Blowback

Oedipus

"The second Bush administration is built on a negation of the first that verges on the oedipal"
The Guardian, Aug. 26, 2002

George W. Bush bears some resemblances to the Greek hero Oedipus. In one version of the Oedipus myth, Oedipus is determined to track down the killer of his father, not realizing it is himself. In the modern version, Bush wants the man ultimately responsible for the September 11 massacre, not realizing it might just be his father, George H. W. Bush.

Bush Senior was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from November 1975 to January 1977, and the CIA didn't start supporting Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan until the just before the Russian invasion of December 1979. (Jimmy Carter signed an order authorizing covert aid to the nascent Islamic moujahidin). However, he was President of the USA from 1989 to 1993, after the end of the Afghan war, during which time the US government "hatched a monster of Islamist extremism, the Taliban movement" - (Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, John K. Cooley, Pluto Press, London, 2000).

Osama bin Laden has more in common with the Conrad character, Mr. Kurtz, a Company man gone bad.

Bush Junior, who apparently thinks the inhabitants of Greece are called "Grecians", is probably unaware of the literary parallels. Perhaps he should be told.