What? Russian spies in America! Has the retro craze even affected those of us who wax nostalgic about the Cold War, of all things? What, they miss Nuclear Bomb Drills? They wish the Berlin Wall was still there and that it was Russian troops shooting up Afghanistan instead of our own?

Or maybe they have fond memories of the exhilarating tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the highest stakes poker game ever played, with nothing less than the fate of all mankind in the hands of 2 pissed-off, driven men?

Well, if you are one of those people who wonder what it’s like to be a spy for Russia, it looks like they have some openings (11 and counting!) for avid fans of the bad guys in Robert Ludlum novels. The only drawback, it seems, is that today’s spies live exceedingly ordinary lives.

No dead drops, no radio and code book in the attic, no blackmailing of scientists, no poison-tipped umbrellas, no tiny cameras to photograph sensitive papers during a daring embassy break-in, and worst of all, you don’t get to cary a gun with a silencer, much less assassinate anybody!

Granted, the spies picked up the other day by the Feds were “sleepers,” deeply imbedded moles instructed to keep a low profile and blend in with the American crowd while filing innocuous “political reports” and awaiting instructions to take action that never came.

The biggest action these people ever saw was fighting crabgrass. The only “intrigue” in which they were involved was connected with the leadership of their local PTA. So you might want to rethink pursuing the exciting life of an international spy. It’s just not what was.

Employees of the SVR (the renamed KGB), it couldn’t have taken them more than a month to realize that there was absolutely nothing at all secret or classified going on in the suburbs, but, not wanting to lose their cushy gig, they fed their spy masters all sorts of melodramatic nonsense, knowing they’d lap it up.

KGB operatives were the most pissed off of all Russians when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight back in 1990, rendering their vast espionage network all but obsolete. All they knew was the Cold War; the provocations, the propaganda, intelligence, counter-intelligence, espionage, sabotage and secret prisons. Then one day it was over without warning

Bureaucracies are, however, quite resilient, and the ex-KGB boys must have jumped at the chance to get back in the game when enterprising Russian and South American agents offered to spy on America from the comfort of their split-level ranch homes. What they promised to deliver we can only guess, but odds are they just made stuff up and passed it along on Twitter.

Imagine their chagrin when the Feds found out and thought they were on the level! Initial interrogations indicate that these people held no secrets about America, were in possession of exactly no classified documents or a single blueprint for a secret weapon on microfilm! Some spies.

One is reminded of the Conehead skit on Saturday Night Live where an alien family was sent to conquer Earth but instead wallowed in its bland pleasures and excesses, then panicked when asked for an accounting of their progress.

It was a good scam while it lasted, but with this Homeland Security Administration falling all over America like a ton of bricks to justify their own existence, these amateur spies were bound to find their way onto the radar of officialdom sooner or later. While busting this spy ring might have been a major coup twenty-five years ago, today it is only a mild curiosity at best.

Not too many people think all that much about Russia anymore, much less fear them. While this may bug the Russians no end, that’s just the way it is. With the Gulf of Mexico filing up with crude oil, jobs disappearing, homes being abandoned, lunatic religious terrorists vowing to destroy us and our rapidly warming planet poised to flood our shores with melting ice caps and drown millions of us, well, the Cold War doesn’t seem so bad now.

One would think that modern day Russian spies would be industrial espionage types, emulating China’s success in that area, especially with the orgy of corrupt capitalism and the gangster/entrepreneurs taking over the banks in the former worker’s paradise. For all we know, there’s no shortage of those people working in the United States for various corporations and the mole couples were a red herring.

Commerce is where the stakes are highest in today’s world, with the multinational corporations wielding more power and influence every day. And the pay is undoubtedly better. Russia has a whole lot of oil and natural gas, and when the Soviet Union’s collapse led to the privatization of these assets, politically connected and corrupt Soviet insiders along with the Russian mafia were the big winners in the instant billionaire sweepstakes.

The Russian government, on the other hand, can’t get out of its own way. Led by former KGB stalwart Vladimir Putin, a man who continues to call the breakup of the Soviet Union “a national catastrophe,” and accuses the American police of “going crazy” over the crabgrass spy ring, Russia is consumed with small wars with breakaway former Soviet Republics with names ending in “stan” and obsessed with regaining their Superpower status. It’s a little sad, really.

Even sadder is that so many within America’s intelligence community miss the Cold War as much as the Russians. An entire generation of our own Cold Warriors had nothing to do after 1990, which was okay by most of the world since the Cold War scared the crap out of everybody and gave our CIA license to do the most abominable things in small nations all over the globe.

Not that our “Russian experts” were any good. The fall of the Soviet union was as much of a surprise to them as it was to the rest of the world. You’d think that all the thousands of people trained to speak Russian and know everything there is to know about the Soviet Union would at least have a clue that the whole thing was about to go kablooey?  The answer to that one is “no” and they read about it in the papers like the rest of us.

Like their former-and hopefully-future nemeses in the KGB, our own Cold Warriors have now attained high rank through the merit of just being there and their mindset still informs the America intelligence community. Is it any wonder that a grubby bum in robes has eluded them by not playing by Cold War rules and hiding in caves in South Asia? Osama bin Laden has read all the Ludlum novels and wisely stays out of Prague and East Berlin.

And like most generals, our espionage leaders are fighting the last war, and this “Russian Spy Ring” vindicates that in their minds. We can look forward to more years of fighting the wrong wars with the wrong tactics. What will become of their new trophies, these Soccer Mom spies?

Who cares? They’ve already done enough damage, although not the sort their Russian handlers had in mind. America is unchanged by their feeble efforts, and more’s the pity since we need a complete overhaul of our intelligence agencies and their priorities. The last thing we need is a huge splashy “Red Menace” spy trial to take our eye off the terror ball.

This is not the 1950s, it’s the 21st century. Let’s hope our president doesn’t let our intelligence agencies get carried away with themselves and forget about bin Laden and his not-so-merry men, who, by the way, are feeling so comfortable that they have launched their own magazine to promote world-wide jihad. That should be interesting, as in horrifying interesting.

Probably the worst thing you can do to these spies is deport them, see if they can get hold of the spacious homes, minivans, iPads and the sheer American convenience of living in modern Russia. Those things are not for the Communist Party elite anymore, but the wheeler dealers in the private sector. The rest of Russia drinks plenty of vodka to ease the sting of getting screwed again by their latest Tsars.

Judging from their lack of initiative as spies, these mole couples are not exactly equipped to compete with the new Russian aristocracy of hustlers, mobsters and government-connected industrialists. There’s no place in today’s Russia for such people.

Thanks to them, however, there is a place again for American Cold Warriors and their legacy of psychotic, clandestine “black ops” that have caused so much misery. Way to go, Coneheads! Let’s hope they like vodka and standing in line dreaming about that worldwide worker’s paradise they were pretending to implement.

For the umpteenth time the Pentagon has announced that it has killed or captured the #2 man in Al Qaeda. The title, while it might be loaded with prestige for the man who gets to sit at the right hand of Osama bin Laden, has to be one of the most hazardous jobs around. Now that America has killed the latest #2 man, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, with an unmanned predator drone aircraft, somebody has to move up a notch to fill his job. The meeting of the Al Qaeda Leadership Council to pick a successor to Mr. al-Yazid went something like this:

Osama bin Laden: “I guess you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here…”

Sheik Yerbouti: “No, we’re not wondering, Ozzy. Everybody knows what happened to Mustafa. You’re looking to appoint a new #2 man. Well, count me out!”

Osama bin Laden: “It is duly noted that you don’t want the job, Sheik Yerbouti, and don’t call me Ozzy!”

Mullah Yabba Dabadu: “Sheik Yerbouiti isn’t the only one around here who feels that way, Osama. Allah knows that the #2 job in Al Qaeda is very hazardous to your health”.

Osama bin Laden: “Where is your martyr spirit, my people! Let’s keep the big picture in mind here, the defeat and conversion to Islam of the Great Satan America.”

Sheik Yerbouiti: “And where is yours, Ozzy? No one here remembers you volunteering to blow yourself up for the cause!”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “Yerbouti’s right! You want to fill the #2 job so bad, take it yourself!”

Osama bin Laden: “How can I be an assistant to myself! Besides, the role of martyr does not fall to leaders and planners like ourselves…”

Sultan Peppah: “Tell that to the last couple of dozen #2 men, Ozzy!”

Osama bin Laden: “They were well rewarded with 72 virgins in Paradise, and Alllah is most pleased with them! And stop calling me Ozzy!”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “And since when is our mission to defeat and convert America? We thought it was only to get America to leave us alone!”

Osama bin Laden: “After 8 years in Afghanistan, is has become obvious that the Great Satan is a very tenacious foe and will not leave until they kill or capture me. Therefore, they must be completely defeated and their country must be converted to Islam.”

Sultan Peppah: “Oh, is that all? Defeat the most modern army in the world and take over America? With what? Hijacked airplanes and illiterate goat herders? What part of Guerilla Insurgency don’t you get, Ozzy?”

Osama bin Laden: “The guerilla insurgency will defeat the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then we move the fight to their home soil for complete victory. And stop calling me Ozzy!”

Ayatollah Howmenee: “Conquer America? You had your cave checked for mold spores lately, Ozzy, ’cause you’re not thinking straight. Last time we did that they invaded Afghanistan, annihilated its army and toppled their government in like, what, 3 weeks? A year or so later they did the same thing to Iraq,  only this time they hung their leader for good measure. Now their flying robots kill us like steel hawks from the  sky! This would be a good time to lay out the grand plan to defeat these people, Ozzy. Where’s your invasion force gonna land? Who gets to govern Vegas once America surrenders?”

Osama bin Laden: “Enough with the Ozzy already! We will conquer the Great Satan from within, with American Muslim men willing to die for Allah.”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “Sure, like that Einstein you sent to Times Square! Get real! I’m thinking now that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to use up all 19 of our top guys on that 9/11 mission. What have we done since then? The Shoe-Bomber nitwit and the Times Square slacker, who left the keys to his damned getaway car in the car bomb?”

Sultan Peppah: “A car bomb which never went off, might I add?”

Osama bin Laden: “Okay, so they all can’t be home runs. What about the trains in Spain?”

Sheik Yerbouti: “Like the Rolling Stones song says: ‘Who wants yesterday’s papers?’”

Osama bin Laden: “Personally, I prefer ‘Exile on Main Street,’ but what is your point?”

Sheik Yerbouti: “I mean that you used up all of our best people in a just couple of big headline bombings, that’s what! The rest of ‘em can’t even read, for Allah’s sake! They couldn’t plan a meal, never mind spectacular attacks on infidels. Most of our people are real good at shooting AK47s up into the air and howling like banshees, and not much else! This is your army, pal, so command it to overthrow The Great Satan already! And while you’re feeling frisky, why stop at the conquest of America? Our toothless illiterates ought to be able to conquer the whole world in a couple of years, right?”

Osama bin Laden: “It will take more than a couple of years, my friend, perhaps even a decade…”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: “10 years and the world will be ours? In that case, you are indeed a masterful leader touched by Allah, and no man is worthy to be your assistant. I call upon this counsel to proclaim that from this day forward: ‘No mortal man shall sit at the right hand of Osama The Great.’ He will be his own #2 in Al Qaeda. long may he live! Those in favor say Aye!”

The Assembled Leadership Council: “Aye!”

Osama bin Laden: “Now, wait just a dog-gone minute…”

Imam Hoozya Dadyeh: The ‘Ayes’ have it! Congratulations, Ozzy, from here on in you’re your own Number 2# man! Let the world know that Osama The Great is both the #1 and the #2 man! Meeting adjourned. Watch out for those hawks, Ozzy!

Has anything gone right in Afghanistan since the opening weeks of that war when we destroyed their army and toppled the government? If that sounds like winning a war, well, that usually  does the trick, but America was in Afghanistan for another reason, to capture the madman who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t a part of the Afghansitan government, but a Sauidi Arabian of Yemeni descent, and he and his al Qaeda gang were being given a base of operations by the Taliban regime from which to train suicide killers and plan terrorist attacks. Both the head of the Taliban, one Mullah Omar, and Osama bin Laden escaped the initial onslaught and have been on the lam ever since, both still very active in their respective gangs.

For 8 years now we’ve been killing or capturing a series of #2 al Qaeda guys, possibly the least attractive job in Afghanistan. Now we get word that we have captured the #2 Taliban man, some goon with the mouthful of a name Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Meanwile, his boss, and the al Qaeda boss, both of them a striking 6 foot 6, have melted into the bleak landscape somewhere in the nebulous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Catching the #2 man in any organization might be a public relations coup, but doesn’t really do the trick of crippling the organization.

That’s like catching Larry of the Three Stooges and leaving Moe free. He and Curly would still be capable of all sorts of mayhem. And if the new #2 guy Curly gets apprehended, then Moe would simply go on with the show with Shemp and Joe Besser. Moe is the mastermind behind all the havoc perpetrated by the Three Stooges, the “brains” of that outfit, or at least as far as brains go with outfits like the Three Stooges and the Taliban. Usually just enough to make a ton of trouble for everybody else, and it’s always Moe’s idea. It’s the same with Osama and Omar. Without them, the rest of the Taliban and al Qaeda Stooges couldn’t plan lunch, never mind a tyrannical government or a deadly terrorist organization.

Osama makes more inspirational videos than Tony Robbins while planning further attacks on the West as we capture or kill his latest Larry. And now we’ve started down that same road with the Taliban, with the big cheese Mullah “Moe” Omar still out there on the loose running the Taliban and organizing it into a lethal guerrilla force, waiting for the day America tires of searching for the twin Moes so he can seize power again. The recent assault by 15,000 soldiers on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan saw sporadic fighting by a rear guard Larry Brigade assigned to hold off the enemy until the rest of the Talistooge guerrillas melted back into the mountains.

Mullah Omar will simply have his Stooges reappear where the enemy is not, that’s the name of the game in a rebel insurgency. He found out 8 years ago that the Talistooges were no match for a modern army and has tailored his tactics accordingly, while America and her allies have not. Unless and until they can capture a Moe, this war will be continue to be a stalemate. Kill or capture the twin Moes, and there is no more Taliban or al Qaeda for the other Stooges to follow. Enough with the capturing of yet another Larry. That’s happened so often it’s not even news anymore. Go after Moe or go home.