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December 12, 2005
Player of the Week for Dec. 12, 2005 - Harold Pinter
This year's Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter might seem an odd choice for our Player of the Week, especially given is rather harse criticism of U.S. policy. That said, I think that it is important for any entity to undergo a certain degree of reflection on occasion. The problem is knowing when that proper occasion should be, because constant reflection or analysis is counterproductive. Plus there is always the case that many, many people are all too willing to criticize the government every minute of every day. However there are certainly people who are also all too willing to accept anything the government says, no matter what. How is Mr. Pinter different? Well, though not a "politician" his literature is very political. He is very cognizant of our political reality. He is exceptionally perceptive and quite eloquent, which makes him enjoyable to read. He has an interesting perspective that should make us all think for a few minutes before we plunge ahead on our quixotic adventures in Oilland. The following is from his Nobel acceptance speech last week.
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
It is more than worth reading and digesting.
Posted by Chip Spear at December 12, 2005 2:11 PM