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| The Alliance |
| Guardian: Bush and Blair are lost |
| 2001-10-09 |
How the war will end is not possible to say. Our leaders give us not a single ground for optimism. They say it must go on and on. Their immediate aim, the elimination of Bin Laden, looks as elusive as their ultimate aim, the end of all world terrorism. Both are desirable, both perhaps unreal. The work has to be started. Bush and Blair had no choice. But, more than any other military engagement in the last 20 years, it defies confident explanation. The commentator is accustomed to making rational sense of things, pointing the way towards an outcome, admitting the reader to the mind of political leaders who know what they are doing. This time these leaders can be by no means sure. They know what they want, but have little idea how far or long they, or we, will have to go to get it. Meanwhile, let's be clear about this one aspect. Though the danger is universal, the failings that provoked it are particular. The unforgivable act against humanity sprang from a version of Islam that only Islam can set about repudiating, so that among people of goodwill there can be no shred of misunderstanding. On the other hand, the context in which it happened, the target it was aimed at, is the residue of a history that America needs to recognise. Such truths are the start of making a better world hereafter - if the hereafter ever comes. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |