NON– F I CTI ON

Messages to the World The Statements of Osama bin Laden

Edited and Introduced by Bruce Lawrence Verso / 224pp. / £10.99

Review by Simon Kovar

THISvolume repays attention for two reasons. The first is that it leaves the reader in no doubt about the ideology or intent of its subject; and, as Bruce Lawrence argues, bin Laden must be understood if he is to be defeated. The second is that it gives some insight into the Left’s understanding of ‘political Islam’. Lawrence believes that bin Laden’s terrorism is essentially a response to the West’s “much greater” terrorism. He quotes approvingly from Michael Mann: “Despite the religious rhetoric and the bloody means, bin Laden is a rational man. There is a simple reason why he attacked the US: American imperialism”. For Lawrence et al., the equation is simple: remove this reason and bin Laden’s war will cease. It is true that bin Laden’s statements define his jihadas reactive: that is, as a legitimate response to Western aggression against Muslims, and one that will cease once its causes have been removed. But let us be clear about what he perceives those causes to be. They include the “Crusader-Jewish” presence in all the lands of Islam. By this he is not referring solely to the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan, or to Israel’s incursions beyond its 1967

borders. He is referring to the entirety of Israel-Palestine, and (a tricky one for the EU) to Moorish Spain. Bin Laden goes further: “In our religion, it is not permissible for anynon-Muslim to stay in our country” (emphasis added). Lawrence et al. might view giving bin Laden what he wants as a “rational” response to the threat of terrorism, but moral honesty requires that we call this solution what it is: ethnic cleansing as a mode of appeasement.

“Bin Laden is explicit in his view that the current war is ‘fundamentally religious’; the enmity is ‘doctrinal’”

History, of course, teaches us that such fantasies can never be satisfied. And here we come to a second problem with Lawrence’s analysis, one he himself alludes to in his introduction but does not resolve. While “rationality” might tell us that bin Laden’s foe is “American imperialism”, bin Laden himself has an intriguing habit of telling us that his real concern is actually something else: what he calls “global unbelief”. The unbelievers are the Jews, the Christians, and more generally, the liberal, “permissive” societies of the West, epitomised by the US, although bin Laden is explicit in identifying the Jews as the root evil. There can be no permanent peace with the Jews, he states, and scripture demands their annihilation before the Day of Judgement may arrive. American

society – its economy, media and politics – is subordinated to the Jews. More generally: “Every Muslim, from the moment they realise the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews, and hates Christians”. Bin Laden is explicit in his view that the current war is “fundamentally religious”; the enmity is “doctrinal”. His societal ideal –his model for the restored Caliphate –is revealed to be Talibangoverned Afghanistan. Is this all merely a code for hostility to American imperialism? One of the statements included in this volume, dated from October 2002, sets out to answer directly the question “What do we want from you?”, and provides a helpful itemisation. “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam”, bin Laden writes. His second and third points go on to refer to the irreligion and immorality of American society, and to the fact that, “rather than ruling by the sharia of God”, Americans “choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire”. American foreign policy does not get a mention until point four. “I’m really not a fan of OBL”, Lawrence assures us in an interview press-released to coincide with the publication of this volume. Well, it’s good to clear that one up, Bruce, because I fear that “OBL” doesn’t like us very much either. But what are we to make of an analysis that sees “logic” in capitulation to bin Laden’s demands, when these include the Taliban as a model of good governance, support for the Indonesian butchers of East Timor, opposition to any Western intervention to prevent the genocide in Darfur, and the annihilation of the Jews? I am reminded of Nehru’s account of his meeting with French and British statesman during the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938. “Appeasement seemed to be a feeble word for it”, he wrote. “There was behind it not only a fear of Hitler, but a sneaking admiration for him”.

Simon Kovar is a Contributing Editor of The Liberal.

44 | The Liberal | Autumn 2007
NON– F I CTI ON

Savage Kingdom Virginia and the Founding of English America

Benjamin Woolley HarperCollins / 467pp. / £25

Review by Ronald Wright

FOURhundred years ago, the first lasting English colony in America took root at Jamestown, Virginia, now a theme-park recently visited by the Queen. The United States tends to regard the New England Pilgrims of 1620 as more respectable ancestors than the “vagabonds and bankrupts and other disorderly persons” who initiated Indian-fighting, slave-owning and tobacco-growing at Jamestown in 1607. Yet, apart from differing levels of religious cant, the behaviour of the two colonies was much alike. Both were saved from starvation by the local ‘Indians’, and both began systematic extermination of their native hosts within some fifteen years. In that short time, relations between the races descended into mayhem, and the original Americans were transformed from foreign potentates worthy of being received at court in London to devil-worshipping savages fit only for “dunging the ground with their flesh” –as one Puritan gleefully wrote after burning a town full of 600 women and children in Connecticut. Benjamin Woolley’sSavage Kingdom confines itself to the first decade and a half in Virginia. Taken on the terms of its subtitle – as a frankly English view of modern America’s founding – the book is a delight, a rattling good read packed

with dreamers, schemers, rogues and desperadoes. Well versed in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods, Woolley steers confidently through the religious, political and personal storms that buffeted the flimsy English foothold. Things got off to a bad start. The Jamestown site was marshy, unhealthy, and devoid of precious metals. Half the settlers (at that time all men) died the first summer. More English came, only to suffer horribly in the “starving time” of 1609-10, when some were reduced to cannibalism; dead Indians were unearthed for the table, and one settler was caught with the butchered joints of his wife. In 1610, the colonists decided to abandon the place, but on the very day they were to leave Lord Delaware sailed in with reinforcements and supplies – a deliverance ascribed by many to the Lord.

“There was much going on that the English could not see or understand, and more they didn’t care to reveal”

Men went to Virginia, Woolley writes, “not because of how much they had to gain, but how little they had to lose”. Things began to improve with John Rolfe’s commercial development of tobacco and with his marriage to Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, the wily overlord of eastern Virginia who controlled a small empire of 200 towns, some with large wooden temples and a hundred houses. Unlike movie Indians, most ancient Americans, including the Powhatans, lived by largescale maize farming. It was the Indians’ corn – sometimes bought, often stolen –

that fed the Jamestown English, who were much more interested in growing tobacco once the new addiction sank its lucrative hooks into London. Woolley’s refreshingly old-fashioned biographical approach is the great strength of Savage Kingdom, bringing the players to life – especially John Smith, Powhatan, Rolfe and Pocahontas. But the method also has its flaws. Primary sources from these early years are few and suspect –many are textually corrupt, nearly all were written by people with axes to grind, and none were penned or dictated by a native American. There was much going on that the English could not see or understand, and more they didn’t care to reveal. The result is like interpreting only one spouse’s version of a failed marriage. Woolley is fairminded, describing atrocities by both sides. But the Powhatan War of 1622, when the Indians killed about one fourth of the settlers, was hardly the undeserved outrage the English claimed. By then the invaders had burgeoned, while the invaded were collapsing from Old World plagues such as smallpox, and from damage to their ecology and economy from introduced weeds, vermin, and feral livestock. As the balance tipped in the whites’ favour, they became more arrogant, seizing land and food that wasn’t for sale, debauching the locals with alcohol (formerly unknown there), and enslaving both Indians and Africans. In Virginia as in Mexico and Peru, disease and demography were the key factors in European conquest. Readers wanting this wider context to the Jamestown story should find it in Alfred Crosby’s seminal Columbian Exchange(1972), and Francis Jennings’s provocative Invasion of America(1975). That said, Savage Kingdomis a fascinating introduction to the unpromising seed that, for better and worse, grew into the mightiest nation of our times.

Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress is published by Canongate.

Autumn 2007 | The Liberal | 45