Just building on this ObL stuff while I may; isn't there something of a fetish
happening here? I mean, I go a good way with Andy's position on the bloke,
but I keep harking back to EP Thompson's explanation for why the magistrates
couldn't nip the Luddite movement in the bud. Experienced investigators and
military chaps that they were, they kept looking for the head of the snake
('General Ludd'). But there was no head. Just a culture of sullen, socially
sanctioned silence, not to mention a widespread sympathy for the redressers.
What looked organised, was actually a culture - perhaps a subculture - at work
- autonomous bodies of men popped out at night and did their thing and
disappeared back into their milieu by morning.
Which was great for putting pressure on insensitive innovators and nasty
boojies, but no good at carrying through a fancy many had at the time for
marching on London. Anyway, eventually, even hard-headed classical political
economists/businessmen like Francis Place were encouraging the PM to give in
on some big counts. The cost, in Pounds Sterling, of not doing so was just
too great.
Having declared a war so quickly, Bush needed a demon-object to give that war
a focus - I don't say it wasn't ObL's outfit, mind, I just say he's not the
be-all and end-all - money, sympathetic milieus, cultures of resentment,
murderous selflessness and ingenuity are all over the place - interdependent
when it suits, but secretively autonomous at bottom, if I don't miss my guess.
The war to end all wars didn't, and the war to end all terrorism can't.
Without doing for us all, anyway.
Cheers,
Rob.
