Return-Path: <sentto-279987-3229-1003760401-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:22:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25677 invoked by uid 510); 22 Oct 2001 14:19:32 -0000 Received: from n14.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.64) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 22 Oct 2001 14:19:32 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-3229-1003760401-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.1.221] by n14.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 22 Oct 2001 14:20:58 -0000 X-Sender: fc@red.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 22 Oct 2001 14:20:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 20967 invoked from network); 22 Oct 2001 14:20:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by 10.1.1.221 with QMQP; 22 Oct 2001 14:20:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta1 with SMTP; 22 Oct 2001 14:20:00 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id f9MEKHY04500 for iwar@onelist.com; Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:20:17 -0700 Message-Id: <200110221420.f9MEKHY04500@red.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:20:17 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:Why.we.are.right.to.fight] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Why we are right to fight Terrorism, not Islam, is the target in this just war. We must change but not be defeatist, says Henry Porter. Sunday October 14, 2001 The Observer Osama bin Laden shows his face on TV in a pre-recorded message of doom and what do we see? The victorious instigator of a clash of civilisations? The master strategist who has set things up so that dead, alive or captured he still wins by rallying to his standard the warriors of Islam? There is a view, most cogently expressed by Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, that Osama had more than likely already beaten the West in the propaganda war. Without wishing to be rude to Mr Freedland, who reiterated the opinion on Newsnight, this argument has all the depth and durability of a two-week suntan and reveals precisely the weakness of resolve which bin Laden imagines to be the prevailing character of the West. What we actually saw on TV was a mass murderer calling for more slaughter. To regard this as a propaganda coup is to misunderstand the sociopathic threat that confronts us. Bin Laden is not an ideologue, not even a visionary, but an adventurer with an egotism that is unholy in any religion you care to name. Watching the al-Jazeera broadcast, we were all surely alert to the subliminal messages in the deceptive modesty of his glances, and to his neurotic effeminacy and self-love. It brought to mind the sexual ambivalence of T.E. Lawrence, who suggested in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom that truly dangerous men allow themselves to dream during daylight and then 'act their dreams with their eyes open'. Lawrence understood the vanity of daring and he would have recognised this freakish character broadcasting from a sun-scorched redoubt in Afghanistan, dressed, for heaven's sake, in jungle camouflage. We should take this man for what he is: anti-matter which pretends to rational aims, but which is simply addicted to the egotistical gratification of death and destruction. The only way you meet that kind of man is with total and unswerving force, not an appreciation of his media skills. The depraved, the mad and the disenchanted will sign up for a jihad with very little knowledge of what bin Laden stands for. The removal of US troops from the holy soil of Saudi Arabia and resolution of Palestinian problem are surely pre texts rather than aims. He has a pathological loathing for the West and wishes it to be permanently harmed. In the United States, where I spent three weeks after the attacks, there seemed to be a genuine evaluation of where the country went wrong. I lost count of how many times I heard people admit that the US had been too self-absorbed and too mean with its resources. They wanted to know why they inspired such hatred and, when they got the answer about the support of Israel and the arrogant unilateralism of its policy makers, they showed every sign of paying attention. If there is one enormous result of 11 September, it is the beginning of a radical change in Americans' world view. We must pray it continues. America's debate has been urgently undertaken with the goal of making the country function better in the world, but it has not affected essential beliefs in liberty and democratic institutions. Americans feel a stronger sense of mission because 11 September has made them value these things so much more. In conversation with British friends, I find a different note. 'I am not at war with Afghanistan,' said one. 'I object to Tony Blair declaring war on my behalf. He has not consulted Parliament or the country. I have got nothing against Afghanistan, nothing against its people.' She said the whole thing was an American problem and implied, like others, that they had brought the attacks on themselves. Any sane person must have doubts about the war, particularly now that Britain is preparing to deploy Royal Marines currently on exercise in Oman, but the view that this is not our problem is misguided. When bin Laden's suicide pilots crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre he attacked all our values and liberties. It follows that the initiation of war came from the East, not George W. Bush or Tony Blair. The arguments against British involvement and Blair's high profile are underlaid by an old-fashioned relativism which says that the liberties of the West have no higher moral value than the oppressive social customs and political tyranny of many Muslim countries. It is held to be merely a matter of cultural difference that women have so few rights under Islamic law, that welfare and education programmes suffer for the greater cause of male political establishments. I pointed this out to my friend, a feminist who campaigns tirelessly for the rights of women, but she was unpersuaded. What mattered to her was the offence to our democracy done by Tony's Blair's refusal to consult. In this there is an enormous failure of faith and conviction. If liberal beliefs are to be overturned so easily, we might as well hand over the keys to all democratic institutions to the men from al-Qaeda. The point now is that we have to fight for what we hold dear, not mope around saying that this isn't our war, while arguing weakly that we should try to understand a culture which refuses to allow women to show their faces and denies them and their female offspring education. The practices of some Muslim regimes aren't just different; they are wrong. During the last month all the Western powers have been at pains to stress that this is a war against terrorism and not Islam. Palpably this is true and the representatives of the 57 Muslim nations who met in Qatar seemed to accept it. Their final statement did not demand proof that bin Laden was responsible for the attacks, probably because bin Laden's broadcast last week amounted to an admission of guilt. So the call to arms that he delivered has - for the moment - failed and we should recognise that fact before granting him a propaganda victory. The world has not been plunged into a war of civilisations and, while the regime that gave bin Laden shelter is pushed into a corner, his networks are being tracked and broken by the largest international intelligence operation ever mounted. He is not beaten yet, but he hasn't won either. It will take a long time to understand the full consequences of 11 September but we can say definitely that the era of US complacency has ended and with it America's unquestioning support of Israel. The Palestinian problem is the most urgent issue facing the US and Europe after the initial war against terrorism. Change is needed on all sides, but one wonders whether Islam will experience the same tectonic shifts of attitude. My guess is that it will not, chiefly because Islamic culture has not produced the habits and apparatus of self-criticism which have been developing in Western societies since the Reformation. Significantly, few, if any, British Muslim clerics have supported the West's action against bin Laden, although it must not escape them that they benefit from the freedoms guaranteed by our democracy. In the final analysis that may seem to be a stance which is as unyielding as any American policy of the last nine months. The West and Islam have to find a way of working together, but it is not going to be easy. There are deep differences between our worlds. In 1922, R.H. Tawney wrote in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: 'Not the least fundamental of divisions among theories of society is between those which regard the world of human affairs as self-contained, and those which appeal to a supernatural criterion. Modern social theory, like modern political theory, developed only when society was given a naturalistic instead of religious explanation.' In a nutshell, we have had a Reformation while the Muslim world has not. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE VeriSign guide to security solutions for your web site: encrypting transactions, securing intranets, and more! http://us.click.yahoo.com/UnN2wB/m5_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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