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Torture and misery in the name of freedom
There are no more words to be said All we have left are the
bombs Which burst out of our head All that is left are the bombs
Which suck out the last of our blood All we have left are the
bombs Which polish the skulls of the dead. The Bombs by Harold
Pinter from War courtesy of Faber and Faber
By Harold Pinter
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
10/14/05 "The
Independent" -- -- The great poet Wilfred Owen
articulated the tragedy, the horror - and indeed the pity - of
war in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing.
Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more
savage, more brutal, more pitiless.
But the "free world" we are told, as embodied in the United
States and Great Britain, is different to the rest of the world
since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral
authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God.
Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin
Laden finds it easy.
What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit
act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of International Law. 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 upon thousands of
innocent people.
An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi
civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that
the figure approaches
100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi
dead. As General Tommy Franks of US Central Command memorably
said: "We don't do body counts".
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium,
innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the
Iraqi people and call it " bringing freedom and democracy to the
Middle East". But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed
with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a
ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.
You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well,
President Bush himself answered this question when he said: "We
cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a
country under foreign military occupation". I had to read that
statement twice before I realised that he was talking about
Lebanon and Syria.
What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves
in the mirror?
I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion,
our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of
the American and British governments.
Adapted by Harold Pinter from a speech he delivered on winning
the Wilfred Owen Award earlier this year 'A colossal figure'
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