Osama bin Laden Was Not America’s Useful Enemy

The Guardian is a great newspaper but, lord, does it ever print some claptrap. Via Messrs Geras and Worstall comes this dreadful piece by Adam Curtis. The headline, for which Mr Curtis is not responsible, is a warning of the nonsense to come: For 10 years, Osama bin Laden filled a gap left by the Soviet Union. Who will be the baddie now?

From the off we’re supposed to appreciate, I think, that bad as bin Laden certainly was, he was never as bad as you were led to believe and, gosh, certainly not as bad as the people for whom he was a useful, even necessary, enemy. The world, you see, is complicated and if you think al-Qaeda are the bad guys you’ve been duped my friend. Seriously. Curtis writes:

Bin Laden and his ideological mentor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, talked about “the near enemy” and the “far enemy”. But from 2001 onwards they became America’s “far enemy”.