Remembering Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter - "Is Our Conscience Dead?"
Friday 26 December 2008
by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. (Photo: Reuters)
On the news today of the death of Harold Pinter, the winner of
the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, I remembered hearing his Nobel
Laureate lecture/acceptance speech. I was in London in December 2005,
speaking at the annual Stop the War conference when Pinter delivered
his speech - not in Oslo, as Pinter was very sick and could not
travel, but in London via TV link.
I was amazed and thrilled that he chose to use the Nobel Prize
platform and devote a huge portion of his speech to shining an
international spotlight on the tragic effects of the past decades of
US foreign policy and particularly, on George Bush and Tony Blair's
decisions to invade and occupy Iraq, on Guantanamo and on torture.
Pinter's Laureate speech question, "Is Our Conscience Dead?" is
most relevant today when three years after his acceptance speech,
"Art, Truth and Politics," Bush, Cheney, Rice and other administration
officials are either trying to rewrite history or, as in Chaney's case
- purposefully revealing his role in specific criminal acts of torture
and daring the American legal system and people to hold him accountable.
Following is the part of Pinter's lecture that speaks to the
invasion of Iraq, torture and Guantanamo - and our collective and
individual conscience:
"Art, Truth and Politics"
Noble Lecture by Harold Pinter
December 7, 2005
"... The United States no longer ... sees any point in being
reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear
or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United
Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as
impotent and irrelevant.
It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a
lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have
any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely
employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our
own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of
others? Is all this dead?
Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without
charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due
process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate
structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is
not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the
'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by
a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'.
Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the
media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page
six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed
they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being
force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-
feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up
your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture.
What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing.
What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not?
Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in
Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or
against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state
terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of
international law. The invasion was 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 and thousands of
innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium,
innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to
the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the
Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?
More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just
that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal
Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the
International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American
soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush
has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has
ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can
let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10,
Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place
death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were
killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency
began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They
are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body
counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the
front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a
little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days
later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another
four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a
missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he
asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in
his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of
any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when
you're making a sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are
transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out
of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of
their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different
kinds of graves.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank
about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official
declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is
not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of
land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations
throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception
of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they
are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear
warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched
with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear
force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are
intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I
wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes?
China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile
insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is
at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind
ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing
and show no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States
itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their
government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent
political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we
can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech
writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose
the following short address which he can make on television to the
nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning,
sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously
attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin
Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he
didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't
chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not
a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-
loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give
compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are
a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He
is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this
fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
I hope you will decide that yes, we do have a conscience and
that you will join the millions of Americans who say we must hold
accountable those who have committed criminal acts while in government
- the policy makers as well as the implementers.
Write and call the new President and the new Congress and demand
official investigations into war crimes and other criminal acts
committed by members of the Bush administration and join us on
Inauguration day to remind the new President of his responsibilities.
ยป
Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a
Colonel, and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in
opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada,
Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and
Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the
US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book
"Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
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