After bin Laden

In this week’s Spectator, on sale today, we have an outstanding lineup on bin Laden’s death and its aftermath. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested a preview of what’s in this week’s mag.

Our lead feature is written by Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times: she has been writing about Pakistan for 24 years and is now based in Washington — so is ideally qualified to write about the changing relationship between the two countries. Bin Laden’s urban lair fits a trend, she says: other jihadis have been found in similar urban compounds near the Pakistan military. The country is playing a double game, she says. Dana Rohrbacher, a Republican Congressman who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, tells Christina: “I used to be Pakistan’s best friend on the Hill … for a long time we bought into this vision that we were supporting moderates by supporting the military. In fact, the military is in alliance with the radical militants. Just because they shave their beards, drink whisky and look Western they fooled a lot of people.”

Christopher Hitchens writes the diary. Publishing pictures of dead tyrants serves a purpose, he says:

“In Romania in 1989 I helped hand out freshly printed Hungarian newspapers (this was in Transylvania province, celebrated for its supernatural potentates) that showed the corpses of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. The looks of relief, slowly replacing incredulity, were well worth seeing.”

Peter Oborne just happened to be in Pakistan on Monday, researching his book about cricket. He sped along to Bin Laden’s compound, and sends a dispatch about what he saw: including an advert for a local girls’ school. He has a different take from Lamb and Hitchens. “My hunch is that the ISI lured Osama down from the hills, and the American special forces did the rest,” he says. He also describes how he watched the Royal Wedding in Urdu in a colonial-era club in Karachi, and found that the royal kiss had been censored on decency grounds.

Andrew J Bacevich, a former US Army colonel, now a professor at Boston University, is one of the world’s leading counter-terrorism experts. He writes with fury and authority about the future of what he regards as the wrong war. This killing, he says, “settles nothing, decides nothing and repairs nothing,” he writes. “The US has been playing the wrong game, unable to recognise who its enemies actually are”.

This is a tiny sample. We have Rod Liddle on the new era of conspiracy theories that will soon be upon us. Hugo Rifkind about the spectacle of the celebrating Americans. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore asks if historians have exaggerated Ian Fleming’s role in cracking the Engima code; Theodore Dalrymple writes on the demise of Scarborough (“we are barbarians, living in the ruins of civilisation”); and Charles Moore gives his top 11 observations about the Royal Wedding.

All this for a paltry outlay of £2 direct, £3.20 in the shops — or you can subscribe direct, with free iPad and online access, from £1 per issue.