Osama bin Laden

Palden Jenkins

Written: 21st September 2002

The key issue with bin Laden is that he's a financier and facilitator, not necessarily a commander or perpetrator. He finances, networks and trains footloose, terror-inclined people who started out with similar noble intentions to those of many young Western protesters. It is entirely likely that bin Laden was not part of the organisation of this specific attack - secrecy and independent cellular action is clearly used by these terrorists. Learned earlier from CIA instructors.

There's something of a holy man and philanthropist to bin Laden too - though this shouldn't be taken too far. His original intentions were to support underdogs against the 'megamachine' - first Soviet, then Western. Subsequent alienating experiences twisted this into something far more unwholesome. Like many of the wealthy and powerful, his street-level experience of real life is inadequate. Holy men can also make major errors, possessing shadow aspects we all variously share. Let us take a lesson from these extremists who mix the truths of Islam with far more irreligious sentiments and actions. Western Christianity, scientism and consumerism, themselves religions, suffer the same problems.

There's guilt here too. Bin Laden's wealth (apparently about $200m) is oil-derived (mainly through the construction industry), and Western-derived. [Interestingly, when a US airbase in Saudi Arabia was bombed by bin Laden's associates some years ago, the bin Laden family got the contract to rebuild it. Hmmm.] The power structures and ruling clans of the Muslim world are tied in to this, their representative legitimacy being questionable. Some of them were installed by the West, even if eighty years ago. There is concealed guilt concerning the source of this power and advantage. People (ultimately all of us) engage in intricate tricks and use other-directed blame to cover guilt. Bin Laden is a family man, believing he supports oppressed people and a just cause. So he levels his patrician feelings against symbols of Uncle Sam. In a sense he represents an element of the collective guilt complex within the Saudi Arabian ruling elite.

There is something noble here too - the sincere commitment of Muslims to protect their fellows. The corrupted extremity of this Muslim sense of solidarity played out in USA last week is seriously mistaken, yet it is nevertheless rooted in sincere social sentiment. Similarly, the notion of 'God-and-America' is genuinely-rooted and seriously mistaken in its more extreme expressions. In the end, we're not talking about Muslims and Americans, we're talking about humans with interchangeable narrownesses and shared tendencies.

One of the factors being exposed at this time (Sept 2001) is the sheer insidious negativity driving the Taliban - amongst others. In addition to the oppression the Taliban bring to Afghans, they shelter international mayhem-makers, encouraging them in globally-significant activities. This does happen when world powers isolate and demonise 'rogue states' - which then become 'hothouses' for resentful activists, just as prisons have become schools for criminals.

It would be counterproductive to over-demonise bin Laden and to over-personalise this conflict. He is expendable: the terrorist movement benefits from him but does not depend on him. This movement is not centrally recruited or organised. Counterproductive also is the resolution of this issue into a goodguys/badguys scenario - America the good, and al Qaeda the bad. Such an approach will surely exacerbate the issues longterm, long after George Bush and Tony Blair are gone.

To declare war is counterproductive longterm, unleashing a deeper, hidden, hawkish agenda on the Western side. We have seen this before. War-threats conceal the inherent flaws in the West: the ruthless aspect of capitalism, inflated militarism, concealed nationalism and significant social discontents. We Westerners aren't rioting - we have full bellies and plenty of credit with which to buy off hard truth. But we're not happy. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan and Palestine, hunger, loss and raw oppression change and radicalise things, producing restive crowds and 'freedom fighters'. It is not productive to seek to suppress the social pain expressed by terrorists with military actions likely to exacerbate social pain.

Osama bin Laden is a biggish cog in a terror machine, but he is not the machine itself. Announcing crusades against him perpetuates the global power-bloc schizophrenia we suffered last century. Still suffering Cold War withdrawal symptoms, we lock back into polarisation, even when disinclined to do so. Pavlov's dogs, yet again. Someone somewhere is trying to undermine the open, liberal, internationalist and empathetic aspect of America's and the West's contribution to the world, and to itself. Americans legitimately worry about their freedoms, yet a bigger issue at stake here is the freedom of the world to evolve and develop as a whole planet.

USA is hereby called, by events, to take its rightful place in the world community, and to drop the domination, manipulation and violence underlying its 20th Century standpoint and geopolitical agenda. This challenge applies to the whole 'developed world', and to wealthier and privileged people in all nations - to step back a bit, to give others a chance of a decent life. This is an enormous challenge, with a certain inevitability - the main question concerns the fuss, friction and strife involved in changing the gross inequalities of today. In the 21st Century, is war the best way to adjust our relative positions?

Yes, if necessary, 'take out' these guys, but do it subtly by laying traps for them to fall into, while largely holding fire. Move faster than they, and undermine them on their weak points. Penetrate them. Meanwhile, attend to the key root causes. This doesn't even have to involve pumping aid into nations and cultures to help them rise to their full potential - aid too can have questionable effects. It involves removing the significant blocking influences which USA specifically, and the developed world in general, currently apply to hamper other nations' and cultures' efforts to get a better life. It is usually called 'national interest', but it's really the dominant nations' interest. Stop dominating the proceedings and claiming precedence in naming the game. Remove obstructions to progress. We all stand to gain - especially our children.

To disempower such figures as bin Laden, erode their constituency through creative action. Pop groups are conceivably more effective here than troops and missiles. Render terrorists unsupportable and irrelevant by acting to de-polarise the world's societies, economies and belief-systems. Do anything which generates good-naturedness. Encourage healthy, co-existent cultural variety. Address causes of conflict, promote shared needs and goals, and give less air-time to antipathies and conflicting parties. Our task in the 21st Century is to engage with wholeness. It's a big challenge: may we start now?

Terrorists have recently made a valid point, and we avoid learning from it at our peril.

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