The London Bombing
London has been bombed. Middle of downtown. Amidst the swarming sea of passengers. Maximum damage. On the first day of the G8 summit. Maximum focus. Just like 9/11.
Why?
Two different theories are offered up, one by Thomas Friedman in the NYT and the other one by Robert Fisk in The Independent. Both of these accept that the issue is too complex to put the blame on any one party. But they suggest entirely opposite solutions.
Tom talks almost like Bush. His piece is alarmist at best and fearmongering at worst.
Yesterday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country. In part, it's because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital. That would be deeply troubling because open societies depend on trust - on trusting that the person sitting next to you on the bus or subway is not wearing dynamite.
Like a Bombing in our own country?! The same, tiring it-can-happen-to-you-tomorrow! Maybe yes, maybe no. But I suppose the big contribution of Michael Moore is to have shown that fearmongering always benefits the establishment, and is therefore practised rampantly. Just that one did not know that the "most respected" NYT journalist talks in the red-orange-yellow language that one ascribes to Rumsfeld.
Tom, you are wrong in the next sentence too. "Open societies" trust the person sitting next to not wear dynamite because western capitalist societies are based on incentives as the only motivation of human action, and therefore have still not fathomed how a person can wear dynamite, or do anything, for a cause. This, after so many suicide attacks. It is here that there is a language problem between the east and the west. The west does not understand Islam. All alliances, all trade, all exchange, and all theories (economic, and today, political too) that the west has, are based on an idea of mutual benefit. A cause is a collective interest to which the indiviadual interests are meant to be subdued. That is a moral position enforced by tradition, not a rational one. No wonder then that the west that is focussed on the individual as the rational decisionmaker is flummoxed. No wonder that they do not understand the idea of brotherhood or the idea of dying for a cause without any gain. And as long as this lack of understanding persists, the west will always be afraid of Islam in general. Fear will breed violence, use of force on a national scale, and attempts to convert Islam to the western ideals. All this will lead to Bin Ladens - more of them. This is the classic civilizational struggle. It will go on. The west will use its military might, and the Muslim brotherhood basically its ideological might along with the tactical vulnerabilities of the west. These forces will reinforce each other, and it will go on.
Poor Tom does not understand that, and instead issues an alarm to the whole muslim world:
Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - ...- or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way -... making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. ...(T)he greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed.
So the entire onus is on the Muslim world. Note that it is still carrot-and-stick: either restrain your lads or we will bomb you. The problem is, it does not work that way. Over the last few years, different places in the Muslim world are being bombed quite a bit. But all that it has managed to do is harden the jihadi psyche. In fact, Iraq really was not the focus of Muslim sentiments, nor was it a "jihadist factory". But I would suspect that by now, it indeed has a significant role in motivating the jihadist mind, in confirming the theory of the jihadist preachers. Incentives and threats do not work as well in the Middle east among the masses. Poor Tom, please take note. You miss the point.
Robert Fisk does not. He does not intellectualise. He puts it rather plainly, with a touch of poignance:
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.
It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".
But I do not support Fisk too when he goes to the other extreme and says that the west restraining itself is the solution. Blair, leave Iraq. Bush, quit. No, Sir. Thats not going to happen. It is a war. Above all, it is a war of ideas : of the west trying to convert the Middle east to the purported western ideals of freedom, democracy and individualism.
And in this war, a clash of civilizations, each is using its own weapons. Each is justifying himself, in his own ways. Is there an end in sight? No, I dont see one, at least as long as they speak in different languages. And, "democratising" the Middle East, as is the Neocon mission, is not possible either. The problem really is that the world, at least the connected world, cannot stay unipolar for too long. That Bin Laden is a direct outgrowth of the American handling of the cold war is now well documented. Throughout history, the only way a power is checked is by another power, or a combination of other powers. Thats the only equilibrium that can yield a steady state. Whenever the world grows unipolar, the one power grows expansionist. It struggles for a world domination. This automatically breeds its own opposition. And more often than not, the empire dies of overstretching (remember Napoleon?). It can be hit at various places, even by a weak, but quick opposition. Sounds familiar?
Today, the Neocon agenda is to spread certain ideals all over the world. And the land that corresponds to the antithesis of such ideas is the obvious first target. Democracy, freedom and individualism. These are noble ideas, indeed. But it is not an intellectual expansion alone. Very, very costly political and economic changes come in the package. And at no point does the west consider that there could be alternative world systems that are just as valid, as consistent and as effective as their own. It is this insularity that breeds most of the problem. And the west drives its agenda, blaming individuals like Saddam and Bin Laden. They are not the problem. The insularity, the blindness, keeps them from realising that one Bin Laden can give way to a hundred, if more Bombs fall on Iraq or Afghanistan. It is in this recognition of the systemic nature of the problem that the Jihadists are ahead of the Neocons. As long as the western intellectuals keep expecting to root out the "few terrorist elements" either by force or by persuading the "village elders" in the middle east (these two seem to be the responses of the conservatives and the liberals respectively), the problem will continue as it is. Unfortunately, I do not see a solution to this, except for a natural decay of a moribund empire.
Why?
Two different theories are offered up, one by Thomas Friedman in the NYT and the other one by Robert Fisk in The Independent. Both of these accept that the issue is too complex to put the blame on any one party. But they suggest entirely opposite solutions.
Tom talks almost like Bush. His piece is alarmist at best and fearmongering at worst.
Yesterday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country. In part, it's because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital. That would be deeply troubling because open societies depend on trust - on trusting that the person sitting next to you on the bus or subway is not wearing dynamite.
Like a Bombing in our own country?! The same, tiring it-can-happen-to-you-tomorrow! Maybe yes, maybe no. But I suppose the big contribution of Michael Moore is to have shown that fearmongering always benefits the establishment, and is therefore practised rampantly. Just that one did not know that the "most respected" NYT journalist talks in the red-orange-yellow language that one ascribes to Rumsfeld.
Tom, you are wrong in the next sentence too. "Open societies" trust the person sitting next to not wear dynamite because western capitalist societies are based on incentives as the only motivation of human action, and therefore have still not fathomed how a person can wear dynamite, or do anything, for a cause. This, after so many suicide attacks. It is here that there is a language problem between the east and the west. The west does not understand Islam. All alliances, all trade, all exchange, and all theories (economic, and today, political too) that the west has, are based on an idea of mutual benefit. A cause is a collective interest to which the indiviadual interests are meant to be subdued. That is a moral position enforced by tradition, not a rational one. No wonder then that the west that is focussed on the individual as the rational decisionmaker is flummoxed. No wonder that they do not understand the idea of brotherhood or the idea of dying for a cause without any gain. And as long as this lack of understanding persists, the west will always be afraid of Islam in general. Fear will breed violence, use of force on a national scale, and attempts to convert Islam to the western ideals. All this will lead to Bin Ladens - more of them. This is the classic civilizational struggle. It will go on. The west will use its military might, and the Muslim brotherhood basically its ideological might along with the tactical vulnerabilities of the west. These forces will reinforce each other, and it will go on.
Poor Tom does not understand that, and instead issues an alarm to the whole muslim world:
Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - ...- or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way -... making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. ...(T)he greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed.
So the entire onus is on the Muslim world. Note that it is still carrot-and-stick: either restrain your lads or we will bomb you. The problem is, it does not work that way. Over the last few years, different places in the Muslim world are being bombed quite a bit. But all that it has managed to do is harden the jihadi psyche. In fact, Iraq really was not the focus of Muslim sentiments, nor was it a "jihadist factory". But I would suspect that by now, it indeed has a significant role in motivating the jihadist mind, in confirming the theory of the jihadist preachers. Incentives and threats do not work as well in the Middle east among the masses. Poor Tom, please take note. You miss the point.
Robert Fisk does not. He does not intellectualise. He puts it rather plainly, with a touch of poignance:
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
And it’s no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain’s subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.
It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".
But I do not support Fisk too when he goes to the other extreme and says that the west restraining itself is the solution. Blair, leave Iraq. Bush, quit. No, Sir. Thats not going to happen. It is a war. Above all, it is a war of ideas : of the west trying to convert the Middle east to the purported western ideals of freedom, democracy and individualism.
And in this war, a clash of civilizations, each is using its own weapons. Each is justifying himself, in his own ways. Is there an end in sight? No, I dont see one, at least as long as they speak in different languages. And, "democratising" the Middle East, as is the Neocon mission, is not possible either. The problem really is that the world, at least the connected world, cannot stay unipolar for too long. That Bin Laden is a direct outgrowth of the American handling of the cold war is now well documented. Throughout history, the only way a power is checked is by another power, or a combination of other powers. Thats the only equilibrium that can yield a steady state. Whenever the world grows unipolar, the one power grows expansionist. It struggles for a world domination. This automatically breeds its own opposition. And more often than not, the empire dies of overstretching (remember Napoleon?). It can be hit at various places, even by a weak, but quick opposition. Sounds familiar?
Today, the Neocon agenda is to spread certain ideals all over the world. And the land that corresponds to the antithesis of such ideas is the obvious first target. Democracy, freedom and individualism. These are noble ideas, indeed. But it is not an intellectual expansion alone. Very, very costly political and economic changes come in the package. And at no point does the west consider that there could be alternative world systems that are just as valid, as consistent and as effective as their own. It is this insularity that breeds most of the problem. And the west drives its agenda, blaming individuals like Saddam and Bin Laden. They are not the problem. The insularity, the blindness, keeps them from realising that one Bin Laden can give way to a hundred, if more Bombs fall on Iraq or Afghanistan. It is in this recognition of the systemic nature of the problem that the Jihadists are ahead of the Neocons. As long as the western intellectuals keep expecting to root out the "few terrorist elements" either by force or by persuading the "village elders" in the middle east (these two seem to be the responses of the conservatives and the liberals respectively), the problem will continue as it is. Unfortunately, I do not see a solution to this, except for a natural decay of a moribund empire.
posted by Sourav | 10:53 AM
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