Bush presidency and bin Laden: Each needs other for legitimacy
By Pierre Tristam
Created Oct 24 2006 - 8:36am
The most important book of this political season isn't Bob Woodward's "State
of Denial." That book is a catch-up job on what some of us "shrill" liberals
were writing four years ago, when the Iraq war's props were being assembled,
and what a majority of the electorate suspected six years ago: President
Bush doesn't know competence from Barney. Woodward's first two books about
the administration were themselves in denial for being so admiring of the
Bush junta. But they reflected the gullible mood Bush created on the
ash-heap of Sept. 11 and abused to his administration's advantage until last
summer, when Katrina exploded the illusion.
What we're left with is a presidency less credible than any since Watergate,
three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, "terror"), a world more dangerous and a
nation less safe than six years ago, and two more years of the incompetence
that got us here. Judging from the polls, which still give Bush a roughly 40
percent approval rating, there's still an awful lot of denial going on
despite Woodward's confessions.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is still vacationing somewhere in the Hindu Kush.
Following Bush's lead, the rest of us still prefer to demonize him rather
than study him. Which is why the most important book of the season is
Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower." It's a history of al-Qaida's roots
and development through Sept. 11. It's also a history of what we commonly
refer to as America's intelligence services as they hunted al-Qaida, and
more often hunted each other, on the way to enabling Sept. 11.
Wright's history draws two principal lessons. First, the 9/11 Commission
underplayed how much the intelligence services were to blame for allowing
Sept. 11 -- criminally so, if Wright's evidence is true. The CIA, the FBI
and the National Security Agency each, on its own, had vital information
(and photographs) about meetings, phone conversations and eventual
hijackers' travels and whereabouts. Those weren't needles in haystacks that
required leaps of imagination to connect. They were hard evidence the
agencies refused to share -- not because the law prevented them. That's a
canard. But because turf battles amplified by personality conflicts and a
clubbish culture got in the way. Judging from more recent reporting, little
has changed. And neither the Patriot Act nor domestic spying gave
intelligence and law enforcement tools they didn't already have to do their
job without infringing on civil liberties, as those new laws do.
Second, al-Qaida is not much more than an assembly of rag-tag, fringe
ideologies that barely have credit in the Islamic world. It isn't for
nothing that in 1980s Afghanistan, the Arab fighters Osama cobbled together
to fight the Soviets were called the "Brigade of the Ridiculous." They were
useless then. Afghans scorned them. What successes they managed were
entirely dependent on Osama's media savvy. None of the fighters, Osama among
them, have ever had a clear idea of what they're fighting for beyond
sophomoric ideals about a golden-age caliphate. That caliphate has about as
much credibility among Muslims as a return to the Confederate States of
America has among Southerners.
President Bush, Karl Rove and other members of the administration,
campaigning in the few places where Other Republicans would let them, have
been talking up Osama's agenda by comparing it to Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The
more fitting comparison is with "My So-Called Jihad." Have a listen: Here's
how Osama responded when the journalist Peter Arnett asked him what kind of
society he would create if he had his way in, say, Saudi Arabia: "We are
confident, with the permission of God, praise and glory be upon him, that
Muslims will be victorious in the Arabian Peninsula and that God's religion,
praise and glory be to him, will prevail in this peninsula. It is a great
pride and a big hope that the revelation unto Mohammad, peace be upon him,
will be resorted to for ruling. When we used to follow Mohammad's
revelation, peace be upon him, we were in great happiness and in great
dignity, to God belongs the credit and the praise."
That's Saturday Night Live material, not the sort of thing an Islamic
revolution can hang its sword on. Al-Qaida's theology is no less crude and
overwhelmingly rejected by mainstream Islam's clerics -- beginning with
al-Qaida's cult of violence and death. But the administration bought the
delusion whole, giving Osama the disproportionate fight he wants with the
Great Satan and elevating him to an enemy status he could never manage on
his own. Give him enough rope, and Osama will lynch himself in Arab and
Muslim eyes. Instead, the Bush doctrine gives him ammunition and caps off
the calculated paranoia by shackling America's liberties in the name of
fear. When it comes to expediency covering up a hollow core, Osama has only
one rival accomplice: George W. Bush.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
