The Way the World is Now

Walter Rainey writes: This is an initial blog. Randomly, by way of introduction, I reprint the text of a letter sent to the Irish Times within days of the attack on the Twin Towers in September 2001. The letter was not published.

Dear Editor, Just one question. Why did bin Laden, if it was bin Laden, carry out the attacks on New York and Washington? And I’m not talking of the ideological motive, but the strategic one. Even a child could see the likely consequences of carrying out such an attack - which suggests that the operation was mounted in order to provoke those very consequences. Nothing else makes sense.

The implications of this are that America with all its current military huffing and puffing is in fact dancing to Bin Laden’s tune - again, if it was Bin Laden. The only logical explanation is that the whole thing was devised in order to provoke America into launching a military assault and thereby destabilising the whole Middle East.

There is no doubt that President Bush is, as the Americans say, between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he has to be seen to do something to avenge the outrage and make sure it never happens again, at the same time he has to be careful not to do even more harm by precipitating a collapse of the precarious international balance. But that is what statesmanship is about, making the correct choice in tough situations.

The truth is that America is indeed at war, but it is not a war susceptible to the quick fix of blanket bombing or cruise missile technology, but rather a long drawn-out one of dogged intelligence work, limited engagements and assassinations. It is not a war likely to satisfy the American public desire for the catharsis of a ‘big bang’; nor is it a war likely to make headlines in the papers; nor is it even probably a war that America can in the long term win.

In the meantime, if there are any lessons to be drawn from history, one surely is that it is not a wise thing to let your opponent set the agenda in a conflict, no matter how otherwise compelling the circumstances might seem.

Yours etc.

Now to current matters: Here in Ireland we're still in the middle of the phony economic war. The government is doing nothing because there is nothing it can do. Instead it is disguising its inactivity by commissioning all these reports which it has no intention of implementing - outside of screwing the public service even further. Even if it was to implement fully all the proposals in the An Bord Snip report, it would in financial terms amount to little more than slapping a postage stamp on the rump of an elephant. Instead, those who would rule us are privately on their knees praying that there is a world economic recovery that will float our boat along with all others. Also, I imagine, they think they have an ace up their sleeves in that they believe that the EU cannot afford to let us sink. If they are wrong on both counts, then God help us!