Terry Jones on Iraq

Mod's please feel free to do what you wish with this, it was mailed to me today and is taken from sundays Observer, letters to the editor. I thought it was ahem interesting...

A letter to the London Observer from Terry Jones (yes, of Monty
Python). :

Letter to the Observer
Sunday January 26, 2003
The Observer

I'm really excited by George Bush's latest reason for bombing Iraq:
he's running out of patience. And so am I! For some time now I've been
really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the
street.

Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give
Me queer looks, and I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for
me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what.

I've been round to his place a few times to see what he's up to, but
he's got everything well hidden. That's how devious he is. As for Mr
Patel,
don't ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he
is,
in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that
if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by one.

Some of my neighbours say, if I've got proof, why don't I go to the
police? But that's simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need
evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours.

They'll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights
And wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be
finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will
be secretly murdering people.

Since I'm the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic
firearms, I reckon it's up to me to keep the peace. But until recently
that's been a little difficult. Now, however, George W. Bush has made
it clear that all I need to do is run out of patience, and then I can
wade in and do whatever I want!

And let's face it, Mr Bush's carefully thought-out policy towards Iraq
Is the only way to bring about international peace and security. The one
certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the
US or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened
us.

That's why I want to blow up Mr Johnson's garage and kill his wife and
children. Strike first! That'll teach him a lesson. Then he'll leave
us in peace and stop peering at me in that totally unacceptable way.

Mr Bush makes it clear that all he needs to know before bombing Iraq is
that Saddam is a really nasty man and that he has weapons of mass
destruction - even if no one can find them. I'm certain I've just as much
justification for killing Mr Johnson's wife and children as Mr Bush has
for bombing Iraq. Mr Bush's long-term aim is to make the world a safer
place by eliminating 'rogue states' and 'terrorism'. It's such a clever
long-term aim because how can you ever know when you've achieved it?

How will Mr Bush know when he's wiped out all terrorists? When every
Single terrorist is dead? But then a terrorist is only a terrorist once
he's
committed an act of terror.

What about would-be terrorists? These are the ones you really want to
eliminate, since most of the known terrorists, being suicide bombers, have
already eliminated themselves.

Perhaps Mr Bush needs to wipe out everyone who could possibly be a future
terrorist? Maybe he can't be sure he's achieved his objective until every
Muslim fundamentalist is dead? But then some moderate Muslims might
convert
to fundamentalism. Maybe the only really safe thing to do would be for Mr
Bush to eliminate all Muslims?

It's the same in my street. Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are just the tip of
The iceberg. There are dozens of other people in the street who I don't
Like and who - quite frankly - look at me in odd ways. No one will be
Really safe until I've wiped them all out. My wife says I might be going
too
Far but I tell her I'm simply using the same logic as the President of the
United States. That shuts her up.

Like Mr Bush, I've run out of patience, and if that's a good enough reason
for the President, it's good enough for me. I'm going to give the whole
street two weeks - no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all
aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar
terrorist masterminds, and if they don't hand them over nicely and say
'Thank you', I'm going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come.
It's just as sane as what George W. Bush is proposing - and, in contrast
to
what he's intending, my policy will destroy only one street.

sceptre

Ah, Terry Jones' rapier wit. I was actually surprised that the Observer printed it at all, given that unlike the Guardian, they've come out as pro-war.

Here's a followup piece, again by Mr Python, last Sunday. He's a bit peeved that Tony Bush (or should that be George Blair?) is also intent on declaring total war against the English language. Or at least butchering and raping it a bit.

Powell speaks with forked tongue: Language, not truth, has been the first casualty of the West's war against terrorism

Terry Jones
Sunday February 23, 2003
The Observer

It was interesting to hear Colin Powell accuse France and Germany of cowardice in not wanting to go to war. Or, as he put more succinctly, France and Germany 'are afraid of upholding their responsibility to impose the will of the international community'. Powell's speech brings up one of the most outrageous but least examined aspects of this whole war on Iraq business. I am speaking about the appalling collateral damage already being inflicted on the English language.
Perhaps the worst impact is on our vocabulary. 'Cowardice', according to Colin Powell, is the refusal to injure thousands of innocent civilians living in Baghdad in order to promote US oil interests in the Middle East. The corollary is that 'bravery' must be the ability to order the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis without wincing or bringing up your Caesar salad.

I suppose Tony Blair is 'brave' because he is willing to expose the people who voted for him to the threat of terrorist reprisals in return for getting a red carpet whenever he visits the White House, while Chirac is a 'coward' for standing up to the bigoted bullying of the extremist right-wing Republican warmongers who currently run the United States.

In the same vein, well-fed young men sitting in millions of dollars' worth of military hardware and dropping bombs from 30,000ft on impoverished people who have already had all their arms taken away are exemplars of 'bravery'. 'Cowardliness', according to George W. Bush, is hijacking an aircraft and deliberately piloting it into a large building. There are plenty of things you could call that, but not 'cowardly'. Yet when Bill Maher pointed this out on his TV show, Politically Incorrect, he was anathematised and the sponsors threatened to withdraw funding from the show.

Something weird is going on when not only do the politicians deliberately change the meanings of words, but also society is outraged when someone points out the correct usage.

Then there's 'the international community'. Clearly, Colin Powell cannot be talking of the millions who took to the streets last Saturday. The 'international community' he's talking about must be those politicians who get together behind closed doors to decide how best to stay in power and enrich their supporters by maiming, mutilating and killing a lot of foreigners in funny clothes whom they'll never see. And while we're at it, what about that word 'war'. My dictionary defines a 'war' as 'open, armed conflict between two parties, nations or states'. Dropping bombs from a safe height on an already hard-pressed people, whose infrastructure is in chaos from years of sanctions and who live under an oppressive regime, isn't a 'war'. It's a turkey shoot.

But then the violence being done to the English language is probably the price we have to pay for cheap petrol.

Language is supposed to make ideas clearer so that we can understand them. But when politicians such as Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair get hold of language, their aim is usually the opposite. That's how they persuade us to take ludicrous concepts seriously. Like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

When men in power propose doing something that is shameful, wrong and destructive, the first casualty is the English language. It would matter less if it were the only casualty. But if they carry on perverting our vocabulary and twisting our grammar, the result will spell death for many who are now alive.

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,901102,00.html

daveirl

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