January 16, 2003
SMILEY FACE (via Kevin Whited):
The United States of America has gone mad (John le CarrŽ, January 15, 2003, Times of London)America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. [...]
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. [...]
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which.
Rare are the opportunities in life to redeem yourself--particularly after siding with a brutal totalitarian dictatorship with global aspirations--but folks like John LeCarre have been given just such a Godsend. Sadly, he, like many others, is squandering it.
Mr. LeCarre, as many of you will recall, was the great bard of moral relativism during the Cold War. His excellent oeuvre is, unfortunately, far too often a testament to the vile notion that there was no difference between the West and the Communists (or, in the case of books like Little Drummer Girl that there's no difference between Israel and terrorist gangs), rather than just a critique of the use of espionage in a democracy, which would be entirely justified. The gist of his novels then was that it mattered little whether the USSR or America/Britain prevailed in the Cold War and that the sometimes repugnant, but more often simply misguided, techniques and tactics of our spy craft delegitimized our side. It seemed to matter not one whit to him what the overall strategies and purposes of the combatants were--thus, that the Soviets wanted to impose communism, while the Americans/British wanted to bring freedom, was unimportant. For LeCarre there was never a forest, only trees, and only bad trees.
One might have thought he'd learn something from the euphoria with which Eastern Europe greeted the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Russians the ousting of Gorbachev, but he seems unteachable. Even if we grant the risible notion that our freedoms are being "systematically eroded", and pretend that they were during the McCarthy period, this is once again a focus on tactics to the exclusion of the big picture. That Lincoln suspended habeus corpus did not make the North the moral equivalent of the South, any more than FDR's putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps made him the equivalent of Hitler. Both men may have been mistaken--FDR clearly was; the Lincoln case is arguable--but their causes were righteous.
Mr. LeCarre comes before us now, at a time when a few of the West's still serious democratic states--America, Britain, Israel, etc.--are engaged in an effort to extend democracy, and the ideals that make it possible, to those portions of the Islamic world that are in the grip of totalitarian dictatorship and which threaten their own people, their neighbors, us or all of the above. No religious person would argue that one side represents, as Mr. LeCarre says, "Absolute Good" and the other "Absolute Evil": the Judeo-Christian belief is that we are all a mixture of good and evil and that no human can be absolutely one or the other. But the religious also recognize that evil does exist and that to deny evil is to deny reality. One need not be a holy-rolling hawk to comprehend the Saddamist rule of Iraq as a barbarous tyranny and a danger, as, in fact, a form of evil. One does, on the other hand, have to deny the reality of evil if one wishes to equate America, Britain, and Israel with bin Laden's al Qaeda, with Saddam's Iraq, with Yassar Arafat's Palestine, with Assad's Syria, with Hezbollah's South Lebanon, etc. Yet this seems to be the project upon which Mr. LeCarre is embarked. Just as he sought to sap the will of the West to resist and defeat communism, he seeks now to sap our will to resist and defeat Islamicist totalitarianism.
Mr. LeCarre at one point says:
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
Strangely enough, he is demanding the kind of Absolute Good and moral purity that he ascribes to President Bush's worldview. Given the choice between an imperfect Bush and an imperfect Saddam, he's chosen Saddam. Carried to its extreme such a position might render the following: a man is being attacked by a tiger, a poacher comes along and prepares to shoot the tiger, so you stop him because his heart is not pure. A man dies, but you've not dirtied your conscience. One wonders how many deaths Mr. LeCarre will accept to keep himself Absolutely Good?
MORE:
Writers, artists and civic leaders on the War (openDemocracy, 12 - 1 - 2003)
President Bush has rallied his troops for what he calls “The first war of the 21st century”. What is your view of this crisis, where, briefly, do you stand? This is the question we are putting to people around the world, especially those with their own public reputation and following. Our aim, to help create a truly global debate all can identify with.Posted by Orrin Judd at January 16, 2003 10:36 AMJohn le CarrŽ
Roger Scruton
John Berger
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Salman Rushdie
The mighty James Lileks
published the definitive demolition of Le Carre's "quice cliche" idiotarianism in today's "Daily Bleat."
In the real world, there are only two alternatives: (1) Saddam's continuance in power; (2) Saddam's removal from power thanks to a coalition led by the imperfect Bush and including imperfect Britain, imperfect Kuwait, imperfect Kurds, imperfect Qatar, imperfect Israel, imperfect Turkey, etc. Realists chose one of the alternatives actually available. Le Carre chooses to reject all real alternatives and assault everyone from the sidelines. He is a fantasist, wishing for a world that could never be, and a misanthrope, hating all those not part of his fantasy.
Posted by: pj at January 16, 2003 10:02 AMYeah, what does Britney Spears think about
this?
Let me mention something I saw, it was, I think, on Bill Quick's blog. The Beserkely or SF City Council ruled that pet... um, people.... would no longer be pet "owners", but pet "guardians", as "owners" is of course oppressive, Neanderthal, etc etc.
Off Topic? Well, yeah. Or not.
I bring this up because that story was truly and brilliantly clarifying, about how much, maybe in entirety, that the Left's thinking and posturing is about THEMSELVES. And in that, it is astonishingly selfish. I mean, what possible achievement is to be had by calling pet owners "guardians", except to make the City Councilpersons FEEL GOOD about themselves when they go home that night? That's it. Period.
Point is, there is a direct line to be followed from SF pet "guardians" to Sean Penn in Bagdhad and Mr. LeCarre here. "I want Saddam gone, but only in a way that makes ME feel like all is right with the world". As for how the Iraqi people, and their inherent rights and freeedoms, fit into this, well to LeCarre and the entire Left, that is utterly irrelevant.
Indeed, ALL is about ME.
From now on, whenever you hear from the Streisand-inistas, the Chomskyites, the Monibots of The Guardian, etc, ask yourself as they speak, "do you think this is making the speaker FEEL GOOD about themselves?" "As opposed to say, actually addressing the reality and history of the problem, and taking that into account as one proceeds?"
Use that as a framework when you hear these people. It is amazingly illuminating.
"There are two alternatives: Saddam's continuance in power; ... removal from power thanks to a coalition... Kurds... Turkey" ?
I'm with Le Carre - better the status quo than the coming bloodbath.
But its all typical of the hypocrisy that typifies US foreign policy - all in favour of democracies, as long as they elect pro-us governments. All in favour of military dictators - as long as they're pro-US ones.
Bush is after the oil - North Korea has WMD but no oil - talk. Iraq may have WMD, but does have oil - war.
Israel ignores UN resolutions but gets US military aid to commit human rights abuses.
Turkey is a US ally, that receives NATO help to murder Kurds.
I think you are way too kind to Le Carre's mouldering books. Smiley's People is unreadable. The Little Drummer Girl I thought was actually the best of my limited survey of his writing. I actually had to put down The Night Inspector 50 pages in because I had lost all respect for Le Carre as an artist.
Mr Davies: surely the NKorea & Iraqi situations and the different responses to them are due to something more than oil. Your post is simpleminded.
AUTHOR: Alex
EMAIL: a_kirk@integrity.com
IP:
URL:
DATE: 01/17/2003 05:29:00 PM
AUTHOR: Alex
EMAIL: a_kirk@integrity.com
DATE: 1/17/2003 05:29:00 PM
"all in favour of democracies, as long as they elect pro-us governments. All in favour of military dictators - as long as they're pro-US ones."
A little transference, mayhaps? Paging Dr. Freud.
Milosovic was NOT Anti-US.... but we went after him based on his reprehensible murderous behavior. Marcos was very pro-US.. and we threw him over the side. Iran has been viciously anti-US for twenty years, and we've basically ignored them... until recently, when a whiff of well-deserved imminent revolution took to the air.
Now it's your turn. Walk about amongst the unwashed in Washington this weekend, and their Chomskyite ilk any time, and ask them to condemn just ONE anti-US, anti-Western regime out there. Just one. Cuba? 42 years and counting of dictatorship? Zimbabwe? Home of Starver Bob Mugabe? Hussein in Iraq? The theocrats of Tehran? Let's not forget the lunatic NorKs.
Ask them to say the words "Yes, I agree these anti-human regimes are reprehensible. Maybe I disagree with George Bush, but, yes, they are despicable dictatorships, and I condemn them."
Go around. Ask. Ask another. Ask a third. Ask a thirtieth. Ask three hundred. Ask and ask and ask, for such people to at least spare a moment in their human rights marching to think of the unfortunate vitims of these tyrannies, all of which are virulently anti-US. Just. Freaking. Ask. And ask. And ask.
You will get silence. Crickets will chirp. Pins will drop. (Starvation is indeed a silent killer).
I will bet you COULD ask THREE HUNDRED of these people, and get not one person at least willing to call these regimes for what they self-evidently are. Because no wrong cn be done on planet Earth unless it is committed by the fascist US. Period, end of discussion, I am not listening, I am not listening....
So spare us the self-righteousness. People are marching this weekend in direct support of a murderous tyrant, and they know it damn well. I'm calling 'em on it, and will continue to do so.
Hear, hear
Posted by: Harry at January 17, 2003 11:24 PMI actually agree with Mr. Davies--'ve no problem with treating as an enemy any country that does not believe in the American creed and treating as a friend those who do believe, even if their realization of the ideals is proceeding awkwardly. The demonstrators this weekend are simply among those who don't believe--they are enemies of freedom.
Posted by: oj at January 18, 2003 10:07 AM