More about War
I've found myself torn for a long time on the War on terror. I would think few people- apart from dug-in (or is that drugged-in?) anti-war types- haven't.
The question is really who we are fighting.
Although some people have rightly disparaged the idea of fighting terrorism as a legal matter, there is a terribly big world which opens up when you think of what a wider context means. 'Jihad', taken seriously, means a war of civilisations. We know Osama and co. take that seriously (though we don't really know what 'and co.' means), so all that is required for major conflict is for us to take it seriously.
It's not that simple, and on the other hand it's not the majorly sophisticated cultural problem that some would have us think it is. I actually think (and don't laugh) there's an interesting comparison between Bin Ladin and our own dear Robin Hood.
Let's (as Roger Simon says) review.
Bin Ladin was rich; so was Robin Hood. Not only that, but rich in societies where many were not rich. Both became poor by standing up to powerful interests which many of their class would have accomodated (bear in mind that in both cases there is a degree of fantasy and myth involved). Both Bin Ladin and Robin Hood came to repesent the struggles of a racial group- the Arabs in Bin Ladin's case; the Anglo-Saxons against the (oppressive sort of) Normans in Robin Hood's- and drew a band of hardened followers around them, retreating to inhospitable areas where they could elude capture.
That's a good number of similarities. Now, let's look at the situation facing the US and the Normans when dealing respectively with Bin Ladin and Robin Hood.
What both Bin ladin and Robin Hood have done is melt into sympathetic populations. The same question faced the Normans as faces the US and allies- just how sympathetic are the populations? Even more significant, how sympathetic are the local authorities and the national authorities (in Robin Hood's case there was always the fear that those sympathetic to King Richard would organise an uprising).
The solution for the Normans and the Sheriff of Nottingham in particular, should have been simple: stop terrorising the people; stop taxing them to the bone; don't, as Alan Rickman amusingly did in the Hollywood version, try and 'cancel Christmas'. The trouble is of course that the US doesn't tax the people in these lands either indirectly or directly. They don't (or didn't) have any direct power to change cultural institutions in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bin Ladin myth is much more fantastical than the myth of Robin Hood. Bin ladin exists without any good reason; Robin Hood (likely) didn't exist yet there were very good reasons why he should have.
Having said that, however, the fact is that the US (upon which we Brits depend for so much), as the world's economic powerhouse, has been perceived unfavourably in the Arab and wider Islamic world. The tacit and active support that Bin ladin has received is drawn from the resevoir of blame, not for the actions of the US, which have been negligible, but for the state of Islamic people outside the glow of US economic and cultural warmth. Bin ladin's blame of US actions is really just placing a recognisable face on what is more an ideological or spiritual (in a sick way) message.
It is tempting to many to see the fault lying in the global inequality of capitalism. Many people say under their breath that if capitalism had not triumphed these problems would not have arisen. Unfortunately the real reason is beyond our direct control, and beyond the control of any system we could have devised for ourselves apart from the assistance of the rest of the world.
Religion, not poverty, is the real cause. Religion explains for the people how the poverty exists- explains for all levela of society. The most pernicious analysis though comes from the top, from the bin Ladins of the Arab world.
To take one example: the Koran forbids usury, the lending of money for interest. Now, obviously, this mechanism, as crude as it is, has been the underpinning factor in western industrialisation. It has created the relentless aspiration towards social development which creates the demand for all the oil that Bin Ladin accuses us of stealing. To a true utopian, placing a high price on that commodity and scrambling for it in a short period of time, creates an inequality with which the mechanisms of a society without full capitalist equipment cannot cope. Hence, we are the cause of their problems.
If you add that kind of analysis to the traditional one of Western colonialism, and say that the power structures put in place by the European powers are now the foundation of the US' economic dominance (which would be highly debatable- if debate were possible in Islamic countries), and you have the crude underpinnings of a modern interpretation of Islam's Koran-inspired insecurity and persecution complex, its need to have military expression, and its conviction that it will finally overcome.
Thus, the analysis ought to be that we need to change the mediation process between our economies and cultures, and theirs. At the same time the priority has to be to confront some of the poisonous emanations from that cultural understanding which sees us as the enemies. Sounds rather like regime change and pre-emption, doesn't it?
Ok, so it was right to pursue such a policy. That's a relief. The real challenge though is whether we can provide a better mediation than the relentless stereotyping and inaccurate logic of groups and people like the Taliban and Saddam. That's bearing in mind that the mediators like Saddam never existed in a vacuum- far from it- and many of them remain. Furthermore there are many in our cultures who have and are promulgating the analysis which blames our dark-hearted capitalism for all the world's problems. Finally, those two countries were not the only ones in need of reform, and we still have to contend with others.
There's really something quite daunting here. Islam declares effectively that the unbeliever has to prove himself to be good; he is guilty until proven innocent. That's the challenge bin Ladin, in full hysterical cultural charge, has set for the US: prove that you're good or we'll blow you up. This is effectively impossible when the 1st principle of Islam is that you're an enemy until you demonstrate your submission to God (whose representative on Earth was Muhammed, whose devoted follower is bin Ladin).
Bin Ladin gave us a set of inaccurate and unrealistic propositions to define our failings, because anything more sophisticated would have pointed the finger back at you-know-who - the Arab ruling class from which bin Ladin has been spawned. So it's a bomb with a code that's been scrambled. The only chance is to cut off some of the wires that made its construction. The only way this can be done is with understanding, skill, and the brute force of the wire cutters.
My final point, the aspirational one, is this: the people of Iraq and the Middle East broadly don't deserve to be the pawns in the strategic game of rich-boy turned outlaw Usama bin Ladin, or any of his clones. They need careful consideration- which may sometimes involve serious decisive action to destroy the irresponsible and the schemers. There needs to be no oxygen for the many idiot hotbloods of the Islamic youth to breathe- and yet we must not assume that the idiot hotbloods are stupid; they are just suicidally feckless. To put it crudely, we are not the Sheriff of Nottingham and Osama is no Robin Hood- but we must not be crude if we're going to win the war on terror before the terror becomes more real than the war. This is a myth we have to unpick- and meanwhile many bombs are ticking.
The question is really who we are fighting.
Although some people have rightly disparaged the idea of fighting terrorism as a legal matter, there is a terribly big world which opens up when you think of what a wider context means. 'Jihad', taken seriously, means a war of civilisations. We know Osama and co. take that seriously (though we don't really know what 'and co.' means), so all that is required for major conflict is for us to take it seriously.
It's not that simple, and on the other hand it's not the majorly sophisticated cultural problem that some would have us think it is. I actually think (and don't laugh) there's an interesting comparison between Bin Ladin and our own dear Robin Hood.
Let's (as Roger Simon says) review.
Bin Ladin was rich; so was Robin Hood. Not only that, but rich in societies where many were not rich. Both became poor by standing up to powerful interests which many of their class would have accomodated (bear in mind that in both cases there is a degree of fantasy and myth involved). Both Bin Ladin and Robin Hood came to repesent the struggles of a racial group- the Arabs in Bin Ladin's case; the Anglo-Saxons against the (oppressive sort of) Normans in Robin Hood's- and drew a band of hardened followers around them, retreating to inhospitable areas where they could elude capture.
That's a good number of similarities. Now, let's look at the situation facing the US and the Normans when dealing respectively with Bin Ladin and Robin Hood.
What both Bin ladin and Robin Hood have done is melt into sympathetic populations. The same question faced the Normans as faces the US and allies- just how sympathetic are the populations? Even more significant, how sympathetic are the local authorities and the national authorities (in Robin Hood's case there was always the fear that those sympathetic to King Richard would organise an uprising).
The solution for the Normans and the Sheriff of Nottingham in particular, should have been simple: stop terrorising the people; stop taxing them to the bone; don't, as Alan Rickman amusingly did in the Hollywood version, try and 'cancel Christmas'. The trouble is of course that the US doesn't tax the people in these lands either indirectly or directly. They don't (or didn't) have any direct power to change cultural institutions in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bin Ladin myth is much more fantastical than the myth of Robin Hood. Bin ladin exists without any good reason; Robin Hood (likely) didn't exist yet there were very good reasons why he should have.
Having said that, however, the fact is that the US (upon which we Brits depend for so much), as the world's economic powerhouse, has been perceived unfavourably in the Arab and wider Islamic world. The tacit and active support that Bin ladin has received is drawn from the resevoir of blame, not for the actions of the US, which have been negligible, but for the state of Islamic people outside the glow of US economic and cultural warmth. Bin ladin's blame of US actions is really just placing a recognisable face on what is more an ideological or spiritual (in a sick way) message.
It is tempting to many to see the fault lying in the global inequality of capitalism. Many people say under their breath that if capitalism had not triumphed these problems would not have arisen. Unfortunately the real reason is beyond our direct control, and beyond the control of any system we could have devised for ourselves apart from the assistance of the rest of the world.
Religion, not poverty, is the real cause. Religion explains for the people how the poverty exists- explains for all levela of society. The most pernicious analysis though comes from the top, from the bin Ladins of the Arab world.
To take one example: the Koran forbids usury, the lending of money for interest. Now, obviously, this mechanism, as crude as it is, has been the underpinning factor in western industrialisation. It has created the relentless aspiration towards social development which creates the demand for all the oil that Bin Ladin accuses us of stealing. To a true utopian, placing a high price on that commodity and scrambling for it in a short period of time, creates an inequality with which the mechanisms of a society without full capitalist equipment cannot cope. Hence, we are the cause of their problems.
If you add that kind of analysis to the traditional one of Western colonialism, and say that the power structures put in place by the European powers are now the foundation of the US' economic dominance (which would be highly debatable- if debate were possible in Islamic countries), and you have the crude underpinnings of a modern interpretation of Islam's Koran-inspired insecurity and persecution complex, its need to have military expression, and its conviction that it will finally overcome.
Thus, the analysis ought to be that we need to change the mediation process between our economies and cultures, and theirs. At the same time the priority has to be to confront some of the poisonous emanations from that cultural understanding which sees us as the enemies. Sounds rather like regime change and pre-emption, doesn't it?
Ok, so it was right to pursue such a policy. That's a relief. The real challenge though is whether we can provide a better mediation than the relentless stereotyping and inaccurate logic of groups and people like the Taliban and Saddam. That's bearing in mind that the mediators like Saddam never existed in a vacuum- far from it- and many of them remain. Furthermore there are many in our cultures who have and are promulgating the analysis which blames our dark-hearted capitalism for all the world's problems. Finally, those two countries were not the only ones in need of reform, and we still have to contend with others.
There's really something quite daunting here. Islam declares effectively that the unbeliever has to prove himself to be good; he is guilty until proven innocent. That's the challenge bin Ladin, in full hysterical cultural charge, has set for the US: prove that you're good or we'll blow you up. This is effectively impossible when the 1st principle of Islam is that you're an enemy until you demonstrate your submission to God (whose representative on Earth was Muhammed, whose devoted follower is bin Ladin).
Bin Ladin gave us a set of inaccurate and unrealistic propositions to define our failings, because anything more sophisticated would have pointed the finger back at you-know-who - the Arab ruling class from which bin Ladin has been spawned. So it's a bomb with a code that's been scrambled. The only chance is to cut off some of the wires that made its construction. The only way this can be done is with understanding, skill, and the brute force of the wire cutters.
My final point, the aspirational one, is this: the people of Iraq and the Middle East broadly don't deserve to be the pawns in the strategic game of rich-boy turned outlaw Usama bin Ladin, or any of his clones. They need careful consideration- which may sometimes involve serious decisive action to destroy the irresponsible and the schemers. There needs to be no oxygen for the many idiot hotbloods of the Islamic youth to breathe- and yet we must not assume that the idiot hotbloods are stupid; they are just suicidally feckless. To put it crudely, we are not the Sheriff of Nottingham and Osama is no Robin Hood- but we must not be crude if we're going to win the war on terror before the terror becomes more real than the war. This is a myth we have to unpick- and meanwhile many bombs are ticking.
