Conspiracy Theory Update
Alert alert alert - as of a few hours ago, the view that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight is the absurd conspiracy theory and the view that he was killed without firing a shot is common sense. Avoid embarrassment and being considered a loon by getting it right.
I have no particular opinion on any of this and no burning desire to know the details - at the end of the day, the Navy SEALS are not a police outfit and (as with the SAS in the Iranian Embassy siege) have a way of going about things that intrinsically involves shooting people. But the changing storyline does demonstrate pretty starkly why anyone talking pejoratively about "conspiracy theorists" is being much less of a hard-headed rationalist than they consider themselves to be; since our only source of information is official statements from the US government, the only two possibilities are to believe that some material misrepresentations have been made, or to believe that the US government is telling the entire truth. Both points of view are reasonable to hold.
But but but I *want* to believe both
ReplyDelete(a) the US government has not materially represented the situation, and
(b) the various mutually contradictory accounts it has given to date.
And obviously, the idea that the US government could cock anything up, let alone a simple matter of reporting like this, is laughable.
(Less sarcastically, if you're going to stuff up part of an operation like this, getting over-excited about your own success story and making public statements somewhat ahead of what you actually know for sure is a lot less bad a failure mode than other possibilities we have seen in the past.)
Strange, I consider myself a hard-headed rationalist, but I nevertheless believe that The US Government doesn't quite know exactly precisely perfectly what happened in the raid, and probably won't, ever.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, I also believe that The US Government (with capital letters!) is very confident that Osama Bin Ladin isn't going to be releasing any more propaganda tapes.
How on earth am I supposed to reconcile these two beliefs, yet still consider myself a hard-headed rationalist?
What do you think of this?
ReplyDeleteI find that very difficult to believe; I wasn't aware that the US had a rail system.
I am still hoping against hope that Al Qaeda were gong to try out my Eurostar/"Unstoppable" idea.
ReplyDelete"As late as February last year"? On that logic I'm an occasional lecturer at a Russell Group university and a thorn in the side of its HR department. (Or maybe they were a thorn in my side, I don't know. It was nice when it stopped, I do know that.)
ReplyDeleteSurely it would have been more surprising to find that he'd given up the whole plotting-against-the-Great-and-Lesser-Satan/Far Enemy stuff as a bad job and was concentrating solely on the internal jihad to turn his mind from all things but God?
ReplyDeleteMind you, if he had done that, I'd expect the US to keep quiet about it if anyone with a clue was involved. Spending his last, isolated years in holy contemplation of the Names of God would play to a martyr conception much more effectively than spending them on fruitless and ineffective plotting.
I note also that there is a very big difference in practice between 'X had this specific idea for a way of making bad things happen to Y' and 'X was in a position to make bad things happen to Y'.
On the 'cui bono?' front, is there any evidence of Presidential political capital riding on the railway system? You know, say a large chunk of financial investment in it? Which might be secured in the public imagination if it was A Target Of Terrorists Who Hate America - since proceeding with the project would then be deeply and profoundly patriotic? I know very little of the US situation: I only ask.
It's not reasonable to hold that the US Government is telling the entire truth when you can't tell what the truth is that it's telling.
ReplyDeleteOn the 'cui bono?' front, is there any evidence of Presidential political capital riding on the railway system? You know, say a large chunk of financial investment in it? Which might be secured in the public imagination if it was A Target Of Terrorists Who Hate America - since proceeding with the project would then be deeply and profoundly patriotic? I know very little of the US situation: I only ask.
ReplyDeleteI think it's just "a form of mass transit that doesn't have body searches and x rays yet". Deep down in his heart, I think Obama knew that this was a pretty useless sequel.
And Osama did too!
ReplyDeleteThe main branch of AQ seemed to be more into symbol killing than people killing, though that was something that happened. AQ should have plotted to do a job on the Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument or Golden Gate Bridge, which would have been worthy targets after the WTC.
ReplyDeleteAs one who semi-regularly travels by rail in the US, I can say that a plot to disrupt it forcibly recalls the old Dorothy Parker/Calvin Coolidge gag.
ReplyDeleteThough actually it is noticeable that Penn Station in NYC now does a big ostentatious security act, with sniffer dogs roaming all over the shop.