Bad things
This morning I keep seeing bad stuff at the Guardian, via different directions – Terry Glavin at Facebook, Norm at Normblog, like that. I’ve seen so much bad stuff this morning that I feel as if I ought to point at it in disgust.
Like Adam Curtis at CisF, via Norm.
The horrific thing about Osama bin Laden was that he helped to kill thousands of innocent people throughout the world. But he was also in a strange way a godsend to the west. He simplified the world.
That “but” is interesting. So is that “the horrific thing.” The but is interesting because given what comes before, why have a “but” at all? There is no but. The first sentence is all we need to know. There is no “but” after that.
We’ll be reminded by heroes of anti-imperialism that the imperialists and neo-cons helped to kill thousands of innocent people too. True enough, but not as the goal. Not as the goal or a goal. Not on purpose.
That’s small comfort to the people killed. But what about their relatives and friends? What about the injured? I should think it makes a difference to them.
At any rate, it is different. Bin Laden killed people in order to kill people. Bin Laden wanted them dead, and he wanted more dead, as many as possible. He never whispered a word of regret for Gladys Wundowa or anyone else; he beamed with joy about his success at killing hundreds or thousands at a blow.
There is no “but” after that. There is nothing else about him that matters, that is in contrast to “the horrific thing” about him that was killing people and rejoicing to have done so. That isn’t “the horrific thing” about bin Laden, it just is bin Laden.
Al-Qaida became the new Soviet Union, and in the process Bin Laden became a demonic, terrifyingly powerful figure brooding in a cave while he controlled and directed the al-Qaida network throughout the world…
I just remarked yesterday that I went on thinking that way for an embarrassingly long time. Adam Curtis is still at it.
Then there’s Azzam Tamimi.
Soon after the fall of Hosni Mubarak I visited my old friend, the Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al, in Damascus. He told me he was sure the change in Egypt, which he expected would be followed by similar changes in other Arab countries, meant that it would not be too long before Palestine was free.
My friends in Gaza would tell me the same thing, and so would my relatives in Hebron and the diaspora. They all believed that the Mubarak regime was an impediment to the Palestinian struggle for freedom; once the Egyptian people were free, a genuine democracy in Egypt would support the Palestinians.
Free. Free, freedom, free – via Hamas.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at here.
Bin Laden and his terrorists are bad people. The people in the West who exploited the terrorist attacks for personal, professional, and political gain are also bad people, but not on a par with terrorists. The terrorist threat is blown way out of proportion.
What am I missing here?
Well, if you remember that Pakistan has nukes – at least 100 of them – it’s not obvious that the terrorist threat is blown out of proportion.
But that wasn’t the point of the post. The point of that was Curtis’s buttery.
The but isn’t so much a comment about bin Laden as a comment about us, no? About our willingness to see the world in black and white – to skip the step of trying on our enemies shoes to see how their world looks and realize the nuance of horrible situations. Osama bin Laden killed innocent Americans, so he is evil, so anyone who helps him is evil, so the U.S. has a right to invade Afghanistan – a country of 30 million people in the midst of a civil war at the time – for the crime of not turning over one of their warlords until they received some evidence of bin Laden’s involvement. After all he did claim no involvement.
What would we do if Iran declared an American responsible for a terrorist act and demanded we turn him over without any evidence of involvement? And as a humanizing act, Osama did declare multiple times his enemy was with the American government, not the American people, and he repeatedly condemned terrorist acts against civilians.
Or like the Hamas thing. Israeli rockets cause collateral damage to Palestinian civilians, and Palestinian terrorists fire rockets on the Israeli people. Not to mention Israeli fences and guards separate Palestinians into 5 isolated desert cantons without access to free trade or communications or even aid from the outside world. That is an ongoing act of war against the Palestinian people, yet Hamas responds in kind and with fewer casualties than Israeli rockets and suddenly Hamas is pure evil.
I just don’t understand what the point of this post is, OB. You don’t like the violent backlash to the creeping oppression of capitalist empire? Neither do I, but I understand my own government was an indirect cause and has blood on its hands too. Or do you think all Islamic terrorism is purely motivated by religion and not by a festering stew of religion and socio-political conflict?
So if he had replaced “but” with “and”, or just started the next sentence with “He was also…” then it would have been alright?
I have more of an issue with the second part quoted, about how “Al-Qaida became” and “Bin Laden became,” as though they actually morphed into the Soviet Union and/or Satan as some sort of organic and inevitable process. Actually, I have more problems than that… yeah, it is just bad news all around.
BTW, when I say that the terrorist threat is blown out of proportion, I don’t mean “nonexistent” by any stretch. I just mean that a couple of hundred thousand troops plus support staff and mercenaries to chase down what is now maybe a couple of hundred Al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan (and whatever we invaded Iraq over), plus ridiculously invasive and ineffective airport security, indefinite detentions, torture, and erosion of civil liberties… It all seems like going after a rabid dog with an infantry battalion while declaring martial law. That’s all I’m saying.
I am a huge fan of Adam Curtis, and regularly post on his blog. However, someone else was not too pleased with his article either, and posted the following comment on his blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2011/04/_in_order_to_see.html?postId=108547711#comment_108547711
To be honest, I don’t see what you’re seeing Ophelia. I have been following Adam’s documentaries and his analysis tends to be spot on and insightful.
the violent backlash to the creeping oppression of capitalist empire
Yup. Al Qaeda (Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Khomeini, 9/11, London, Madrid, Bali, rapes, honour killings, beheadings, suicide bombings, Sharia, Motoons, Rushdie, fatwas galore, etc., etc., etc.) in a nutshell. Nothing else to see; now move along please…
That settles it then. 9/11 had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. What was it exactly? An inside job?
Right, he did say that so many times. A humanist at heart. Should have won the Nobel prize.
Right again. After all, Palestinian terrorists (are they really?) want nothing more than peaceful coexistence with their Jewish neighbors. They only blow themselves up to protest against Israel’s oppressive policies.
Of course you do. It’s yet another veiled apology for the racist, zionist, capitalist, imperialist policies that dominates and destructs the world.
@Improbable Joe,
Estimates put the death toll for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the resulting chaos upwards of 2 million. This in response to 4 thousand killed in Al Qaeda terrorist attacks. We have literally killed half a thousand of them for every one of ours dead. Sure, they started* it, but can we really take the moral high ground any more?
*Given our longstanding support for oil dictators and theocrats despite violent crackdowns, it is disputable who started the killing or even when the killing started, especially if you want to go back to the Shah or the Barbary pirates or merge white, Christian, American identity with Western identity and go back even further to the Turks and the Crusades and the Moors and freaking Charlemagne.
@Alain,
Was I blaming the West for all the violence in the Middle East? No. If you will read the rest of that paragraph I explicitly blame religion as well (although I should have said Islam), and I’m sure there are even more background influences to add to the list if one had the time.
Miles McCullough, #3:
On whether or not the American people were an “enemy,” the record of Mr. bin Laden’s remarks, and the record of other Al Qaida spokespersons, is at best inconsistent with Miles’s characterization, and at worst flatly contradicts that characterization. There was a widely-circulated November 24, 2002 “letter to America.” It was standard, Salafist / Islamist agitprop out of the Sayid Qtub / Hasan Al Banna / Al Qaida playbook.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
The content and the letter’s release were almost certainly approved by bin Laden, even if the writing style of most of it is not consistent with his style. Much of the criticism was aimed at the American people and the American nation and culture, not at the American government. The argument goes that because American people freely elect their leaders, they are directly responsible for their government leaders’ misdeeds (see paragraphs 3 a through 3 e in the Guardian‘s translation).
And I feel a strange but wonderful pride that according to this letter, the worst, the worst aspect of America is its official, constitutional separation of church and state:
@Saikat,
I neither said that bin Laden was innocent, nor that he should be forgiven. Ditto for Palestinian terrorists, yes they are terrorists. Is humanizing one’s enemies really that black of a sin?
I did so because I am a firm believer in getting one’s own house in order before you judge others. To do otherwise is the height of hypocrisy. There is enough blame to go around in the Middle East, but until each side honestly faces the part they and their enemies have played, we will continue to fight over a never ending cycle of religion, revenge, and self-profit.
@Jeff, I only know what the newspapers report. I can’t say if the speeches attributed to bin Laden were actually written by him or not, though there do appear to be a lot of conflicting statements attributed to bin Laden, so you are right about that. My source was the following passage from an interview with bin Laden on 9/28/2001:
Upon re-examination it appears that the quote was lifted from an attempt to blame Israel and “the Jews” for the WTC attack, an obvious ploy for pan-Islamic sympathy and simultaneous scapegoating if ever there was one. I offer my apologies for taking him at his word in a quote-mined passage and not researching further.
Again, my only point from the beginning was that the evidence was not conclusive concerning bin Laden’s guilt at the time we invaded Afghanistan, and a reasonable country could deny extradition on these grounds. Now that appears to be even more of a gray issue, after all Pat Robertson also blamed the WTC attacks on a ludicrous group that he disliked. Religious nuts tend to do that sort of thing, but that doesn’t mean one is really responsible and hiding it.
Miles:
A good point, and I agree. Only those who have never directed a bunch of zombie followers to fly planes into skscrapers are entitled to judge bin Laden.
I believe that bin Laden deserved to die. The point is that this is a belief. Would it not have been a better thing, in the long run, to bring him to trial, to document as a matter of public record what he did, how he did it, who else was involved, all the whats and whos and whys and hows. What was his defence, how does that really stand up? It is only by examining this in a proper trial that you have the solid factual basis to demonstrate the true guilt and the true horror of his actions – how else are you going to counter such an ideology. After all, at the end of the second world war the Nazi leaders weren’t shot out of hand, they were captured and put on trial and those whose guilt was sufficient were properly executed.
And another thing, should there have been any religious performance when his body was buried? As far as I can see – and of course there isn’t a trial at which this can be examined – his actions barred him from being considered a Muslim.
bin Laden was certainly not the only theocrat in the Guardian today and probably not the biggest threat to the US – especially when our own set of antiscience zealots are out in full force: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/may/05/evangelical-christian-environmentalism-green-dragon
Miles (#11),
Apology accepted (by me, at least).
Of course in that first (September 28, 2011) interview report, bin Laden denied involvement in the 9-11 attacks. Later, authenticated video or audio surfaced for a meeting or a presentation in which bin Laden took credit for the attacks and practically beamed with pride at having accurately predicted that all the burning jet fuel would weaken the towers’ steel exoskeleton and cause a pancaking collapse of upper floors upon lower floors, and so on.
I don’t consider making it easy to oversimplify international affairs a godsend at all.
Let someone else launch the drones against targets in Pakistan and Yemen, so long as they’re launched. Let the Security Council take over when they’re ready. Are they ready and willing? Let the French and British fight Quaddafi. Oh, I see they can’t, they’ve run out of bombs, we have to do it after all or it won’t get done. Isn’t this the situation we’re in?
The truth is that the world has already passed judgment on the moral fitness of the U.S. to be the world police. It does this by offering only the mildest resistance to being defended by us, mostly in the form of saying that we’re not doing it right. When they’ve had enough they will devote more resources to defending themselves. Presently it serves both the U.S. and allies to keep the arrangement as it is. It’s better at keeping everyone safe than making everyone happy.
Hypocrisy doesn’t really come into international relations in the way it does between parents and children. And, fortunately, it doesn’t even come into it there, as children find out when they try to convict their parents of not being perfect. Nasty as flagrant hypocrisy is, it doesn’t decide cases.
No. No no no no no no no. Osama bin Laden killed thousands of innocent people, on purpose, not as a by-product but as a goal, and he was overjoyed about it afterwards. He was the kind of person who does that. He wasn’t a mistaken idealist of some sort – he was a theocratic bully who liked killing people. He wasn’t an overzealous anti-imperialist, he was an Islamist thug.
Fine, the WTC attacks were an act of mass murder of innocents for purely religious reasons. Even granting that, how does that make Afghan requests for evidence before extraditing the accused any less reasonable?
How does that justify the invasion of a country of 30 million people – a country that wasn’t perfectly accommodating of Western interests perhaps in part because it was busy with a decade long civil war in which the relatively theocratic forces received a great deal of outside support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and in which the relatively democratic forces received a relative pittance in support from Western sources, not to mention the preceding invasion from another imperial power, the Soviets.
In other words, nobody outside Afghanistan cared about the place enough to do anything but invade or support theocratic warlords, and suddenly Afghans are supposed to go out of their way to help the U.S. when either we don’t have evidence of guilt or we refuse to share it?
Osama simply isn’t the point. The point is U.S.-Afghani relations show leave much to be desired on the U.S. end. The ‘buttery’ of some people is an attempt to bring discussion back to a focus on how are actions affect the world and how we can improve our own actions instead of gloating over the dead. The ‘butters’ are looking to the future instead of the past.
I don’t even know that much… he may have just been a garden-variety sociopath who got off on manipulating other people to do his dirty work, and the religious angle was part of that. Otherwise, yeah… whatever credit we give to the idea of imperialism (and I give it a lot), that’s not what drives someone to convince others to commit murder, and then hide out in a giant mansion eating Cheetos and drinking Pepsi while his organization goes to pot.
Ophelia,
So, Bin Laden killed thousands of innocent people deliberately and this is supposed to be different from killing people as a ‘by product’. Is that the difference between manslaughter and murder? Killing innocent people negligently or callously in an unjust war and then redefining the slaughter of human beings as ‘collateral damage’ is repugnant. Bin Laden was a psychopath, however I doubt if we could have charged him with hypocrisy. In quantifying the extent of Axis atrocities during WW2, wouldn’t you include the indirect victims of the Nazis and Japanese.
Bin Laden’s unforgivable crime was scaring the beejeezus out of Americans.
Yes, that is the way I read it as well. For someone who decries oversimplification and fantasies, Curtis’s article sure contains a lot of them, though. Like the part about Obama rejecting interventionism? Since when? He’s just reaffirmed it. (I’m not blaming western interventionism for terrorism, but the militarized response to terrorism and militant Islamism do seem to be feeding off each other)
If your country was invaded on falsified evidence and was now in the grip of religious fundamentalists and your relatives or friends had been killed, how much difference would it make? I think it’s a little too pat to say ‘it wasn’t on purpose’. The religious usually claim that there’s a higher purpose behind their actions and the suffering they cause is just a byproduct.
Miles – one, bin Laden had a hand in a lot more killings than just the one at the WTC. I am not talking about just the WTC. You keep trying to pin little america-ism on me, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m also not talking about the war in Afghanistan. I’m not saying anything at all about what justifies that. You’re confusing me with someone else.
Bin Laden may not be the point as far as you’re concerned, but I wrote this post, and he is the point of this post. You’re talking about something else.
Fuck, but you guys are patronizing.
Bin Laden’s unforgivable crime was scaring the beejeezus out of Americans.
Well I am not a US citizen and he fucken scares the beejeezus out of me. I only wish my country (Mexico) would have joined in the enterprise.
On Afghan and US relationships. While there are certainly a (underscoring it) shitload of issues regarding the current political climate in Afghanistan, im pretty sure that “philosophical considerations over the imperialist US of A” are at the bottom of it, the main issues for afghan people is services, corruption and not getting blown up while theyre voting (thanks anti-imperialist AQ). For the Karzai is all about keeping power. And for USA is all about not having it go back to a breeding ground for terrorists (its arguable if it still is, but its undeniable that AQ capabilities have diminished during the war), I am of course oversimplifying, but these are actual arguments one can use and no pointing and judging for the bad bad americans who want to conquer all the countries.
On actual topic: I also used to be a lefty who believed that Osama was a freedom fighter, it is the same self-blindness, I fear, than that which allowed good left thinkers to support the URSS after ’45. Tribal thinking? Us against them? I cannot say, but we really should know better.
Ophelia,
“you guys”?
I really don’t make much of distinction between the two when it comes to moral culpability. Idealists have a responsibility to get their facts right before employing violence as a tactic. Sure, Stalin enjoyed killing people, and some of the people who followed his orders did so out of fear, but some of them probably thought they were building the just, equitable society envisioned by Marx.
The main difference is that the latter are capable of learning that they made a mistake and correct, whereas the former are not.
Not getting it done is the idea. Let the Libyan rebels fight Qaddafi. They might win; they’ll probably lose. I’m OK with the US hitting actual Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, but not with trying to build a nation in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
Yes it is. Otherwise every leader who took their country to war (just or otherwise) is a cold-blooded killer, from Roosevelt and Churchill, to Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. You want to put each of them on par with a bin Laden or a Milosevic, be my guest. Just don’t expect the rest of us to adhere to your lofty standards.
His apparent lack of hypocrisy makes him less of a psychopath? Since when is hypocrisy the mother of all sins?
Maybe. Wouldn’t you counter Axis atrocities by bringing up Hiroshima and Dresden?
Seriously, what is wrong with you guys? Where exactly do you get your geopolitical opinions from? It’s spectacularly infantile.
Ophelia,
As far as I can tell your post wasn’t written about bin Laden; it was written about the “but” that journalists/bloggers used to turn bin Laden’s death into a commentary on American imperialism. As such I took it as an attack on anti-Imperialism or maybe a more pedantic attack on segues. Looks like it’s time for me to apologize once again for misunderstanding something.
Nobody in the American media to my knowledge was trying to defend the terrorist acts committed in bin Laden’s name. At most some anti-Imperialists were trying to educate the public and insist on holding America to a higher standard of respect for trials, treatment of the enemy, and general decency.
#29 Saikat Biswas,
More ‘you guys’,who are ‘we’?
Where did I claim that bin Laden’s ‘apparent lack of hypocrisy” made him less of a psychopath? Unlike the US,I can’t remember bin Laden lecturing the rest of the world, in an insufferably patronizing manner, on the virtues of democracy and then proceeding, with breathtaking hubris, to ignore democratic conventions when it was expedient. Bin Laden was a 7th century tribal chieftain and didn’t claim to be anything different.
Which of the numerous Third World nation-states that the US has ‘intervened’ in since 1945 and often reduced to misery and chaos has attacked America first? Which one of America’s wars since 1945 has been a “just war”, are any of those interventions comparable with the struggle againt the Axis nations? Yes,the allies did commit war crimes eg Dresden,Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Seriously, what is wrong with you guys? Where exactly do you get your geopolitical opinions from? It’s spectacularly infantile.”
I get my geopolitical opinions from the world, not from between the borders of Canada and Mexico. Did Americans really think that they could bomb the crap out of the rest of the world for 60 years and that absolutely not one those foreigners wouldn’t successfully retaliate someday, somehow?
@31 … You guys are the ones who never miss a beat to squarely blame US (and Israeli) policies for every single instance of terrorism. You guys are the ones who interpret every suicide bombings, taped beheadings and public stonings as ‘responding in kind’ to imperialist excesses. You guys are the ones who bring up nonsensical analyses from the Nixon and Reagan era to dispute contemporary realpolitik. You guys are the ones who haven’t the foggiest idea about the real, theocratic character of Islamist threat and who comfort themselves by imagining that threat as a mere, avoidable nuisance. You guys are the ones whose politics is based on convenience and is devoid of any sense of proportion. You guys are a travesty.
For the record, I’m not an American and hold no brief for US foreign policy in the last 60 years. I grew up in a country which suffered a bloody, sectarian partition, against whose citizens bin Laden and his Jihadi brethren declared open war much before 9/11 happened and killed thousands of innocent men, women and children. I have seen too many self-proclaimed leftist liberals in my country either openly embracing Islamist thugs as ‘freedom fighters’ or keeping a gratuitous silence as politicians fell over each other to appease the fanatical fringe. I’ve had it with people who never cease to come up with the most exquisite rationalizations for the actions of bloodthirsty fanatics. It’s repulsive. It’s corrupt. It’s thoroughly despicable.
#32,
By your definition I’m not one of “those guys”. However you appear to be one of those guys who demonize people who disagree with them,even though they know absolutely nothing about them,so don’t include me in the ‘useful idiot’ category or make offensive remarks
I have no respect for Islam, or for any religion and I certainly don’t agree with the constant concessions to Islamism in the name of “Multiculturalism”.
You know, I don’t think the horrible thing about bin Laden was that he killed thousands of people – that was a horrible thing about him, but it wasn’t the horrible thing.
Consider the case of Bradley Manning – prior to 9/11 Manning would have possibly have simply been tried and executed. Post 9/11 he has been subjected to social isolation and what appears to be a campaign of psychological warfare not to gain any new information, there is no ticking time bomb there, but because the US military can. The US military has become like a vindictive child.
Prior to 9/11 the US had as part of its idealism the idea that human beings have rights which are inaliable. These rights could not be taken away simply because you are dealing with a bad human being, or that person is foreign. America didn’t always live up to its ideals – there was always a bit of hypocrisy involved – but these ideals set out exactly what America was trying to be.
Post bin Laden these rights first came to only cover Americans, and now only Americans it is comfortable to defend. America isn’t even trying anymore, somehow being a decent human being has become unpragmatic. Even when doing the decent thing has been shown to have a greater chance of working, its unpragmatic.
Look at Wikileaks – the most that has happened there legally has been an investigation into the idea of an investigation. It has not even been legally accused of doing anything wrong, yet US government pressure was applied to shut down donations to it. The US developed a psychology of not having to work within any legal framework whatsoever, a psychology of zero accountability, to deal with the “threat” of Osama bin Laden and this psychology has spilled over into everything else.
That is the horrible thing about Osama bin Laden. Osama wanted to destroy the very idea of America, and he has succeeded.
Simply for his patrician mannerisms, Bin Laden’s been seen as somehow ‘above’ the usual blood-curdling fundamentalism he wallowed in. Yet I recall the well-respected BBC reporter John Simpson telling how he bumped into Bin Laden in Afghanistan, in 1989:
“with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson’s Afghan driver $500 — a large sum in a poor country — to kill the infidel Simpson.”
simply because Simpson was Western. The evidence of Bin Laden’s psychopathy was increasingly widespread before 9/11, and certainly apparent after the African embassy bombings in the late 90’s. BTW Miles McCullough, you expect the Taliban to be swayed by ‘evidence’? What’s got into you?
You’re mistaken here – Curtis explicitly denies that Bin Laden was that kind of James Bond villain terror figure. He’s merely commenting that that was what he became in the west’s perception.
I think several of you are grossly misreading Adam Curtis here. He’s just repeating his point, made at length in The Power of Nightmares, that many people had/have a clear personal incentive to exaggerate the (genuine and serious) threat from moslem terrorism.
@ 34
“That is the horrible thing about Osama bin Laden. Osama wanted to destroy the very idea of America, and he has succeeded.”
Again, Osama didnt succeed in anything, this is what helps in portaiting him as an idealist fighting against western imperialism. He wasnt, he was a rich, megalomaniacal, brat who wanted all the middle east under his thumb. So no, he lost and he knew he was losing.
As for the rest of your post I sadly agree, the civil liberties that have been lost thanks to this “war on terror” are quite terrifying, the case of Manning in particular is horrible and worring and indeed the worst outcome of this war.
Allow me to second RJW.
@Bruce,
Manning’s torture is a warning to any who might dare to embarrass America by revealing her imperial ambitions, and it is only tolerated by the American people, because they have been bludgeoned by neo-con “defense” rhetoric in response to 9/11.
Manning wouldn’t have been executed before 9/11; that horrible day probably made his expected punishment a lot worse. The last execution of a spy was the Rosenbergs in the McCarthy era, despite some high level spies being found since. Besides, Manning didn’t covertly leak American secrets to foreign powers, he publicly leaked government secrets to the American people. He is a hero, not a traitor. Not that you disagree, I just think it needs to be said more often xD
@Mike,
There was considerable public disagreement among the Taliban about whether to turn over bin Laden before the invasion even without evidence of guilt. They weren’t entirely stupid; many could smell the harbingers of war and did not want it. At least that’s what Chomsky says, and I trust his encyclopedic knowledge of hard facts.
Besides, I think assuming the religious, even the insanely religious, are oblivious to evidence underestimates them. They are capable of dealing with evidence, they just choose not to when it comes to particular beliefs and practices and anything that threatens such.