part of the world where a "moderate" is defined as somebody who only holds a grudge for six generations, the USA is opening up a thousand-year-old grudge.

Do I think that the average American will be unaffected by the forthcoming war? Do you think that out of two billion Muslims, there won't be a few tens of thousands who will be willing to die for Allah, canoeing up Chesapeake Bay, snowmobiling down from Saskatchewan, sailing a catamaran into Santa Barbara, or cutting a big hole in the fence between Sonora and Arizona -- with dynamite or C-4 duct-taped all over their bodies? Disneyland, the Mall of America, the Astrodome, the Washington Monument, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Coney Island, anyplace that seems important to us will be an easy target for a suicide bomber.

If the border patrol and the police catch most of them, and say only five thousand get through and blow up themselves, a chunk of American culture, and a few hundred American civilians, do you think life will ever be the same for us again?

You asked for a worst-case scenario. You got it, Lone Ranger. Sure, I think there's a good chance that it won't happen. But there's also a fair chance that it will. And if it does, I don't know what the hell any of us will be able to do about it except watch it happen and live in fear, shock, and mourning for the rest of our lives.

Thanks a heap, Mr. Bush. You've really got our best interests at heart. It's so comforting to have a man at the helm who understands politics and history. I'm sure your wife and children will be in Sweden or New Zealand while all this is going on.