In 1991, after the swift rout of Iraqui forces in the Gulf War, General Colin Powell had complained: «I’m running out of demons. I’m running out of villains.» By the time replacements arrived in 2001, Powell was senior member of George Bush Junior’s administration prosecuting the «war of terrorism.» There had been plenty of terrorism in the 1970s (not lest in Northern Ireland, where the Provisional IRA was partly bankrolled by donations from Irish Americans), but even in the Middle East it had been mainly secular and political: the Public Enemy Number One was Carlos the Jackal, a boozy playboy in a cravat. Osama Bin Laden, by contrast, was manifestly not an atheist, still less a Communist. A God-fearing, teetotal, anti-gay traditionalist who believed that a woman’s place was in the home and crime should be punished severly – what kind of enemy was this?
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World por Francis Wheen
