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CounterPunch
December
13, 2002
The Vocabulary
of Bombs
by HAROLD PINTER
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 George W. 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.
America is at this moment developing
advanced systems of "weapons of mass destruction" and
is 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.
America believes that the 3,000 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 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never
referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead
through American 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 200,000 deaths in East Timor in 1975
brought about by the Indonesian government but inspired and supported
by America are never referred to. The 500,000 deaths in Guatemala,
Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Argentina and Haiti,
in actions supported and subsidised by America, 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 misjudgment 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 also 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 America 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 America. Apparently a terrorist
poison gas attack on the London Underground system was recently
prevented.
But such an act may indeed take place.
Thousands of schoolchildren travel on the 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.
America and Britain are pursuing a course
that can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the
world and finally to catastrophe. It is obvious, however, that
America is bursting at the seams to attack Iraq.
I believe that it will do this not only
to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American 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 American power, Europe
itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's declaration--"We
are not the doctors. We are the disease".
The article is taken from an address
given by Harold Pinter on receiving an honorary degree at the
University of Turin.
Yesterday's
Features
Alexander Cockburn
American
Journal: Berrigan, America's Greatest Arms Inspector
Michael Neumann
Who Hates
Ya, Baby?
The Baffling Patriotism of Daniel Pipes
Kevin Gray
Clinton and Blacks:
Soul Brothers?
Will Youmans
Israel's Demographic Obsession
Ron Jacobs
Berrigan: Blessed are the Peacemakers
Walt Brasch
Jackass: the People
William Cook
World Wide Intifada?
John Stauber / Sheldon
Rampton
Flashback: How PR Sold the Gulf War
Terry Jones
Bombs Away!
Ralph Nader
The Robo-Candidate
Anis Shivani
Information Prozac
Harvey, Engel, Alam
Poets' Basement
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