A War Against The Will Of The People
A War Against The Will Of The People
“For the first time, I understood what it was like to live as the British do, where the threat of terrorist attacks are common place.”
And with that, last Wednesday on Channel 4, I heard the first American comments regarding the atrocities of September 11th, that actually showed any intelligence or any empathy of for anyone or anything outside their own island. Apart from Noam Chomsky of course.
And in all this, not one American - until the quote at the top of the page - has even acknowledged that the US has finally entered a world that we all - outside of the US - live in. A world where public houses explode on Friday evenings and the streets become full of blood and rubble. A world where train stations turn into white light. A world when our friends become memories.
If one of my friends hadn‘t been forced to work late, he would’ve died in the Docklands train explosion of 1996 planted by the IRA which took place only four hundred yards from his house. The gentleman he bought his daily paper off on the way into work was dead by the time he left work to come home.
And if the Happy Mondays had played Brixton on April 30th and not the day earlier, I’d’ve been sat in the Chinese restaurant next door to the Admiral Duncan on the 30th and not the 29th. I was sat in there a day earlier - to the second - before it exploded, killing at least 2 people in 1999.
As we near the first anniversary of a moment that will defines our generation as much as the JFK or John Lennon assasinations, I think all of us, every human being, is starting to finally understand the ramifications of the terrible events of that day, and the months and years after.
Throughout all of this though, America has failed to realise that the attacks were probably the single biggest Wake-Up call that has ever been issued. The attacks were almost definitely an assault upon the core elements of American values - the same core elements that most Americans cannot see.
On the surface America is a place of unlimited opportunity. A place where freedoms are without limit, and prosperity equally so. The values America sells are undoubtedly virtuous. But these are not the virtues that America actually promotes - as a nation it is a trojan horse, promising freedom, prosperity and equality, whilst using the vehicle of capitalism to provide the exact opposite. Economic slavery that restricts freedoms to a small set of choices and engineers inequality. Everyone can be equal, everyone in theory can be rich. The problem is that in any economic system, equality is impossible.
Look on the streets of any city and see homeless people sleeping in tunnels and begging. Capitalism does not provide. It does not provide equality. It definitely does not provide truth. And it provides justice to those who can afford it. And freedom of speech to those who can pay for advertising.
Capitalism in effect is the unrestricted use of trade. Without checks of balances, what it means is that companies can abuse their enormous financial powers to whatever ends they like. And, under the pretence of freedom and opportunity, any attempt to introduce any form of accountability and ethical behaviour can be seen as Anti-American.
And anything labelled as Anti-American is demonised without any debate. In the culture of choice, the land of the free and the brave, you’re either with us, or against us. And if you’re not on our side - if you don’t support bombing the crap out of anyone The President damn well feels like bombing - then you’re one of the bad guys. And you’re going to get bombed too. Goddamn Pinkie Lefto Commie scumbag. America is regressing back to the 50’s.
So the virtues the US extols, as truth, justice, and the American Way are the same ones that the terrorists are protesting against. The right to exploit anything or anyone that cannot defend itself against unlimited power, the right to abuse, lie, cheat and defraud the public, the right to empty pension funds to line the pockets of millionaires, the right to bribe the government and fiddle the accounts, the right to bully any other nation in the world, and hypocritically claim itself to be the home of all things virtuous.
When they raised the flag in the ashes of the World Trade Center, the people cheered as if some great victory had occurred. But all that had happened was that the spirit of hypocrisy had returned. The Americans never even thought to look at why they had been attacked. What they had done wrong. Why people might possibly seek to demolish the American way of life. Not because its America, but because of what America does.
Terrorism, whilst not normal, has been commonplace in England for years. I’ve had to live with it. It’s only now that it’s coming to the Americans. Terrorisms Coming Home. Back to the land of Apple Pie, back to the land of McCarthyism, state terrorism, training camps run by the FBI deep in heartlands, corporate corruption, and a foreign policy that decidedly hostile to anyone who doesn’t give the Americans the oil they want. It’s about time that the American attitude, exemplified in the slew of patriotic, offensive renditions of “America The Beautiful” over montages of weeping flags, grew up.
It’s about time America realised that being America does not give it a divine right to bomb the crap out of any nation that it doesn’t like the look of, and starting wars on the pretext of pretending to enforce UN resolutions. Often the same resolutions that it’s political allies break, but hey, America doesn’t bomb those countries, because they do what the Americans say.
It’s about time America realised that the values it promotes in its words, and the values that it promotes through its actions are radically different. It’s about time that George Bush had lessons in English. Terrorism’s coming home. I don’t support it. But we don’t want those bloody terrorists here, send ‘em back where they belong. Send them back home. Send them to the Pentagon.
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(c) Mark Reed, 1991-2002. Except where indicated.