What Do Our Enemies Think of Our Candidates? Do They See Obama Assuming the Mantle of Greatness?

If you were someone irrational and vicious, someone in Al Quaeda or the Taliban, someone who rejoiced after 9-11, someone who wants to see America in ruins, what would you think about our candidates? Most human beings are incapable of thinking from that perspective, thank God, but those who do are real and gaining in fervor and influence.

Imagine an eager operative, fifteen or sixteen years old, or his trainers, thirty or fifty years old. Imagine the room they are in, the photographs pinned on the wall, clean books, grimy books and some poorly translated texts on a table, flashlights, remnants of food, coats and jackets, explosives. Who knows?

So how does Hillary look to one of those guys? For starters, they think her face should be covered, right? Can they discern that she is desperate to win? Do they find desperately ambitious women offensive? Do they assume she is doing her husband's bidding? Do they find the Clintons loathsome?

McCain, a prisoner of war for five years, wants to kick ass and take them all on, even if it takes a hundred years. Are the zealots scared? There are still a few crazed and vocal Vietnam Vets out there who think McCain collaborated with the North Vietnamese. We here in Saneville generally respect him for what he endured in those years. Many want to give him a chance to set things straight. But for whom? Have those years been burning like an eternal flame within him? Is he harboring some very personal retaliatory impulses, and willing to drag us all along to Armageddon? Will the bad guys be afraid of a man who has been subdued and reduced to captivity already? Would they hold back their own murderous impulses, out of respect for a man's sufferings?

What would a crazed and/or impressionable young zealot make of a man named Barack Hussein Obama? Now there, just in the name, we have some real psychological leverage. But the leverage is far greater than that. Barack Obama, past editor of the Harvard Review, knows what his name his. He knows full well that he is young and relatively inexperienced. He also knows history and government, culture and sociology, psychology and math, and art and poetry. You don't get to be editor of the Harvard Review without broad knowledge and a solid worldview. The young zealots in the dimly lit room won't appreciate all that, but they will be affected by it. And who knows, perhaps disaffected from their disaffection by Barack Hussein Obama, when he stands on a much larger stage than their current mentors, who are urging them on to those virgins in heaven.

Barack Obama, radiant, graceful, brilliant and young, is willing to take on the mantle of greatness. He's willing to expose himself to all the dark forces in the dimly lit rooms around our troubled world. He's willing to carry the load, to learn and lead, and, implicitly, because of the dangers out there, to offer his life. I imagine a young enemy zealot in training, catching a glimpse of Barack Obama on a television screen, and after looking back once more at his twisted teacher, choosing to attach himself to life and freedom, and to Obama.