Mark Danner blistered the pages of the NYT Magazine yesterday. If you didn’t see it, here is the link:
<www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11OSAMA.html>
A lengthy and well rounded report of the words, intentions and deeds of both Mr. Bush and Mr. Bin Laudin, it is notable in its ability to cast the endless spinning by the administration against the simple truths expressed in thought, word and deed of Mr. bin Laudin.
That is to say, simple as well monstrous when the deeds include the use of human beings as bomb detonating devices.
There is a complex series of dialectical relationships at work here. The first being the war between an entire civilization and a small group of religious rebels from a second civilization.
The rebel has successfully positioned his battle against the Great Satan as a means to stir up a larger widespread rebellion within his own civilization, the Arabic middle east, against their corrupt rulers who suck at the Great Satan’s teat.
The Iraqi invasion by the US has dropped a gift into the rebellion’s lap that might be described by the Muslim world as a gift from Allah.
There is the war of lifestyles between the secular, rational, forward thinking west (now also to include China, Korea and India, among others in the east) and the middle east of the middle ages as their rapture envisioned by the rebellion.
But mostly, there is the juxtaposition of the lies, lack of understanding worldview and general incompetence of a President and his executive branch against a pack of lone wolves who seek a different world.
