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CounterPunch
March 10,
2003
A Lot More Killing
Than Saddam Ever Managed
Mr. Bush Goes
for the Kill
By TERRY JONES
Mr. Bush is right, Saddam Hussein is a nasty man
and nobody I know has the least objection to Mr. Bush killing
him. It's just the way he proposes doing it that worries me.
Dropping 3000 bombs in 48 hours on Baghdad is going to kill a
lot of other people who, as far as I am aware, are not nasty
at all.
That's the bit of the 'moral' argument
I don't follow. It's a bit like the police saying they know a
murderer comes from the south of England so they are going to
execute everybody in Epsom.
Then again why does Mr. Bush need to
drop 3000 bombs on Saddam Hussein? I would have thought one would
have been enough to take him out, if he knows where Saddam is.
And if he doesn't know where he is, what on earth is the moral
justification for dropping any bombs at all? Doesn't Mr. Bush
realise they are dangerous things and tend to kill people when
they land?
Or does Mr Bush simply enjoy the idea
of taking out a lot of Iraqis? I appreciate Mr. Bush's argument
that because Saddam Hussein has refused to take any notice of
the UN, Mr. Bush should teach him a lesson by dropping a lot
of bombs on him. But now he's telling us that if the UN won't
give him permission to do it, he's jolly well going to drop a
lot of bombs on Saddam anyway. In which case won't Mr. Bush be
guilty of the same thing he's accusing Saddam Hussein of? Apparently
not because, according to the President's advisers, if the United
Nations won't give him permission to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam
Hussein, it will have ceased to be a Responsible World Organization
and therefore he doesn't need to take any notice of it.
But doesn't the same thing go for Saddam
Hussein? If the United Nations ceases to be a Responsible World
Organization how can the fact that Saddam Hussein has refused
to take any notice of it be something so evil that it justifies
dropping bombs on the poor people living under his heel?
And that's another thing--everyone seems
to be very certain that dropping a lot of bombs on Baghdad will
get rid of Saddam Hussein. But will it?--any more than devastating
Afghanistan (and killing maybe 20,000 people) got rid of Al-Qaeda?
A recent UN report reckons that if and when the US starts bombing
as many as 100,000 Iraqis will die.
I can't really believe that the President
of the United States gets his rocks off by having people killed.
That's more like Saddam Hussein.
And yet it worries me that Mr. Bush says
that one of the reasons he wants to kill a lot of Iraqis is because
Saddam Hussein has also been killing them. Is there some sort
of rivalry here?
Back in 1988 Saddam killed several thousand
at once, in the town of Halabjah. Since then he's been carrying
on the good work, but on a piecemeal basis. In fact, for all
I know, since his 1988 spree, he may not have killed any more
of his own citizens than George W. Bush did as Governor of Texas.
When Mr. Bush became Governor in 1995, the average number of
executions per year was 7.6. Mr. Bush succeeded in quadrupling
this to a magnificent 31.6 per year. He must have had the terrible
chore of personally signing over 150 death warrants while he
was Governor. I suppose the advantage of killing Iraqis is that
you don't have to sign a piece of paper for every one of them.
Just one quick scribble and--bingo! You can kill a hundred thousand
and no questions asked! What's more, nobody is going to quibble
about some of them being mentally retarded or juveniles, which
is what happened to George W. Bush when he was Governor of Texas.
I'm not saying that George W. Bush shouldn't
be allowed to kill as many people as he wants. After all he is
the unelected leader of the most powerful country on earth, so
if he can't do anything he likes, who can?
And, in the years to come, we can confidently
look forward to a lot more killing all over the world--certainly
a lot more than ever Saddam Hussein managed in his own country.
Terry Jones
is a founding member of Monty Python.
Yesterday's
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March 8 /
9, 2003
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