Dan Scanlan wrote:
"Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs." Arundhati Roy - Source: Arundhati Roy, "Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire," 8/24/04
That little quote contains a lot of the things that I don't like about Roy's prose, but which I suppose are keys to her popularity. She asserts a solidarity - "our child," "our screams" - that doesn't exist. It should be created, yes, but it doesn't exist. US soldiers aren't all there becuase of a "poverty draft," and some of them enjoy killing people. So she's trafficking in sentiment, not analysis. And the title, appropriating brand names for a critical purpose, is slick and empty - she wants to use the names to connect imperial war with common consumer products, but that would only work with guilt-ridden westerners.
Someone told me once that Roy said that when Americans ask her what they should do to make the world a better place, she'd like to answer, "Eat less, motherfucker." But she doesn't. Whatever the flaws of that response, at least it would be honest and unsentimental.
Doug
