CSotD: Desert blooms
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With a little more time to ponder, Signe Wilkinson provides a more outward-looking cartoon than the chest-thumping, flag-waving panels that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the death of bin Laden. Note that the event isn't even referenced here; only the timing suggests that it was part of her thought process.
The world changes quickly. New faces come on the scene as new generations spring up, and adults, even those much younger than I am, struggle to keep up.
I was talking to some fifth graders a few weeks ago about a story of mine that they had read, set in Prohibition times. A gangster's girlfriend called herself "Theda" and I was explaining why that was a kind of humorous choice. I almost said, "It would be like a girl today calling herself 'Madonna,'" but realized only their parents would get the parallel.
"It would be like a girl today calling herself 'Gaga,'" I said, and they all laughed and understood.
Similarly, a major factor in this story is the number of young people, even of voting age, for whom Osama bin Laden is only a name out of history. A college student interviewed yesterday by NPR said he was the boogeyman of his childhood, the shadowy figure who was going to come get him. It almost sounded as if he'd have rejoiced as much if he heard that the Joker had been killed, so little was the actual man a part of his consciousness.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera had reports from various places in the Muslim world reacting to the death of bin Laden. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, he still had influence, not as an immediate player, but as an authority figure, as if he were a respected imam rather than a political leader, in a world in which the distinction between religion and politics is muddy at best. And, to that extent, Wilkinson's cartoon is wrong: There are still plenty who buy what al Qaeda is selling.
And yet the Hindu Kush is not the center of the Muslim world, and when al Jazeera asked for reaction from Libyan rebels, they got this very revealing response. I was fascinated by it because, first of all, it reveals how the bin-Laden-as-boogeyman theme plays out in that conflict, but also because these guys don't look like the modern young people who carried out the revolutions in Tunisia and Cairo.
But, traditional and blue-collar as they appear to be, it seems that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are not part of their thinking. (I might expect some polite disclaimers if they were talking to an American or British network, but I don't see why they'd mute their opinions for al Jazeera.)
A decade ago, we were told by pundits and patriots that it was disloyal to ask why the Arab/Pashtun world would support al Qaeda and to wonder if there were some way to improve our image in their eyes. I would suggest that, with the emergence of the "Arab Spring," it is disloyal not to.
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