[Peace-discuss] Monty Python on the War

[David Green]

Forward from Jewish Peace News:

[Terry Jones, the most intellectual of the Monty
Python team, writes the following lightly sardonic
piece for The Guardian UK. Riffing off the endless use
by the media of the word 'haggard' to describe Osama
bin Laden’s appearance in the most recent video, Jones
rapidly points up the contradictions in -- and hence,
in a dark way, the comic absurdity of -- official
pronouncements about the war in Afghanistan. Jones
finds British Prime Minister Blair's craven desire to
be the international mouthpiece of US doctrine
particularly incomprehensible. What he might have
added, although it's not obvious how to get a laugh
out of it, is that Britain's, currently rather
successful, response to its local terrorism has been
more or less the opposite of Bush's.]

December 30, 2001 Guardian UK by Terry Jones 

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. 


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