"The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

[Abdali]

:lol:"The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

By John le Carr

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

Democracy Now! - Broadcast September 20, 2010



TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: British novelist John le Carr. I spoke to him in London on Sunday. While hes famous for his spy novels, he wrote a widely read antiwar essay in 2003 just before the US invasion of Iraq. Its called "The United States of America Has Gone Mad." This is an excerpt.

• JOHN LE CARR: America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
  
  The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
  
  The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the worlds poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
  
  But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayers pocket? At what costbecause most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane peoplein Iraqi lives?
  
  How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting Americas anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
  
  Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because Im dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddams downfalljust not on Bushs terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
  
  The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of Americas Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. [...]
  
  What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is Americas need to demonstrate its military power to all of usto Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
  
  The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blairs part in all of this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He cant. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he cant get out.
  
  It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britains opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But thats Britains tragedy, as it is Americas: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. [...]
  
  I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefects sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he cant explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
  
  "But will we win, Daddy?"
  
  "Of course, child. It will all be over while youre still in bed."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because otherwise Mr Bushs voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him."
  
  "But will people be killed, Daddy?"
  
  "Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people."
  
  "Can I watch it on television?"
  
  "Only if Mr Bush says you can."
  
  "And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?"
  
  "Hush child, and go to sleep."
  
  Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time hed finished shopping.

AMY GOODMAN: British novelist John le Carr reading from his 2003 essay "America Has Gone Mad." John le Carr is the pen name for David Cornwell. His new book, Our Kind of Traitor, is coming out soon. Well be broadcasting the full interview with le Carr in the coming days.