Blame Bowling
If Western leaders made al-Qaeda into something it isn’t, by talking it up as ‘the greatest threat facing humanity today’, which is apparently seeking nuclear weapons with which to launch a new ‘holocaust’ on the West, then so too have some in the anti-war movement. They have given these bombers far more credence and coherence than they deserve, describing their actions as strikes against America and Britain for those states’ military interventions in the Middle East. The pro-war lobby has made al-Qaeda into an overblown terrible threat, while the anti-war lobby has made it into a kind of resistance movement. It is neither of these things; both sides are stamping their own worldviews on to a loose, disparate gang of nihilists, and it is precisely the emptiness of al-Qaeda and its actions that allows them to do that.
I guess it’s the natural human tendancy when faced with apparently random acts of evil, to try to put some meaning and coherence on them. It’s the hope that perhaps something can be done, that we can somehow regain control over the situation.
However, I agree with Brendan O’Neill that we are overdoing it with the deeper meanings and motivations. The 11th September attacks in America, and the Madrid and London bombings do not seem to me to be motivated by any tangible politic end (although, as O’Neill points out, many have used them to promote political goals). They seem to me to have more in common with the extreme sociopathic behaviour of mass killers such as those involved in the Columbine school shootings and any analysis of their motives is likely to lead (and has led) to similiar erroneous conclusions to those made in that case.
All of which means that the solution to stopping further outrages of this type is far more difficult than anyone would like to admit.
Mark Waters marked time at 10:28 am on July 13th, 2005 .
