Dear Mom and Dad, Camp was a Blast!!!

"Fatwa Camp??....I thought my parents were sending me to Fat Camp!!!" said Saleem, the portly and somewhat surprised teenager.

Afghan Suicide Bomber School Holds “Graduation”
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Footage depicting what can only be described as a Taliban “graduation” ceremony that took place June 9 was obtained by abc News this week. The footage and accompanying report, which came by way of a Pakistani journalist invited to observe the ceremony, shows approximately 300 masked men and boys dressed in loose-fitting tunics and sandals and sitting in rows in a desolate mountain range along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

As my own daughter makes last minute preparations for her own graduation and prom it's hard not to read the article excerpt above and think "Geez, what a small world!" This is the time of year when teens across the globe prepare to move on in life, some apparently into the afterlife, with ceremonies that mark this important rite of passage.

With the success of the Afghani school stories of similarly themed summer camps are already emerging from various corners of the Mid-east. I saw a recent ad for a Pakistani camp that promised Archery, Bomb making, Horseback riding, and a Farewell Video Workshop. Sounds like a lot of fun for the young insurgent to be! Camp Khaboum (as it's called) even has it's own catchy jingle sung to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours (better known as Alan Sherman's Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.)

Hello Mullah, Hello Allah

Time to join the Intefada

I'm heroic but still modest

That is just what one would want from a Jihadist.

So long Mother, farewell Father

I'm preparing to be a martyr

I've been trained to be sycophantic

Now they say that we'll be crossing the Atlantic!

I don bombs (oh Mother, Father)

with aplomb, (it's not a bother)

I'm grown up so now I can blow up

and take along a Jew (or maybe two).

Infidels we're targeting and

Fear's what we're mass marketing so

Camp Khaboum has lead us to assume

that dying for our cause deserves applause.

Soon the summer will have ended

Then our faith has to be defended

I'll be joining the insurgents

Then I have a date in heaven with some virgins!!