Author: geoff

Try these all season Flipflops. Click on image to progress forward.
(Thanks, Kate.)

OK, so this is really contrarian thinking. In the midst of an election campaign in which one of the main issues is how to prosecute “the War on Terror”, along comes a documentary which argues that al-Qaida may not really exist. In today’s Guardian, Andy Beckett reviews the series The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear which begins on BBC2 next Wednesday. In this three-part series, the director Adam Curtis:
… points out that al-Qaida did not even have a name until early 2001, when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a named criminal organisation.
Curtis also cites the Home Office’s own statistics for arrests and convictions of suspected terrorists since September 11 2001. Of the 664 people detained up to the end of last month, only 17 have been found guilty. Of these, the majority were Irish Republicans, Sikh militants or members of other groups with no connection to Islamist terrorism. Nobody has been convicted who is a proven member of al-Qaida.
In fact, Curtis is not alone in wondering about all this. Quietly but increasingly, other observers of the war on terror have been having similar doubts. “The grand concept of the war has not succeeded,” says Jonathan Eyal, director of the British military thinktank the Royal United Services Institute. “In purely military terms, it has been an inconclusive war … a rather haphazard operation. Al-Qaida managed the most spectacular attack, but clearly it is also being sustained by the way that we rather cavalierly stick the name al-Qaida on Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines. There is a long tradition that if you divert all your resources to a threat, then you exaggerate it.”
Bill Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at King’s College London, says: “The reality [of the al-Qaida threat to the west] has been essentially a one-off. There has been one incident in the developed world since 9/11 [the Madrid bombings]. There’s no real evidence that all these groups are connected.”
Good heavens – maybe Bush was right to dismiss Osama bin Laden as he did. But in that case, who are we supposed to be fighting? Iraqi patriots insurgents? Or perhaps – and even more terrifying – it’s….

Thomas Friedman’s op-ed Addicted to 9/11 today was right on the money. He addresses Kerry’s hope that America can get back to a state where “terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance”, and says, “The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don’t know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives.”
I would certainly like that, and having lived in England through the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign I can remember what it felt like. I can still recall the moment when I caught myself looking at a package in the sidewalk and, for the first time in years, didn’t immediately think panic “Bomb…?”. It’s a good feeling. Naive? I don’t think so; just getting things into proportion and being careful rather than obsessive.
Friedman concludes, “Lastly, politicizing 9/11 put a wedge between us and our history. The Bush team has turned this country into The United States of Fighting Terrorism. […] I want a president who can one day restore Sept. 11th to its rightful place on the calendar: as the day after Sept. 10th and before Sept. 12th. I do not want it to become a day that defines us. Because ultimately Sept. 11th is about them – the bad guys – not about us. We’re about the Fourth of July. Just so.

After a series of mind-bogglingly inept op-ed pieces in the New York Times, David Brooks came up with what seemed like a reasonably interesting column today. Under the heading Not Just a Personality Clash, a Conflict of Visions, he argues that there is a relationship between political orientation and geography:
We’re used to this in the realm of domestic politics. Politicians from the more sparsely populated South and West are more likely, at least in the political and economic realms, to champion the Goldwateresque virtues: freedom, self-sufficiency, individualism. Politicians from the cities are likely to champion the Ted Kennedyesque virtues: social justice, tolerance, interdependence.
Politicians from sparsely populated areas are more likely to say they want government off people’s backs so they can run their own lives. Politicians from denser areas are more likely to want government to play at least a refereeing role, to keep people from bumping into one another too abusively.
And he goes on to wonder if this dichotomy is related to the way people think about international affairs. (He cites a recent article by Adam Wolfson in the Weekly Standard, at which point my interest started to wane. C’mon, there has to be a better source than that rag.)
However before Brooks gets to that point, he tosses in the following throw-away line:
Neither group lives up to its ideals with perfect consistency, but this is what both groups say.
And that got me thinking. Brooks clearly intends this as an even-handed characterization, in true journalistic style, but is it accurate. Are liberals and conservatives equally inconsistent when it comes to living up to their ideals?
I think not. My sense if that, by and large, conservatives are much more likely to be “closet liberals” than are liberals to be “closet conservatives”. The newspapers report many arch-conservatives who denounce the Federal government one moment and then turn around to lobby for a contract, or a tax break, or a subsidy. Taxprof Blog published an analysis of government spending and subsidies last month that showed:
…that of the 32 states (and the District of Columbia) that are “winners” — receiving more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes — 76% are Red States that voted for George Bush in 2000. Indeed, 17 of the 20 (85%) states receiving the most federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid are Red States.
On the other hand, I can’t remember a single case of a prominent liberal politician displaying “closet conservative” tendencies. (Apart from Zell Miller, I guess, though he’s out of the closet these days.) Of course you may regard the efforts of Clinton, Rubin, Kerry and others to balance the budget in the 1990s as rather conservative behavior. I thought so at the time, but after four years of Bush and his runaway deficits I’m thoroughly confused.
Naturally I’m not talking about campaign fundraising or pandering to special interests. Those are equal-opportunity failings, neither liberal nor conservative.
The bottom line: Brook’s simplistic ideas about geography and politics do illustrate a point – but not necessarily the point that he intended to make.

Recommended: my colleague Alec’s recent piece on America, Terrorism, and the Power of Nightmares.