Osama! Saddam! Santa!

By Abid Aslam and Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted December 24, 2004.

Also known by the despicably deceitful alias Father Christmas, this is a man who has assembled a massive stockpile of toys and who maintains the technology to deliver them into the hands of unsuspecting children. Year after year, Claus has violated rooftops and chimneys and despoiled our cultural landscape with adoration of gizmos. With gimmicks of mass decadence (GMDs), our children are being tricked into questioning authority and turning against us.

To his credit, the President has not allowed the challenges in Afghanistan and Iraq to distract him from this struggle for civilization's soul. Even as you read these words, patriots in public service and in business are harnessing the climate-changing power of pollution to drive Claus and his diminutive henchmen from their polar reaches.

The latest word from the Far North indicates that we are literally melting the ice from under Claus, his family, and those legions of evil-doing elves. With our emissions pouring into the atmosphere, according to an ''Arctic Climate Impact Assessment'' released last month, we've already shrunk his base by eight percent in just the past 30 years – an area larger than Texas and Arizona combined. We are forcing Claus into an ever-smaller area of operation. He can skate but he can't hide.

The Arctic is warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world, and the trend is accelerating. At the very least, half of all Arctic ice will be gone by the end of the century, making it much harder for Claus to sustain operations or even physically support his workshops. The North Pole itself may be completely submerged by then! His reindeer herds already are under increasing stress, diminishing the GMD delivery systems on which he has long relied. There is no doubt but that we are winning.

And this strategy is pregnant with collateral benefits. In the process of melting out Claus, we are raising sea levels. We have raised the oceans by three inches in the past 20 years and we can look forward to a rise of three feet by the end of the century. That may not help operations much in high-altitude combat zones like Tora Bora but it could substantially reduce the number of hearts and minds we have to win in lower-lying places like southern Iraq.

When the Greenland ice sheet finally floats off into the North Atlantic, sea level will rise another 23 feet. Floods will seal the fate of vast swathes of Canada, whence our senior citizens are barraged with life-threatening cheap prescription drugs.

Declining salinity caused by melting ice could shut down the ocean current that carries warm water to the North Atlantic. This means that we can turn Europe into an ice cube. Euro-Gaullism? Bring it on!

Of course, like any war, this will not be cost-free. We will lose southern Florida and large parts of the Mississippi Delta. But this will be nothing compared to the blue-state losses. Bye-bye Boston. Hasta la vista Hollywood. So long, Soho.

To ensure victory against Claus and the icebound ones, we must stand firm against environmentalists who would have us sign on to the anti-global warming Kyoto Protocol, just as we righteously scorn those who insist that quaint notions of human rights and the Geneva Conventions have even the slightest relevance to the mission that our generation must complete.

Our Arctic endeavor is threatened by the likes of Klaus Toepfer, the head of the UN's Environment Program and the owner of an Old European name if ever we saw one. Incredibly, this is what he said when the Arctic report came out: ''We need, more than ever before, a concerted and renewed international effort to combat the climate-change problem, one of the most serious threats to humankind today.''

''The Arctic region,'' Toepfer insinuated, ''is like an environmental early-warning system for the world. What happens there is of concern for everyone because Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications.''

Duh! Why do you think we're attacking it?

Now is the time to strike a decisive blow against Claus and his mass consumerism. It won't be easy; there will be difficulty all along the way. Our children will whimper and bawl. But we do not shrink from sacrifice for our calling is the future. The rod will not be spared and our children will not be spoiled. And one day they will thank us for slaying the evil that calls itself Santa Claus.

Abid Aslam and Jim Lobe are writers in Washington, DC.

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