http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/john_le_carr_the_united_states
Guest:
John le Carré, A former British spy, his books include The Spy Who Came in
from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and The Constant Gardener.
AMY GOODMAN: British novelist John le Carré. I spoke to him in London on
Sunday. While he's famous for his spy novels, he wrote a widely read antiwar
essay in 2003 just before the US invasion of Iraq. It's called "The United
States of America Has Gone Mad." This is an excerpt.
JOHN LE CARRÉ: 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 world's 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 taxpayer's pocket? At what
cost-because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane
people-in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's 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 I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see
Saddam's downfall-just not on Bush's 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 America's 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 America's need to
demonstrate its military power to all of us-to 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 Blair's part in all of this is
that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can't.
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 can't get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself
against the ropes, neither of Britain's opposition leaders can lay a glove
on him. But that's Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: 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 prefect's sophistries
to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are
shared by all sane men. What he can't 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 you're still in bed."
"Why?"
"Because otherwise Mr Bush's 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 he'd finished shopping.
AMY GOODMAN: British novelist John le Carré reading from his 2003 essay
"America Has Gone Mad." John le Carré is the pen name for David Cornwell.
His new book, Our Kind of Traitor, is coming out soon. We'll be broadcasting
the full interview with le Carré in the coming days.
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