Scooby Doo as counter-terrorism model

(cross-posted at Dispatch, with reacts here and here)

Esteemed foreign policy commentators like Dan Drezner, Stephen Walt, Fred Kaplan, and Michael Tomasky have already plied their film knowledge in listing the top international relations movies.  I’ll try to pick up what Matt started earlier today and start an internet meme about the cartoons with the most interesting implications for foreign policy and geopolitics.

I’m tempted to draw a lesson about hubris, paranoia, the place of cold and calculating intelligence in world politics, and the futility of global domination from — where else? — “Pinky and the Brain.”  But I don’t think neoconservatism needs any further rebukes.  Instead I’d nominate Scooby Doo.

Consider the Scooby Doo villains as rudimentary terrorists.  They dress up as scary monsters, terrify the local population, and chase Shaggy and Scooby through endless halls and mismatched doorways.  That they wear masks, and often are after financial gain, may make them seem to resemble old-school bank robbers, but the crux of their power is the terror they invoke in residents.

The mysteries are inevitably solved by the members of the team — Fred, Daphne, and Velma — who remain relatively calm and treat the monsters as criminals — not, say, “enemy combatants” of the beleaguered town.  This is despite the fact that they are impersonating what is, in terms of fear-inducing presence, essentially a child’s equivalent of a bomb-laden terrorist.

But no lockdowns are conducted, there is no torture for information on the monster’s identity, and no pre-emptive strikes.  (The only “operations” are limited to Rube Goldberg-esque traps that are conducted only once the team has accumulated enough evidence to identify the villain, who, naturally, “would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you lousy kids!”)  The culprit is then arrested by the local police, and, instead of bundling him in the Mystery Machine and sending him/her to Guantanamo, s/he is presumably headed for a normal civilian jail.

Mainers respond to topless coffee shop with mindless arson

Via The Daily Beast, the topless coffee shop in Maine that I mused about a few months ago has been burned to the ground.

Crabtree said he did not have insurance for the Grand View. If necessary, he said, he would be willing to reopen in a temporary mobile trailer on the site of the topless — and now roofless — coffee shop.

Crabtree said his 10 female and three male employees are “in shock.”

I implied objectification in my earlier post, but this stupid act of protest reorients my feelings about this; if it was indeed a business modeled on free expression, not exploitation, then down with the ignorant arsonists of puritanism (and even if it were a crassly sexist enterprise, engaging in criminal activity is obviously completely inappropriate).

Title of this post notwithstanding, I think it is in poor taste for CNN to mock the “roofless” coffee shop, which was also connected to the home of the owner, Donald Crabtree, and his family.  And I can see nothing but prurience in the decision to divulge that a preponderance of the employees happened to be female.