Tread lightly on the things of earth

Lee Harris’s ideas in Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology (Policy Review, Aug 2002) make me think. Lee presents a different model for understanding 9-11 — seeing it not as an act of rational and instrumental (Clausewitzian) war, but as part of a fantasy ideology; that is, “political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy.” In this case the fantasy ideology is that of radical Islam that says, God is undeniably, spectacularly on our side against the infidels.

I think Lee gives Bush too much credit in recognizing the 9-11 attacks as “the acting out of demented fantasy” instead of a planned act of war. But I can’t (yet) argue with the possibility that “it is time to retire the war metaphor and to deploy one that is more fitting: the struggle to eradicate disease.” Or put another way, that a fantasy ideology like this one is a cancer, which “after driving out all other competing ideas and ideologies, [turns its] host organism into the instrument of [its] own poisonous and deadly will,” and that therefore must be eradicated as soon as possible.

My gut tells me this different model for understanding 9-11 still leads to participating in the same evil that radical Islam is in thrall to. But it’s one of the first perspectives I’ve seen that doesn’t sound like nutso warmongering to me, so I think it warrants further thought.

[discovered from Michele by way of Chris]