[Peace-discuss] Summary of the war

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following article is by Terry Jones, one of the Monty Python troupe,
who has also directed The Life of Brian; it's a good summary of the war in
an unusual style.  Happy New Year.  --CGE]

	I remain, sir, Haggard of the Hindu Kush
 
	Never mind the needless deaths, we've only succeeded in making bin
	Laden a shadow of his former self

	Terry Jones
	Sunday December 30, 2001
	The Observer

Osama bin Laden is looking 'haggard'. A videotape broadcast on al-Jazeera
TV showed the Most Wanted Man in the Known World looking haggard. And in
case we didn't notice how haggard he was looking, the Western media have
been pounding us with the word ever since the pictures were released.

So I would like to congratulate George Bush and Tony Blair on the first
concrete evidence that their 'War on Terrorism' is finally achieving some
of its policy objectives.

Of course, they've done terribly well in bringing chaos to Afghanistan,
but I don't remember that as being one of the policy objectives. When
those planes smashed into the World Trade Centre with the loss of 2,500
innocent lives, I don't think anybody's first reaction was: 'Well, the
sooner we get the mujahideen and the warlords to take over Kabul the
better!' No, as I remember, President Bush laid out the policy objectives
of his 'War on Terrorism' in measured terms: 'We must catch the evil
perpetrators of this cowardly act and bring them to justice.'

Bringing to justice the people who actually perpetrated the crime was out
of the question since they were already dead. They'd killed themselves in
a typically cowardly fashion. So, as I remember it, President Bush pretty
quickly said he would get whoever egged them on to do it and then he would
make them pay for it.

Well, many months later, who has paid for it? US taxpayers have stumped up
billions of dollars. They've paid for it. So have the British taxpayers,
for some reason which hasn't yet been explained to us. Uncounted thousands
of innocent Afghan citizens have paid for it too - with their lives. I say
'uncounted' because nobody in the West seems to have been particularly
interested in counting them. It's pretty certain more innocent people have
died and are still dying in the bombing of Afghanistan than on 11
September, but the New York Times doesn't run daily biographies of them so
they don't count.

Oh, I nearly forgot - we've all paid a considerable amount in terms of
those precious civil liberties and freedoms that make our way of life in
the Free World so much better than everyone else's. Bit of a conundrum
that.

We are all also paying a huge price, all the time, every day, in terms of
our daily anxiety quota. We daren't fly in planes or, if we do, we do so
in fear and dread. We are constantly fearful of some nameless retribution
being visited on us. And it's no good Mr Blair saying this is the
terrorists' fault. Of course it is, but then if we hadn't joined the
Americans in bombing Afghanistan we wouldn't all be so scared.

If the objectives of the 'War on Terrorism' were to catch the perpetrators
of the 11 September attacks, bring them to justice and make the world a
safer place, so far the score - on all three objectives - has been nil.
We're all jumping around scared shitless that something similar is going
to happen at any moment. No perpetrators have been caught; no perpetrators
have been brought to justice.

Mark you, this last is not really surprising. Just think: if the police
were setting out to catch a particularly clever and evil murderer, would
they go around with loud-hailers announcing where they were going to look
for him, pinpoint the areas they intended to search and give him a count
of 100 to get away? That's what you do if you're playing hide and seek,
not if you want to catch a criminal. I rather imagine the police would
have gone to work covertly and tried to find out where he was without his
even knowing they were looking for him. But I realise that's not a very
American way of going about things.

However, finally the 'War on Terrorism' is achieving its policy
objectives. Osama bin Laden is looking haggard. We may not have caught him
or brought him to justice but, at the cost of thousands of innocent Afghan
lives, billions of dollars of US citizens' money and the civil liberties
of the Free World, we have got him looking haggard.

It's a sensational and ground-breaking moment that justifies all the news
coverage it's been getting. If Osama bin Laden is looking haggard, that
means he's scared - or tired or eaten something that disagrees with him -
but at least it means he's not enjoying himself as he was in his previous
video.

This is a considerable triumph for the US forces, for the brave bomber
pilots who release their bombs from such considerable and dangerous
heights above the ground, and for Tony Blair, who has so fearlessly led
his entire nation into the position of being terrorist targets for no good
reason that any of us can think of.

So keep up the good work, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, let's
see if we can continue in this vein and perhaps - at the cost of only
another few billion dollars, a lot more innocent lives, many more civil
rights, and the stability of the Middle East, India and Pakistan, and
perhaps a Third World War, we might even be able to make Osama bin Laden
frown.


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001