>Idealising the other side
>
>Opponents of the Boer war were right, but like today's anti-war crowd,
>wrong about the enemy
>
>Geoffrey Wheatcroft
>Friday October 19, 2001
>The Guardian
>... It is quite hard to idolise or extenuate Osama bin Laden,
>but some are doing their best. In response to the atrocity of
>September 11, a false syllogism was proposed: we should attack poverty
>and injustice because they are "the causes of terrorism", and "the
>west should take the blame for pushing people in developing countries
>to the end of their tether". Poverty and injustice should be righted
>because they are wrong, but they did not breed this latest horror. Bin
>Laden was brought up in luxury, and his zealous recruits were
>educated, middle-class men.
Whatever the strategy of which WTC was part, poverty and injustice have surely always been crucial to its likelihood of success. Mass support for al Qa'ida and growing pressure on western-inclined ME governments are big and predictable parts of what's going on. Hard to believe poverty and injustice had nothing to do with the formulation of the terrorists' plans - or the chances of their success ...
>Caution is still a valid principle - against the excessive use of
>American force or Tony Blair's millenarian rhetoric about changing the
>whole world. And yet history is tragic, human nature is not
>essentially benign, the Boers were not noble heroes, the Kaiser and
>Hitler were not much-maligned men pushed to the end of their tether.
>And Bin Laden and his followers are not Fanon's wretched of the earth
>avenging injustice, they are bloodthirsty religious maniacs. The world
>is not as simple - or as lovable - as liberals would sometimes wish.
Criticising Washington's habit of going in mob-handed and Blair's self-aggrandising disingenuities (is that a word?) is almost as easy as knocking down straw men, I see. Sheesh, you could wipe a world of arseholes with the wastepaper this obscenity is generating.
Cheers, Rob.