Lulua
11-12-2001, 13:07
WESTERN CIVILIZATION: BARBARISM IN A BORROWED HALO?
[By Mary Riddle, The Observer, Oct. 28, 2001]
================================================== =====================
War has a face. It belongs to Hamid Ullah. He lies in a hospital bed in
Quetta, near to his mother, Radigul, whose eyes were burned and arm
shredded by the U.S. bomb that struck her hamlet outside Kandahar,
Afghanistan. Hamid is the only one of her five children to survive the
blast. Despite shrapnel burns and facial wounds, he will live.
Among the several newspapers which carried his image, one version stood
out. "Can you take a picture like this?" the accompanying wording asked
brightly. "Enter the Times/Tabasco Young Photographer of the Year
Competition."
Obviously, it is good that newspapers seek new talent. It is useful that
condiment manufacturers sponsor that search. But would the photo of a
sedated and badly injured British child be similarly juxtaposed with the
twin icons of aspiration and branding? Would such a child be exposed in
the cause of the varied photocalls desired by Western media? First a
long shot, then a profile, then a close-up featuring a teddy bear and
drugged eyes staring into a camera lens. This is collateral damage,
artfully arranged to twitch the heartstrings of the "civilized"
societies whose agents inflicted it in the first place.
How civilized are we? Very, says George Bush, who has repeated that
"this conflict is a fight to save the civilized world." The mantra of
this war is echoed by apostles from Newt Gingrich ("Civilization must
win") to Iain Duncan Smith, who advises fighting all states "which have
placed themselves outside the family of civilized nations."
Assuming the outsiders match the U.S. list of state sponsors of
international terrorism, a cultural benchmark acceptable to Tory leader
Smith can be easily achieved once Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North
Korea and Sudan have been blown away.
Other definitions are less rigorous. To Fernand Braudel, civilization is
"a cultural area" and, to Emile Durkheim, "a moral milieu." To Samuel P.
Huntington, author of The Clash Of Civilisations, it is seven tectonic
plates, ranging from Sinic to Orthodox. To V.S. Naipaul, it is a Britain
cleansed of Tony Blair, whom he accused last year of "destroying the
idea of civilization in this country." Eating canapés with Chris Evans,
or liking Ivanhoe, or whatever Blair's cultural sin was supposed to be,
seems somehow less terrifying in the age of Bin Laden. Even so,
dispensing with Sir Vidia's verdict casts little light on civilization.
Samuel Johnson wouldn't have the word in his dictionary, preferring
"civility." Virginia Woolf moved beyond the standard interpretation (the
opposite of barbarism) for her review of Clive Bell's book on the
subject. For him, civilization was "a lunch party at Number 50 Gordon
Square." That seems also to be the tacit version of George Bush, for
whom civilized living is likely to embrace God, golf, Texas corn
fritters, boots'n'ties dinners and never again having to look like a
pantomime bellhop in a Nehru jacket as a sop to the Chinese. Aside from
the bereaved, few have had to revise their lives so completely as the
U.S. President and it shows. When Bush talks of saving civilization, he
implies, beyond adventurism, some wistful nostalgia for a lost Utopia.
Even for those more sceptical about the sanctity (or hegemony, for
adherents to the Berlusconi line) of Western civilization, there are
problems. War makes barbarians of us all. At a recent charity lunch for
women, someone proposed a toast to "our sisters in America." No mention
of our sisters in Afghanistan. The Madison Square Garden rock concert,
though frothily hyped, struck one caller to a radio phone-in as a
distasteful spectacle in which showbusiness overrode compassion.
He is right. However deep the sympathy for U.S. and British victims, it
is excessive to raise millions of dollars for people with insurance
policies and compensation packages while offering not a cent to those
who starve for little more obvious reasons than that they are easier to
hurt than Bin Laden. Many families of the U.S. dead might welcome some
fraction of the money going to the poor of Afghanistan. For the
performers not to propose it fuels the usual suspicion that the rock
world's idea of feeding programs begins with its own ego.
At least singers have no formal obligation. Clare Short's refusal to
back aid agencies' call to halt air strikes, possibly on the grounds
that they will be wanting golden elephants next, looked craven. She is
right, however, to chivy an international community that pledged £500
million for Afghanistan, but has given only £50m. In private, the new
mercenaries cash in on war. Online chemists plug Cipro; spiritual gurus
peddle prayer pashminas at £75 a throw; hustlers hawk Twin Towers
pictures. Even those who think civilized living means blackened cod at
Nobu must recoil.
Much more alarming is the delusion that the West is a tabernacle of
pristine values. On the simplest analysis of rich Britain, this is
doubtful. Our hospitals and railways kill some users and frustrate most.
One in three children is poor. Asylum-seekers with tuberculosis go
unscreened. Vouchers (which David Blunkett must abolish) oblige mothers
to water down baby milk.
In Beit Rima, where five Palestinians died because of America's softness
on Israel, families unpick children's clothes from olive trees and
scratch for money in the rubble of a bombed home. In Lewes, two foster
parents are jailed for slowly beating to death a four-year-old boy
entrusted to their care. In Norwich, the judge jailing Tracey Wright for
killing her small stepdaughter says that Lauren's death, in a friendly
village, was as inevitable "as if she had been cast out alone into the
furthest desert." Another week goes by in civilization.
Of course, a few people are mad or vicious, but we are inclined to see
society and the state as more benign than they are. That distortion
makes us susceptible to the blandishments of Blair and Bush.
Civilization, goodness, justice. We can all sign up for those. And so
mistaken assumptions lead the West into three errors.
The first is that we are enviable. To think that every Bin Laden
disciple in Tommy Hilfiger jeans and citrus cologne aspires to work for
Paribas is as mad as believing that all Toyota owners want to uproot
from Oswestry to Osaka.
The second mistake is assuming that most tactics pass muster, if
deployed in a just war, as defined by St. Augustine or Tony Blair. The
third, paradoxical, error is squeamishness. As befits a civilized race,
the West has so far avoided the dirty pursuit of ruthless terrorists in
favour of a fragrant option in which the innocent die from bombing or
starvation.
Their fate was mortgaged to a merciful future. The Taliban would be
ousted fast. There would be jam, as opposed to peanut butter airdrops,
tomorrow. Three weeks in, that assurance has been amended or revoked.
Bright tomorrows, Osama's dirty bomb permitting, may be 50 years away.
We are told almost nothing by politicians who seem to understand little
and divulge less.
The aims of conflict remain grandiose, but the achievements stack up as
bombed aid warehouses and charred children. So far, this does not look
like civilization on the march. It looks like barbarism in a borrowed
halo.
[By Mary Riddle, The Observer, Oct. 28, 2001]
================================================== =====================
War has a face. It belongs to Hamid Ullah. He lies in a hospital bed in
Quetta, near to his mother, Radigul, whose eyes were burned and arm
shredded by the U.S. bomb that struck her hamlet outside Kandahar,
Afghanistan. Hamid is the only one of her five children to survive the
blast. Despite shrapnel burns and facial wounds, he will live.
Among the several newspapers which carried his image, one version stood
out. "Can you take a picture like this?" the accompanying wording asked
brightly. "Enter the Times/Tabasco Young Photographer of the Year
Competition."
Obviously, it is good that newspapers seek new talent. It is useful that
condiment manufacturers sponsor that search. But would the photo of a
sedated and badly injured British child be similarly juxtaposed with the
twin icons of aspiration and branding? Would such a child be exposed in
the cause of the varied photocalls desired by Western media? First a
long shot, then a profile, then a close-up featuring a teddy bear and
drugged eyes staring into a camera lens. This is collateral damage,
artfully arranged to twitch the heartstrings of the "civilized"
societies whose agents inflicted it in the first place.
How civilized are we? Very, says George Bush, who has repeated that
"this conflict is a fight to save the civilized world." The mantra of
this war is echoed by apostles from Newt Gingrich ("Civilization must
win") to Iain Duncan Smith, who advises fighting all states "which have
placed themselves outside the family of civilized nations."
Assuming the outsiders match the U.S. list of state sponsors of
international terrorism, a cultural benchmark acceptable to Tory leader
Smith can be easily achieved once Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North
Korea and Sudan have been blown away.
Other definitions are less rigorous. To Fernand Braudel, civilization is
"a cultural area" and, to Emile Durkheim, "a moral milieu." To Samuel P.
Huntington, author of The Clash Of Civilisations, it is seven tectonic
plates, ranging from Sinic to Orthodox. To V.S. Naipaul, it is a Britain
cleansed of Tony Blair, whom he accused last year of "destroying the
idea of civilization in this country." Eating canapés with Chris Evans,
or liking Ivanhoe, or whatever Blair's cultural sin was supposed to be,
seems somehow less terrifying in the age of Bin Laden. Even so,
dispensing with Sir Vidia's verdict casts little light on civilization.
Samuel Johnson wouldn't have the word in his dictionary, preferring
"civility." Virginia Woolf moved beyond the standard interpretation (the
opposite of barbarism) for her review of Clive Bell's book on the
subject. For him, civilization was "a lunch party at Number 50 Gordon
Square." That seems also to be the tacit version of George Bush, for
whom civilized living is likely to embrace God, golf, Texas corn
fritters, boots'n'ties dinners and never again having to look like a
pantomime bellhop in a Nehru jacket as a sop to the Chinese. Aside from
the bereaved, few have had to revise their lives so completely as the
U.S. President and it shows. When Bush talks of saving civilization, he
implies, beyond adventurism, some wistful nostalgia for a lost Utopia.
Even for those more sceptical about the sanctity (or hegemony, for
adherents to the Berlusconi line) of Western civilization, there are
problems. War makes barbarians of us all. At a recent charity lunch for
women, someone proposed a toast to "our sisters in America." No mention
of our sisters in Afghanistan. The Madison Square Garden rock concert,
though frothily hyped, struck one caller to a radio phone-in as a
distasteful spectacle in which showbusiness overrode compassion.
He is right. However deep the sympathy for U.S. and British victims, it
is excessive to raise millions of dollars for people with insurance
policies and compensation packages while offering not a cent to those
who starve for little more obvious reasons than that they are easier to
hurt than Bin Laden. Many families of the U.S. dead might welcome some
fraction of the money going to the poor of Afghanistan. For the
performers not to propose it fuels the usual suspicion that the rock
world's idea of feeding programs begins with its own ego.
At least singers have no formal obligation. Clare Short's refusal to
back aid agencies' call to halt air strikes, possibly on the grounds
that they will be wanting golden elephants next, looked craven. She is
right, however, to chivy an international community that pledged £500
million for Afghanistan, but has given only £50m. In private, the new
mercenaries cash in on war. Online chemists plug Cipro; spiritual gurus
peddle prayer pashminas at £75 a throw; hustlers hawk Twin Towers
pictures. Even those who think civilized living means blackened cod at
Nobu must recoil.
Much more alarming is the delusion that the West is a tabernacle of
pristine values. On the simplest analysis of rich Britain, this is
doubtful. Our hospitals and railways kill some users and frustrate most.
One in three children is poor. Asylum-seekers with tuberculosis go
unscreened. Vouchers (which David Blunkett must abolish) oblige mothers
to water down baby milk.
In Beit Rima, where five Palestinians died because of America's softness
on Israel, families unpick children's clothes from olive trees and
scratch for money in the rubble of a bombed home. In Lewes, two foster
parents are jailed for slowly beating to death a four-year-old boy
entrusted to their care. In Norwich, the judge jailing Tracey Wright for
killing her small stepdaughter says that Lauren's death, in a friendly
village, was as inevitable "as if she had been cast out alone into the
furthest desert." Another week goes by in civilization.
Of course, a few people are mad or vicious, but we are inclined to see
society and the state as more benign than they are. That distortion
makes us susceptible to the blandishments of Blair and Bush.
Civilization, goodness, justice. We can all sign up for those. And so
mistaken assumptions lead the West into three errors.
The first is that we are enviable. To think that every Bin Laden
disciple in Tommy Hilfiger jeans and citrus cologne aspires to work for
Paribas is as mad as believing that all Toyota owners want to uproot
from Oswestry to Osaka.
The second mistake is assuming that most tactics pass muster, if
deployed in a just war, as defined by St. Augustine or Tony Blair. The
third, paradoxical, error is squeamishness. As befits a civilized race,
the West has so far avoided the dirty pursuit of ruthless terrorists in
favour of a fragrant option in which the innocent die from bombing or
starvation.
Their fate was mortgaged to a merciful future. The Taliban would be
ousted fast. There would be jam, as opposed to peanut butter airdrops,
tomorrow. Three weeks in, that assurance has been amended or revoked.
Bright tomorrows, Osama's dirty bomb permitting, may be 50 years away.
We are told almost nothing by politicians who seem to understand little
and divulge less.
The aims of conflict remain grandiose, but the achievements stack up as
bombed aid warehouses and charred children. So far, this does not look
like civilization on the march. It looks like barbarism in a borrowed
halo.