Quiet guy

Although Obama was elected a fortnight ago, Osama still hasn't said a word about it. This situation is unexpected, frustrating, disturbing...

Maybe Osama's Internet is temporarily down, preventing him from getting out messages to the world. Or maybe he's switching from a Windows PC to Linux or a MacBook, and he's still working at getting his learning curve up to an operational level. We cannot of course exclude the possibility, as strange as it might appear, that bin Laden is no longer interested in America. He might simply be lazy, or away from his cave office on an extended vacation with his wife and kids.

Although Barack Obama is not the kind of fellow who shows his emotions, I'll bet he's furious to realize that Osama bin Laden hasn't reacted yet in any way whatsoever to the US presidential elections. It's just not right. We all feel that Osama has a moral responsibility to say something—no matter whether it's positive or negative—about Obama's victory. This notorious guy can't just sit silently there in his cave, somewhere in the vicinity of Pakistan, and act as if nothing has been happening in the outside world. Besides, why doesn't Osama bin Laden have a personal blog, like every other self-respecting Citizen of the World? Don't try to tell me they don't have good broadband connections (at least as good as those of my native Australia) up in that corner of the wilderness. If these terrorist chaps can master the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, they should have enough hi-tech know-how to install fiber optics links for Internet. Or, as former CIA field officer Robert Baer mused in his TIME article on this mystery [display]: Why doesn't Osama simply burn a DVD with up-to-date messages and videos? The best stuff could then be displayed through YouTube.

There is, of course, another explanation. It's quite possible that America's bogeyman, Osama bin Laden, is in fact dead and buried... in which case the cessation of trying to track down his ghost might coincide harmoniously with the long-awaited withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

BREAKING NEWS: I'm delighted to learn that Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, seems to have read my blog during the night (unless he happens to have other other sources of information and inspiration), for he has just made a public declaration concerning Barack Obama, labeling him—if I understand correctly the Arabic, which I don't—a "Negro house slave". Nice concept, a little dated...