Someone on CNN called me a ‘Dirty Jew’
Imagine that Iran decided to invade Mexico in the face of near universal international condemnation, because it claimed Mexico had weapons that it turned out it didn’t. And that it then waged war for several years, de-stabilising the American continent and causing Mexicans to stream across the border into America.
Imagine that Iran had the audacity to setup a Pensicola prison, actually in America but controlled by Iran. Here they could put people that they captured and not have them subject to the Geneva Convention or domestic law. Then imagine that Iran had its navy patrolling the area and inspecting fishing boats, just off the coast of Texas.
Imagine the Americans decided the Iranians were messing too near their border, like with the Russians and Cuba, and captured several Iranian seamen and showed them on TV looking unharmed physically and possibly much better off than the Pensacola detainees, who didn’t get many TV crew visits.
Would there be justifiable public outrage at the actions of America, or would the actions of Iran help mitigate it?
That the actions of Iran are benign is not an issue – its currently a dodgy place, with an even more dodgy leader. Iran, however is a place whose particular dodgy niche has been shaped in a large part by the actions of other nations, since the UK/USA instigated coup that installed the Shah (organized by my former roommate’s father, by unhappy co-incidence).
Iran has the world’s youngest population who have previously shown that they were ready to embrace the modern world. As a somewhat trivial illustration, Iranian’s were the third largest nation to use Google’s social network service. The problem is that opinion is changing among young Muslims world-wide, and that opinion is shaped not so much by the mullahs as the actions of god fearing ideological leaders of the West, like Tony Blair.
The current capture of UK soldiers is a political game that politicians like Blair are not really surprised about, but have to display surprised disgust and steadfastness while the mandarins furiously paddle the diplomatic channels underneath.
Some things are deemed unspeakable, like challenging the automatic loyalty to people who perpetrate violence because of which side of an imaginary geographic line they were born. Some other things are deemed absolutely swell in any circumstance and some things are supposed to be the right thing, always, but actually aren’t. The last category includes the notion that if a ship goes down, women and children should get the first places on the lifeboats. This rule applies unless the women and children are from another country and the men are soldiers from your own.
Last night on CNN, various presenters could hardly suppress their excitement or, more accurately, their schadenfreude. As I paddled away my surplus of food at the gym, a man on TV asked me, in a very grave and serious voice, to pray for the safe return of the British hostages. But this man was not sad, he was happy, and he used the plight of unharmed, interned troops as emotional currency to buy support for violence that is tearing women and children to pieces. The lifeboats weren’t for them, but for ‘our troops’, but more worryingly they weren’t ‘our troops’ at all but ‘our allies’ troops’. The emotional currency he was spending was not his own money but mine, apparently – UK money. By showing his support for what he thought I should be supporting, he wanted to spend it. On the same show, someone suggested that Europe was a dying continent that would be Islamic by 2050.
Johnathan Miller once said that he wasn’t really Jewish, but if anyone called him a ‘Dirty Jew’, well then he would proudly say – Yes I am. I don’t normally care about where I’m from, there are many things I prefer about America and many things I don’t like about Britain and Europe. But last night on CNN someone called me a Dirty Jew, and then wanted to spend my emotional cash.
Yes I am and no you can’t.
I hold you partly responsible for the capture, not the release of British soldiers, but I’m actually even more concerned about the women and children whose places in the lifeboats are being stolen by the crew.
Another idea is deemed unspeakable. The idea that America’s army is possibly not that good, having not won a major war for half a century. This is not a derogatory statement, but a sign of a civilised nation. It is easier to persuade a soldier to volunteer to strap dynamite to his chest and blow himself to bits in a more barbaric place than America, and how do you compete with that?
Having armies that are not very good has lots of precedent. Rome, who survived on military aggression solved this by, quite literally, hiring Barbarians. Rather like the Imperial British, however, who had an army that Napoleon used to joke about (admittedly before a rare away-win at Waterloo), America has something else. The UK had a good navy and the Americans have an unbeatable Air Force.
Unfortunately, the British had to fight a land war in World War I and it created the Iranian style, ‘dodgy niche’ that caused another war, World War II. Millions of people died and most people did not see it coming. Those who did see it coming thought it could be avoided, because the German Kaiser called Queen Victoria, ‘granny’ and Bismark had once considered enlisting in the British army.
I repeat, Millions of people died, a 911 every day for several years. This time we can see it coming and Bush doesn’t call the Ayatollah Khamenei ‘grandaddy’. America is sleepwalking into a region wide conflict that will require an army of cannon fodder which will inevitably end in the slaughter of countless innocent people.
My parents’ generation did something purposeful and peaceful with their youthful energy and enthusiasm, in the 60s, . Depressingly, the last anti-war march in New York seemed to comprise largely of people of that generation, with less energy now but the same purpose. And its not just the ageing hippies of that are warning us. Last week The Economist magazine, hardly a hotbed of radicalism, inched one step further away from its original pro Iraq war stance to talk about the “almost criminal negligence of Mr Bush’s administration”. All that needs to happen for their complete conversion is the removal of the word ‘almost’.
As the slow stream of gray haired anti-war revolutionaries filed past the glitzy Soho fashion stores, my generation, generation apathetic, was busy shopping. So it seems appropriate that all a Generation Apathetic protester can do is write a long, wordy blog post that won’t be read because nobody reads more than three lines.