Art, truth and politics

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2005 Editions - Dec. 17, 2005


 

The following is excerpted from British playwright Harold Pinter’s speech accepting the Nobel Prize for literature, delivered by video in Stockholm, Sweden, Dec. 7. The speech is a hard-hitting indictment of the Iraq war and occupation policy of both the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The full text can be read here.



In 1958 I wrote the following:

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true.

We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th, 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true.

We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as “low intensity conflict.” Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply

doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

The invasion was an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East; a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.”

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official, declared policy is now defined as “full spectrum dominance,” [that] means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honorable exception of Sweden, of course.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. The possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is at the heart of present American political philosophy.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force, yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us — the dignity of man.