Every once in a while, I try to catch the Dilbert Blog.  It’s just one of those blog sites I came across this summer that I thought entertaining enough to bookmark.  This site is not for everyone as the author is candid, somewhat raw and a bit left of center, but sometimes I find myself laughing out loud and psychology departments have known for some time that laughing out loud is good medicine.  And besides, I never knock a person who looks to learn from history for new solutions even if I may disagree with the methodology.

So today again I see Scott Adams writing about the Dilbert Peace Plan - his attempt to stir thoughts on solving the eternal crisis in the Middle East and extremist Islamic terrorism.

I must tell you that I rolled the better part of the work day yesterday with CNN’s Pipeline unedited replay of 9/11 in the corner of my display.  It was an odd day.  Almost like I was sitting there 5 years ago, just as I was, watching this unfold.  It was horrific.  It was stirring.  It also made me wonder what real, effective progress we had made in 5 years.  Wow, nothing comes to mind.

It also made me think that as Americans, we tend to want things when we want them and we tend to expect other cultures to be the same.  So if we are trying to get into a terrorists head, we inevitably inject our own impatience and think the next attack must be soon.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but definitely soon.  Halt.  That’s one mistake we cannot make.  Extremists are somewhat historical in that they look big picture rather than small.  You could argue that a suicide bomber lives day to day, but I would assure you that their survival is day to day, but it is their promised place in history and the after-life that brainwashes them to commit to jihad.

So is our guard down and our confidence up after 5 long years?  Probably.  Should it be? Not in the least.  Remember, terrorists first attacked the base of the towers in an attempt to bring it down 7 1/2 years before 9/11.  That didn’t work, but they didn’t quit and they achieved their goal well beyond our attention span of 1 or 2 or even 5 years.

So what to we know?  We know these extremist terrorists succeed because they are patient, focused and well-funded.  How are they funded?  Simple - oil.  American’s tend to think of success and money in terms of technology as we have been world leaders in this field and we have our very own World’s Richest Person in Bill Gates to show us what technology can buy.  (And kudos to Gates for his passion and commitment to be the world’s leading philanthropist.  Money is doing good things.)  But in the Middle East, oil is king.  Duh.  You know that.  Oil is almost as old as dinosaurs.  But do you fully comprehend what profits from oil buys and supports?  It has created the only worldly success the Middle East knows.

Do you fully comprehend that Americans are the world’s largest consumer of oil?  I think it is time for our relatively young country of 230 years to ween itself from the Middle Eastern tit and the oil dependency that we created ourselves with industrialization.  You see, I think extremist terrorism, jihad and the Middle East crisis is just parenting gone bad and here we are, the ‘Rebels with a Cause’ no longer living at home, but still asking for that monthly suck.  Let’s grow up, overcome our insecurities and start our own families and concentrate on taking care of ourselves.

Tomorrow, I will throw some dizzying math at you and paint a few simple solutions that you, yes you, can use to stop terrorism and make the Middle East Crisis about as violent as Aunt Judy asking you year after year at the family reunion if you’ve gained weight.  “Aunt Judy, can I get you a glass of mineral oil, I mean punch?” ;)

See you then…

(read the conclusion here)