Too crazy for al-Qaeda: Zacarias Moussaoui, the “Twentieth hijacker,” is as much comic relief as we get in the 9/11 saga. He’s the one who caught the attention of his U.S. flight instructor when he said he didn’t want to learn to take off or land. The instructor told the FBI, and an arrest on visa violations followed. His court appearances and filings are zany; he titles motions, “Zacarias Moussaoui, Muslim, v. United States godless government.” He told the judge, “I pray to Allah for the destruction of the United States of America.” He calls his court-appointed attorneys “death lawyers,” and the judge, Furor, as in Führer, preceding her name with DJ, for death judge, saying she deceives people with her “grandnanny look,” and “The curse of Allah is and will be upon you.” One motion called for “a first-class ticket on a 747-400 out of the United States now”; another demanded the return of Spain to the Moors. A detained al-Qaeda operative calls him too unstable to be a hijacker.

As a one-man show, he is already over the top. Then there’s his family, described in a New York Times Magazine piece. His mother has become a celebrity in France. “He’s always telling me, Mother, I’m fine,” she says. His brother has written a book called My Brother,in which he agonizes between disgust and comprehension. He’s sort of normal. His mother told him, “Without Zacarias, you wouldn’t exist . . . your name would be nothing.” There’s an older sister who’s been depressed since 1985 and who draws Stars of David on herself because, “in my heart, I am Jewish.” When Hava Nagila comes on the radio in a Paris café, she sings along, loudly. “You never really know your children,” says the mother. They don’t talk to one or another for years, then make up for a while.

They are, in other words, completely dysfunctional in a completely familiar, unhorrifying way. There is nothing very Islamic going on here. In fact, it all feels kind of American, though none have lived there except Zacarias, while learning to fly. In cultural terms, this kind of American family goes back to the 1920s play You Can’t Take it With You, by Kaufman and Hart, a comedy, though come to think of it, their boarder does build rockets in the basement. It carries through sitcoms such as All in the Family and, of course, The Simpsons. In fact, I don’t think these are really dysfunctional American families, they’re families anywhere, but the U.S. version is commonest, due to the reach of its culture. It makes one wonder: If a Muslim, Arab family, now in France, can seem so darned recognizable, do we really need the Mideast experts on the news shows to explain such people to us?

My other question is: If the backstory of September eleventh concerns the way erratic, distraught individuals such as Zacarias Moussaoui are used by small, secretive, fanatical gangs such as al-Qaeda to wreak terror, with minimal resources such as commercial jets, then how on earth does sending gazillions of troops and thousands of missiles into Iraq deal with that situation? Will anyone feel more secure after we “win&#0148?

Talking the walk: CNN now carries a “terror alert” on-screen all day, just like the weather, time and stock prices. For months, all its coverage has been headed Showdown Iraq. How can CNN not go to war? How would it back down? If U.S. forces fail to show, Wolf Blitzer will have to hit the beach himself. By now, everyone is obliged. The President has to attack or lose his credibility. So they create expectations of war, then they say they can’t do anything except make war because of those expectations. Is this saner than what goes on in the Moussaoui family? It jibes nicely with the macho lingo. Last week, it was David Frum, asking: Why should the world put up with Saddam for one more minute? This week, Brian Mulroney said the Chrétien government should stop trying to suck and blow at the same time. He called it juvenile. And Stockwell Day, now foreign affairs critic for the Alliance, said our government doesn’t “have the jam” to take a clear position. What all these boys have in common is a total lack of real experience with war or combat plus an apparent desire to sound tough and warlike. Watch for more to come. The ones who have actually been through it rarely bother to juice the diction.

This just in, again: The odd symbiosis between George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden continues. Each seems to need, even welcome, the behaviour of the other. Osama surely welcomes the U.S. war on Iraq as proving his point about America and the Muslim world. And didn’t the U.S. government rather eagerly welcome Osama’s latest verbal barrage via a tape this week, as proof of his connection to Iraq despite his denunciation of Saddam as an infidel? Do they both keep muttering: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.”

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.