Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

If I began a post "Has Osama bin Laden started a democratic revolution in the Middle East?" you'd be entitled to hurry away as quickly as possible, convinced that I had gone over to the dark side. That Timothy Garton Ash would begin an article in this fashion simply beggars belief. But he did. And he didn't stop there: "What is happening on the streets of Beirut is not a result of the invasion of Iraq, nor does it retrospectively justify that invasion. But it does, obviously, have something to do with American policy." Er, yes, Timothy. Isn't his second sentence so lame? Isn't his first one so tired?

From its offensive beginning to its pathetic conclusion, the entire article suggests a confused mindset. For some reason, Garton Ash has allowed himself to be forced into viewing the geopolitical through a Brussels prism, come what may, and this has led him to deform his arguments to the point that they're sounding more and more absurd as the weeks go by. It's a shame, really, as he produced some fine commentary in his more balanced days.

As to why I consider his opening sentence offensive, here's an excerpt from "102 Minutes: The Untold Story of Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers" by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.

"For hundreds of people on the upper floor of the north tower, death had come in a thunderous instant. The remains of one man who worked for Marsh & McLennan, which occupied space on the 93rd to 100th floors, would later be found five blocks from the tower. American Airlines Flight 11 had flown directly into the company's offices. The impact killed scores of people who could never have known what hit them.

Flight 11 hit 1 World Trade Center, the north tower, at 450 miles an hour, having traveled the full length of Manhattan Island, fourteen miles from north and south, in less than two minutes. When it slammed into the north side of the building, the plane's forward motion came to a halt. The plane itself was fractionalized. Hunks of it erupted from the south side of the tower, opposite to where it had entered."

In their admirable book, Dwyer and Flynn depict the full horror of mass murder committed in the name of a new fascism. The monstrous crime they describe was the work of the disciples of the man who is now being put forward by Timothy Garton Ash as the possible founder of a democratic revolution in the Middle East. Regardless of the writer's desire to catch the attention of his readers, the opening argument is deeply offensive and utterly false.