[Peace-discuss] Homage to Harold Pinter

[Brussel Morton K.]

Ann Wright reminds us of Harold Pinter's very remarkable Nobel  
lecture on receiving the 2005 Prize for  literature.  --mkb


Remembering Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter - "Is Our Conscience Dead?"
Friday 26 December 2008
by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

      On the news today of the death of Harold Pinter, the winner of  
the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, I remembered hearing his Nobel  
Laureate lecture/acceptance speech. I was in London in December, 2005  
speaking at the annual Stop the War conference when Pinter delivered  
his speech - not in Oslo, as Pinter was very sick and could not  
travel, but in London via TV link.

      I was amazed and thrilled that he chose to use the Nobel Prize  
platform and devote a huge portion of his speech to shining an  
international spotlight on the tragic effects of the past decades of  
US foreign policy and particularly, on George Bush and Tony Blair's  
decisions to invade and occupy Iraq, on Guantanamo and on torture.

      Pinter's Laureate speech question, "Is Our Conscience Dead?" is  
most relevant today when three years after his acceptance speech,  
"Art, Truth and Politics," Bush, Cheney, Rice and other  
administration officials are either trying to rewrite history or, as  
in Cheney's case - purposefully revealing his role in specific  
criminal acts of torture and daring the American legal system and  
people to hold him accountable.

      Following is the part of Pinter's lecture that speaks to the  
invasion of Iraq, torture and Guantanamo - and our collective and  
individual conscience:

      "Art, Truth and Politics"
      Noble Lecture by Harold Pinter
      December 7, 2005

      "... The United States no longer ... sees any point in being  
reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear  
or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United  
Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as  
impotent and irrelevant.

      It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a  
lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

      What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have  
any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely  
employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with  
our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of  
others? Is all this dead?

      Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without  
charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due  
process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate  
structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is  
not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the  
'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed  
by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free  
world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What  
does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small  
item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from  
which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger  
strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in  
these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a  
tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This  
is torture.

      What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this?  
Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this?  
Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise  
our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're  
either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

      The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state  
terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of  
international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action  
inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the  
media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate  
American military and economic control of the Middle East  
masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having  
failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion  
of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of  
thousands and thousands of innocent people.

      We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium,  
innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to  
the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the  
Middle East'.

      How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be  
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?

      More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just  
that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal  
Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the  
International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American  
soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush  
has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has  
ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can  
let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number  
10, Downing Street, London.

      Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place  
death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were  
killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency  
began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They  
are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do  
body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

      Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the  
front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a  
little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days  
later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another  
four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a  
missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he  
asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in  
his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of  
any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when  
you're making a sincere speech on television.

      The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are  
transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive,  
out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest  
of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different  
kinds of graves.

      I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank  
about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official  
declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is  
not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of  
land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

      The United States now occupies 702 military installations  
throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception  
of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they  
are there all right.

      The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational  
nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be  
launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of  
nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever  
cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile,  
Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me?  
Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this  
infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear  
weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy.  
We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent  
military footing and show no sign of relaxing it.

      Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States  
itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their  
government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent  
political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we  
can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

      I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech  
writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose  
the following short address which he can make on television to the  
nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning,  
sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously  
attractive, a man's man.

      'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin  
Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he  
didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't  
chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not  
a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom- 
loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give  
compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We  
are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian.  
He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see  
this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

      I hope you will decide that yes, we do have a conscience and  
that you will join the millions of Americans who say we must hold  
accountable those who have committed criminal acts while in  
government - the policy makers as well as the implementers.

      Write and call the new President and the new Congress and  
demand official investigations into war crimes and other criminal  
acts committed by members of the Bush administration and join us on  
Inauguration day to remind the new President of his responsibilities.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as  
a Colonel, and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in  
opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada,  
Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and  
Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened  
the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the  
book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."


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