So it seems that we’ve been trying to ‘taint the Al-Qaida brand‘. I get why that might seem to be a good idea – make Al Qaeda look bad, discourage people from joining.
It sort of meshes with the conclusions of this recent report which suggests that it’s impossible to identify a single path to extremism: if there’s no way to identify possible recruits, one way to stop them being recruited is to stop them thinking positively enough about Al Qaeda.
(Incidentally, yes, I’m spelling it Al Qaeda. I have no reason to favour that over The Guardian’s Al-Qaida. It’s just the spelling I’ve been using so far and I don’t know why theirs might be better.)
I have to say, though, that it’s a plan which appears to have some serious drawbacks. Consider: if you’re angry and motivated to do Al Qaeda-ish things, but Al Qaeda itself doesn’t appear to be up to the job, what do you do? Well, clearly, it would be nice if you’d resign yourself to writing stinging satirical commentary. It’s also not unthinkable that you might create your own organisation and go right ahead and make go things go boom. I don’t see immediately where it’s better to have a smattering of unconnected terror organisations rather than one over-arching terror organisation with cells and ideologically-inspired fellow travellers.
I suppose another advantage of tainting the brand would be to reduce tacit and complicit logistical support (assuming there is some) for Al Qaeda from the Muslim community in general. On the other hand, encouraging the organisation to fragment will make it that much more difficult to negotiate with Al Qaeda if that’s ever something we want to do. Yes, I know, the mere suggestion is shocking. But if this is a war, and if Al Qaeda is the enemy or represents a large part of the enemy, then at some point it might be nice to reach a settlement and move on. We reach settlements with monsters all the time – indeed, when it’s in our interest, we embrace them. Osama himself is alleged to have been funded by the US to fight Russia in Afghanistan. That was not in any way a pretty war, and unpretty tactics were common.
Speaking of unpretty tactics: the mysterious person in I was talking about earlier – the one who isn’t George W. Bush – is Binyam Mohamed. He’s a British resident who was apparently rendered to Morocco and tortured with razor blades until he ‘confessed’ to involvement in terrorism. The High Court here in the UK recently said that:
“The relationship of the United Kingdom government to the United States authorities in connection with [Mohamed] was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.”
In other words, we were in this charming sequence of events up to our ears.
So maybe the desire to ‘taint the Al Qaeda brand’ is a weird little mirror: we want them to look wicked because we’ve already betrayed so much of what we’re supposed to stand for that we look less like the Good Guys and more like just guys.
We’re making the mistake – again – of thinking that you can use bad, bad tools to do good things. You can’t. We’re defined by the tools we use. The ends don’t justify the means because in politics and history – in the process of living – there is no end. There’s just what we do on the way to tomorrow.
Bad tools = Bad Guys.
So I wish we could stop worrying about the Al Qaeda brand – and our own – and start trying to behave like the people we want to be – or even, like the people we say we are. Because I’m almost sure that’s the only way we get to be the Good Guys.