4 May 2011

Letting Go of Al Queda

Al Queda was nice and neat. For an instant gratification audience as we have all become.

Now their figurehead, the equivilant of Caeser's Eagle, has been killed (whether fairly or not), the West, and predominately America with their pedestal black-and-white politics, will struggle to sculpt another nefarious character.

The Western World with their hyperreal wars are fixated on establishing a devil in every conflcit. And Al Queda fit the bill. Saddam was the penultimate evil, pilloried for genocide and a trademark of undemocratic process.

Bin Laden was the super-devil. The man who had the audacity to attack a materialistic and capitalistic society for it's one dimensional regime. This message was subtly twisted to become a man who hated America, the basis for wars, justification for torture and an excuse to invade and dominate.

To end his life, end his alleged control on an organisation that is fractured, divided, without identity and embracing extremism, was an astute political move.

But now who are our enemies? Who can we project to the realms of evil on digestable media content?

The Evening Standard and the Independent both try to link Al Queda terrorism with the Arab Spring, the emotive title screams in the I paper 'Yemen and Somalia are the last bastions of a terror network'.

As the Arab Spring commenced, rumours of extremist infiltration were rife as protest after protest worked it's way accross the middle east.

And while Gaddafi is a prime candidate, his manner is not nearly dreadful enough, nor arrogant, nor as sercretive as Bin Laden.

Global images promote sections of the alleged Al Queda organisation, but I would suggest they are about as organised as Libyan Rebels. The media, the western nations are reluctant to let the great enemy fade out so quietly, without the drama with which it exploded.

Why do we need to define people, countries, organisations in black and white, good and bad, right and wrong? Is the media, and governments, so lacking in imagination and intelligence to create two dimensional enemies and grasp at straws when they disappear?

Until a new bad-guy comes into the frame, I am resigned to more exaggerations, fallacies and suppositions about Al Queda.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

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