Mad, crazy United States; pathetic Britannia

When a writer of the international repute of Harold Pinter speaks it is well to listen and to record his words with precision. Unfortunately I have no authority to quote Mr Pinter at length and so, hoping he will not take offence, I summarise the views expressed in an article entitled 'Assassinated Press', and quote him only briefly. In short, if I read him correctly he believes, as do most reasonable men and women, that the USA is insane; that its leadership is corrupt, arrogant, besotted with itself and wantonly duplicitous; that it is leading the world carelessly, fatefully to the edge of the precipice, and that its faithful, obsequious partner the United Kingdom will stand by its bully-boy friend if necessary to the last moments of our nightmare.

'If you are not with us you are against us', President 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. The admonition is Pinter's, not mine, though of course I express my heartfelt agreement. 



Only American casualties matter. The thousands of Afghans, Vietnamese, Koreans, South Americans, Africans,  who have died over the years are never referred to. They might not have existed. Only Americans matter. Only Americans are permitted pride in their country and the right of self defence. As for the hundreds of thousands of dead and mutilated Iraqis, mostly women and children,  the tens of thousands of Iranians who would be killed by planned air strikes on Tehran and Bushehr (we used to call it Bushire, like an English county, in the days of the Raj),  whoever worries about them? They are not 'real people', not 'real nations'; they may have reached the peaks of civilisation 3500 years before Christ, to the likes of Bush and Blair they are the dross of history, to be ignored, censored, reproved, put in their place. Rights belong to America and its most obsequious ally.     

America, says Harold Pinter, has more weapons of mass destruction than all the rest of the world together, and is actively developing more, while other nations are denied the right to make political or even legal decisions that the US doesn't approve of, are denied the right to arm themselves as may be necessary for their legitimate defence, and if they do not do as they are told are liable to be attacked and decimated by an American war machine  that is in the hands of a lunatic, bellicose, out-of-control administration.

I hope my version of Pinter's words  does not  stray from his meaning, and apologise if it does. In conclusion, I quote him exactly, from the version of his speech sent out by that excellent on-line service Information Clearing House.

To quote once more: ' The United States and Britain are pursuing a course which can lead only to an escalation of violence throughout the world and finally to catastrophe. .... because the US 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 US power Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's definition (as quoted in the Guardian newspaper in London recently) "We are not the doctors. We are the disease" .'

Winblog