Searle, <I doubt if the organization ever existed --- except in the minds of those who plan US foreign policy --- or attempt to justify it!?>
Well you can't have a war without an enemy. The reality of al-quada makes sense if you consider that it gives us a target to which the US military can direct its response. The US military definitely NEEDS an identifiable organization upon which to focus its efforts. And to people who see a military solution to every problem, something more concrete than the amorphous enemy of arab rage is useful.
If you consider bin laden to be the equivalent of al-quada, A. Roy's description is interesting:
"But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)
Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as "the head of the snake". Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless."
al-quada = the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless (but now do we have to also add, 'and those who sympathize with the oppressed and resent the hegemonic US')
John |
