The bombings
How about this: because four men blew themselves up on July 7 killing 56 people, I am now a more knowledgeable and wiser person. Is it disrespectful to the innocent dead to say that or is it the requesite defiant declaration of “up yours, Osama!”?
I’ve read dozens of articles and made pages and pages of notes, I have a greater understanding of Islam and of the tenets of moral philosophy.
That said, I really have little to add to the sum of what’s been written over the last few weeks. I’ve left it too late and if anything the debate has degenerated into semantics and, let’s face it, childish name calling. There are many, who will remain nameless, who have used the deaths of 56 people to assert their moral authority over those they regard as morally inferior. Very moral. They’ve scored their points and I hope it’s made them feel better about themselves in some small way.
People have been called appeasers and apologists for simply wanting to understand why these men did what they did. Not only is it common human empathy but eminently sensible if future atrocities are to be prevented. As a member of the top brass says in Starship Troopers: “To beat the Bug, we must understand the Bug“.
Gary Younge: No tails or tridents
Those looking for tails and tridents on the CCTV footage of the bombers will be disappointed. In the words of Wednesday Addams, they look like everybody else. If the security services are going to have any chance of infiltrating the bombers they must first humanise those involved. They need to find out what would motivate young men who apparently have so much to live for to die - and kill - in such a manner. Only then can they discover how to spot the determined and stop them in their tracks, and how to catch those vulnerable to their message before they fall into the clutches of the terrorists.
People have also been denounced for wanting to understand what may have been the underlying catalyst for the bombings, realising, as they did, that these things do not happen in a vacuum. The refusal to acknowledge Iraq as a factor seems like denial to me.
It seems clear that such bombings are driven by the Salafist desire to restore the pan-continental Islamic caliphate. But it seems also plausible to me that Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan are the fuel in the engine of Islamist grievance. Don’t they provide yet more reasons - for those who want the caliphate - for why that calpihate is necessary and justification for why men should die to attain it? Why do others refuse to see this? Many can’t admit it - from Prime Minister to “Decent” Leftish blogger - because to do so would be to also admit their exporting of democracy and their war on terror have been abject failures.
I have little more to add. All this and more has been expressed by others much more eloquently. Empty vessels make most noise so it’s time to shut up. Ronan Keating said it best when he said, “you say it best when you say nothing at all.” Wise words.
I would, however urge you to read this piece by Unity over at Talk Politics.
You cannot defeat terrorism through ignorance of its drives, motives and objectives, by dehumanising the terrorist and turning them into a bogeyman, or by denying even the possibility, let alone reality, that own own actions have, in a multiplicity of ways, contributed to and, in some instances, created the context in which terrorism exists.
The article is long, offers no easy solutions and I’m not suggesting it is the last word by any means. It does, however, crystallise many of the points I would have like to have made had I the time and intellectual tools to hand.
This post, on the other hand, is (probably) my last word on the bombings. As I said, the level of debate particularly on left wing blogs is fast reaching a point of Saharan aridity. Point scoring and insults have obscured the fact that brothers, lovers, children and friends are dead. I don’t really want to have a great deal to do with that, if anything.
***
Posting will probably be light on CY for a while. I’m fresh out of inspiration again (if it ever truly returned after the General Election). I don’t feel qualified to talk about the bombings and their wider ramifications in detail and it seems to be the only game in town on the British blogging scene right now.
Posted on July 26th, 2005 at 8:38 am
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I know exactly what you mean. I’m bored shitless by this terrorism lark. I don’t understand the complexities of it to an extent that I feel comfortable offering opinions, and it seems actively discouraged to try to form considered opinions anyway. Methinks it’s time to get back to the dullness of the EU…
I couldn’t agree more. It’s not a debate, it’s a blogging war of attrition. I’m being ground down by the relentless repetition of what is, in effect, the self same post - over and over and over again (esp: see Normblog, Harry etc).
A blogger asked recently - ‘can blogging damage your mental health?’ - I think he’s got a point (seriously!).
It’s certainly doing my head in.
The only consolation is that I see this as a sign of utter desperation, an indication that the arguments have run out.
I’m not sure the arguments have run out exactly, or whether now is the time to be turning to the dullness of the EU.
The UK government’s policies are, now demonstrably, putting everyone in Britain at an increased risk of falling victim to terrorists. What’s worse is that in doing so they’ve been deliberately and repeatedly ignoring the advice of the UK’s intelligence services, departmental advisers and independent experts, as well as strenuously avoiding any honest discussion of the problem, preferring to obscure the issues with self-serving mendacity. New Labour is clearly failing to uphold its basic duty of care towards us and as such has rendered itself unfit to govern in the most fundamental sense.
As most of the media falls obediently behind the government on this debate, this is where bloggers ought to come into their own. If we can’t get ourselves up for this one and make an almighty noise about it then you have to wonder what it is that we’re supposed to be contributing.
http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/former-british-pm-john-major-ties-iraq.html
I’m sure you’re right, Diarist. A child could point out the irony in a government hearing what it wanted to hear (WMDs in 45 minutes) and ignoring what it didn’t (going to war will make us more unsafe).
But the lines have been drawn. Minds have been made up. Nobody’s listening any more - or at least those that are just take your argument and use to to launch a personal attack. There is virtually nothing I could say that would sway anybody or make a difference.
I’m tired and it’s becoming clear that British blogging is too much like whistling in the dark.
Agree with nosemonkey and Justin. I have avoided pointing fingers for precisly these reasons. Truth is, we don’t truly know why 7 of 7 happened. Whilst this doesn’t mean that we should bury our heads in the sand, speculating endlessly and pointing at this agency or that person as causing it to prove ones own judegmental superority is rather pointless, and in the worst cases akin to corpse fucking.
I point you all to Peter Preston’s wonderful article in the Guardian. Sometimes, its probably just best to say “don’t know”.
As for whilstling in the dark though, I truly believe that British blogging has a place, but I don’t know if its political activism, at least in certain areas where, as Justin says, people have certainly made their minds up. We not going to change the world overnight by getting upset about Iraq anymore. But there is the scope still for organisation. Would 10,000 people have signed the No2ID pledge if we all had not linked to it? Probably not, you know. I think its worth persevering with.
I’ll miss the sanity and quality, Justin. I’ll miss it greatly.
Have a good rest.
Thanks. More on this subject: here.
Are you suggesting, Mr McKeating, that venting one’s spleen to an audience of a few hundred strangers, some of whom write nice things about you in return isn’t what everybody looks for in life?
This blogging lark has always seemed a bit odd to me, ever since I was thrust in to give me something to do; I certainly wouldn’t continue were it not part of my job, can’t quite see the point.
But I do enjoy reading about half a dozen or so of the main blogs, including yours, of course, and I’d miss it if it disappeared, but I can see that a little group of fans imploring you to keep effectively wasting such quality on a ltd audience must leave you wondering if you’d not be better off spending the time getting through Bertie’s HOWP, for example
It’d be a shame if you did stop posting: I’ve enjoyed reading what you’ve written. You’re right about the blog trench-warfare though: sampling, say, Harry’s Place (especially the comments) indicates that the pro-war left will be dying in the last ditch with the the less-sophisticated elements of the SWP. Yawn. (BTW what exactly is the pro-war left’s take on Bush and the neo-cons re. Iraq?) Denial is too polite a term for how Blair’s trying to play this (see today’s press conference), and as he’s still in charge (and still hanging on to Bush’s coat-tails), we’re stuck.
PS: Loved the quotation from Starship Troopers (a film that makes even more sense post-9/11 and Iraq and which, perversely, I find funny). Doubtless anyone who expressed an opinion about understanding the bug would be denounced as an insect-loving appeaser, but there you go.
Keep up the good work.
I’m not planning to disappear just (hopefully) recharge the batteries.
I suppose disappointment plays a large part. I felt quite strongly that British blogging was on the cusp of something big during the General Election campaign - we were firing and I think we’ll look back on that as a golden period.
I genuinely believed we were about to produce at least one break-out star (not me, I hasten to add) and we, collectively, might make some sort of difference.
But I think in the aftermath of the London bombings, large sections of the British blog scene have disgraced themselves. Maybe it has something to do with the post-election malaise that many bloggers including me suffered. People have leapt upon the bombings - “Finally! something to write about!” - with little of the subtlety, consideration and (yes) wit that floated a lot of boats during the election.
Nobody on the outside are interested in playground fights between the Decent Left and the Pseudo Left (or whatever we’re calling each other this week) and more and more of us on the inside are peeling off until you’re left with a completely unrepresentative core of arseholes conducting an infantile (pseudo-)intellectual dick-swinging competition.
I don’t really have the right to say this because I’m ducking out of the argument, but it’s an opportunity - to make something worthwhile from all those deaths - squandered.
I’m willing to see your point; feel free to recharge. I’ll personally miss your posts, and you’ve definitely been among those who have inspired my blogging (something of a double-edged sword, I realise!).
Still, we have the ID cards and the many-headed hydra that is the EU to defeat yet. Go not quietly into that dark night…!
Without trying to brownnose, your blog and a couple of others (nosemonkey’s, Manic’s, Guido etc) got me interested in this in the first place. Here you have the benefit of being able to take a break once in a while - whereas newspapers are forced to print column upon column of twaddle even if there is nothing they can authoritativly write about.
Which is the game I want to enter… gulp.
Justin: I agree with you and Nosemonkey on this - there really isn’t much worth saying about the bombings, particularly as anyone who is trying to do that is just relating it back to their own particular historical pet hate. I’ve seen the bombings used in the last few weeks as an rallying call for support for mass redistribution of wealth, the closure of faith schools, the importance of increasing the size of the welfare state, massively decreased civil liberties, pulling out of Iraq, redoubling our efforts in Iraq, pulling out of the entire middle East, abandoning Israel to its fate, and I’d guess that Polly Toynbee somehow managed to squeeze Sure Start in there, although I can’t be certain about that last one. And all of this from the left. Frankly, it is dull to read, and it fails to get to the interesting question, which is what we should actually do right now, and in the medium and long term, about terrorism. I don’t think I have seen anyone tackle that one. It seems like everyone wants to blame something that they can easily control (poverty, deprivation, extremist clerics, immigration, etc…). It’s convenient, but it probably isn’t accurate, and it isn’t that helpful.
I hope you get your mojo back quickly. You, and a few others, provide a consistently interesting viewpoint from the left, and although I disagree with you on most issues, I still want to challenge my own thinking. I’d rather do that with someone thoughtful and considered, than someone whose idea of winning a debate is to find the most childish insult.
Polly Toynbee did write about Sure Start, but it was as if she hadn’t noticed that the bombs had happened: possibly a case of bad timing, buying time to work out her own position (very roughly summarised as I blame religion), or a case of not writing about the same thing as everybody else on that day.
I’m with Andrew, I think what will make British blogging different, and ultimately, better, than US blogging is people who think instead of polemicise.
Some of the people I read have an expertise I know nothing about that they are making available, others have a way of thinking that rejects labels and searches for synthesis, others winnow out from the media morass the things worth reading for me.
I think if people like that (yourself included) start throwing their hands up in disgust, blogging’s done for. It cannot survive as a spitting ouroborus on either end of the spectrum.
You’re right, in comparison with the states, we’re not wildly popular. I get the impression that the british blogging community is more read by other bloggers. But also, increasingly, by “real” journalists. And they might tell their friends, and their editors, and eventually write the same kind of thing, give the bloggers credit, maybe invite some of them to write for a wider audience.
Who knows what could happen? But it requires people to keep it professional, keep it thoughtful, keep it diverse, and keep it real. It’s a fight worth fighting, to improve the level of public discourse.
Well, I can relate, in another sense. American bloggers are all over the Roberts nomination, and I can’t find word one to say on it. He’s bad, so what. I felt the same way about Karl Rove, and finally said so, of a sort.
I too am tired of reading rant after rant restating the obvious.
My outrage…where did I last have it?
As for bomb blogging, at least the Brit bloggers are somewhat more affected by the bombs. Of course, I’m not planning to have an abortion any time soon…if so, maybe I’d find a rant within me on Roberts.
Oh, and I just read a post somewhere talking about the summer blahs of blogging. Happens to everyone.
Do come back, soon.
I very recently discussed this with a friend - the British blogosphere (or whatever one wants to call it), or at least certain parts of it, does seem more accommodative of opposing ideas. I certainly don’t agree with you on an awful lot of topics, and yet enjoy reading your point of view - it’s informative and allows me to see a opinion from another (more mainstream than the mainstream media) viewpoint and take that onboard.
Enjoy your break. See you in Tuscany etc……
Do you ever get the feeling that if they ever do a re-make of The Young Ones then Rik would be an incessant blogger instead of a ‘poet’?
I promised myself I wasn’t going to blog about it.
Then I did.
Then I wrote a post apologising for doing it.
Go. rest. Know you’ll be missed. That is all.
:o)
People have been called appeasers and apologists for simply wanting to understand why these men did what they did.
That strikes me as a miscontrual of what Harry’s place & co are saying. The problems is not with wanting to understand, it is with the content of the understanding then proffered. i.e. Harry & Co are arguing that most of those parading their understanding of terrorism, usually a varient of “it’s a response to injustices”, are infact mis-understanding terrorism, and in doing so acting as apologists for it.
You might be able to point to examples of Harry (certainly comments in there) of failing to make that distinction, but it seems clear to me that his is how the debate ought to be framed.
Trivially, there is nothing objectionable in “understanding-as-diagnosis” but there may be plenty of objections to the diagnosis then given.
Paddy, maybe I’d have more time if they conducted their arguments less along manichean lines and refrained from the abuse.
I have only ever posted one and only one comment on Harry’s Place and that was on a post on Iraq in which I linked to the Iraq Body Count site. The very next comment accused me of anti-Americanism. Where’s the point, fun, stimulation or challenge in that?
Those kinds of blog are places where people go to have their prejudices confirmed not challenged. And if you don’t conform you can fuck off as Harry’s recent spate of comment deletion has proved. Boring.
Two much of the rhetoric coming from the “Decent” Left smacks of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”. Who really wants to play with that?