PooterGeek

2 Comments

1. john b
   Posted 25Oct04 at 19:46 | Permalink

   The BBC programme and associated Guardian article claimed that there was little evidence of a global co-ordinated Islamist terror network, and that links between local groups (beyond a shared love of murder and the Qu’ran) have been exaggerated by Western governments. It didn’t claim that the Islamist terrorist groups do not exist.

   But hey, it’s nearly November 5 - just the right time of year to build straw men…

2. PooterGeek
   Posted 26Oct04 at 08:44 | Permalink

   Here’s the Guardian article linked to quoting the conclusion of the programme:

   The series’ explanation for this is even bolder: “In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.”

   This is stupid in so many ways I don’t have space to enumerate them here, but it’s enough to point out that Mr Aznar had the “phantom” materialise in his own back yard and the effect on his hold on power was striking. Of course, the Bush administration is doing its best to hype and homogenize the threat as much as it can, hoping that voters will perceive the Republicans as being more resolute in the face of it; this doesn’t justify that kind of Kevin-the-Teenager deduction reproduced above. Talk about “sexing up” a report.

   [On a side note, the recent Republican advertisement is surprisingly (accidentally?) apt in its choice of wolves as symbols of the threat. Wolves don’t need to hunt in organised groups, usually fail in their attacks, and prey mostly on the weak and vulnerable.]

   I am the arch-skeptic. On my older site I linked approvingly to a Spectator article pointing out that, regarded objectively, the Osama Bin Laden story was a fantastic and corny explanation for terrorist attacks on the US mainland—if I hadn’t been taking these crazies at their word for a long time, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was also notoriously annoyed by WMD justifications for going to war in Iraq and of attempts to link Saddam’s regime with al-Qaeda.

   My problem is and always has been with people on both the Left and Right dismissing a menace to human life, not because it isn’t real and serious, but because it mainly affects people who aren’t in the West. This was, remember, the attitude of Bush and his isolationist pack before 9/11. It’s never been mine.

   Demonstrating that the enemy is not a single organisation does nothing to diminish the seriousness of the problem of international terrorism or the share of our resources we should devote to acting against its common goals and methods. In fact, if we are dealing with a single entity, fighting it should be that much easier. If we aren’t you can so fight an abstract noun.

   Following your phrasing, there’s no “co-ordinated global network” of motorists around the World trying to run over schoolchildren, but that isn’t a valid argument against legislation to prevent dangerous driving in residential areas. (This doesn’t imply that I support most new “anti-terror” legislation—I don’t—but if they want to counter such changes, people will have to do better than the sort of Big Brother clichés that red-faced BMW drivers trot out to oppose speed cameras.)

   Similarly, infectious disease isn’t, relatively speaking, much of a killer in the developed world, but this isn’t an argument for stopping vaccinations here or research into scourges of the developing world like HIV or malaria. I think we can guess what kind of article The Guardian would write about a documentary if it suggested that deaths from AIDS were exaggerated by African leaders so they could steal the resulting increases in the aid their governments received from the rich West..