[Peace-discuss] "Why George Bush is Insane" by Harold Pinter

[John W.]

At 11:14 AM 4/1/2007, jencart at mailstation.com wrote:

>-----Forwarded Message-----
> >From: fransears at netscape.net
> >Sent: Apr 1, 2007 9:48 AM
> >To: jencart at mycidco.com
> >Subject: Fwd: Why George Bush is Insane
>
>
>
>Why George Bush is Insane
>by Harold Pinter; March 30, 2007


I don't understand.  This is dated March 30, 2007, yet Pinter speaks of the 
war against Iraq as if it was still in the future - "the planned war 
against Iraq".  Is this a reprint of an old article?

John Wason




>Earlier this year I had a major operation for cancer. The operation and 
>its after-effects were something of a nightmare. I felt I was a man unable 
>to swim bobbing about under water in a deep dark endless ocean. But I did 
>not drown and I am very glad to be alive.
>
>However, I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an 
>infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American 
>hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most 
>powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against 
>the rest of the world. "If you are not with us you are against us" 
>President Bush has said. He has also said "We will not allow the world's 
>worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders". Quite 
>right. Look in the mirror chum. That's you.
>
>The US is at this moment developing advanced systems of "weapons of mass 
>destruction" and it prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of 
>them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from 
>international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to 
>allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public 
>declarations and its own actions is almost a joke.
>
>The United States believes that the three thousand deaths in New York are 
>the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American 
>deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence.
>
>The three thousand deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to.
>
>The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through US and British 
>sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never 
>referred to.
>
>The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never 
>referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are 
>born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths 
>or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood.
>
>The two hundred thousand deaths in East Timor in 1975 brought about by the 
>Indonesian government but inspired and supported by the United States are 
>never referred to.
>
>The half a million deaths in Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, 
>Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti, in actions supported and subsidised by the 
>United States are never referred to.
>
>The millions of deaths in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are no longer 
>referred to.
>
>The desperate plight of the Palestinian people, the central factor in 
>world unrest, is hardly referred to.
>
>But what a misjudgement of the present and what a misreading of history 
>this is.
>
>People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they 
>do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they 
>do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty 
>powers. They not only don't forget. They strike back.
>
>The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of 
>retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state 
>terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts 
>of the world.
>
>In Britain the public is now being warned to be "vigilant" in preparation 
>for potential terrorist acts. The language is in itself preposterous.
>
>How will - or can - public vigilance be embodied? Wearing a scarf over 
>your mouth to keep out poison gas? However, terrorist attacks are quite 
>likely, the inevitable result of our Prime Minister's contemptible and 
>shameful subservience to the United States. Apparently, a terrorist poison 
>gas attack on the London Underground system was recently prevented. But 
>such an act may indeed take place. Thousands of school children travel on 
>the London Underground every day. If there is a poison gas attack from 
>which they die, the responsibility will rest entirely on the shoulders of 
>our Prime Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister does not travel on 
>the underground himself.
>
>The planned war against Iraq is in fact a plan for premeditated murder of 
>thousands of civilians in order, apparently, to rescue them from their 
>dictator.
>
>The United States and Britain are pursuing a course which can lead only to 
>an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe.
>
>It is obvious, however, that the United States is bursting at the seams to 
>attack Iraq. I believe that it will do this - not just to take control of 
>Iraqi oil - but because the US administration is now a bloodthirsty wild 
>animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are 
>horrified by the posture of their government but seem to be helpless.
>
>Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to 
>challenge and resist US power Europe itself will deserve Alexander 
>Herzen's definition (as quoted in the Guardian newspaper in London 
>recently) "We are not the doctors. We are the disease."
>
>Harold Pinter
>The Assassinated Press