Worthy Of His Steel

[poliphilo]

The symbiosis of Bush and bin-Laden.

Bin Laden helped to get Bush re-elected by weighing in with a broadcast that seemed to be urging support for Kerry. Of course it had the effect of bolstering support for Bush. CIA operatives have concluded that this was entirely what bin-Laden wanted.

Read all about it

bin-Laden needs Bush's blundering War on Terror. It recruits jihadis for him. It anoints him as the Commander of the Faithful. And Bush needs bin-Laden. He was a one term president in the making until bin-Laden handed him his war.

Both men are boosted by aggrandising their enemy. Every superhero needs a super villain. You're only as heroic as your opponent is fearsome. Holmes needs Moriarty and Moriarty needs Holmes.

Comments

Re: query at end

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's very hot here, but we're promised rain later. I'm looking forward to it.

We disagree about Bush. That's fine. I've found that profound disagreement needn't preclude friendship. In fact it sometimes acts as a spice.

My old mentor G.K. Chesterton, for example, remained all his life on very good terms with ideological adversaries like Wells and Shaw.

tapping the foot

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

in this sort of pairing it becomes
a little like quixote and sancho doesnt
it? friendship completing what is only
partial in each... or more subtley
perhaps in a frinedship like that of
Waite and Machen (in a sense sparring on
some things, but not apparant
opposites)...
sometimes opposites are more apparant
than actual arent they and the one finds
license in the other to be a side of himself
(or maybe it was so for wells and chesterton
too) I am thinking of General Thomas Jackson
(Stonewall) and J.E,B.Stuart the cavalry man
with the black plume in his slouched hat
and the red cape... a cavalier and a puritan
one might say but Jackson was observed to tap
his foot as the young officers danced with their
belles and his bright blue eyes to close and
head to nod during sermons at his Presbyterian
church.