The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal

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

Daily Telegraph December 11, 2002

© Harold Pinter 2002