Lulua
10-11-2001, 16:21
Published on Sunday, October 28, 2001 in the Observer of London
It's a word that can mean all things to all men, but it's also a concept
used in the current conflict to suit many different purposes
by Mary Riddell
War has a face. It belongs to Hamid Ullah, aged one. He lies in a hospital
bed in Quetta, near to his mother, Radigul, whose eyes were burned and arm
shredded by the US bomb that struck her hamlet outside Kandahar. 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 lumped around
in the cause of the varied photocall desired by a 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
US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, a cultural benchmark
acceptable to the Tory leader 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 Civilizations, 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 Mr 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 as completely as the President. It shows. When Bush talks of saving
civilization, he implies, beyond adventurism, some wistful nostalgia for a
lost Utopia.
Even for those more skeptical 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 US 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 reason than that they are easier to hurt than Bin Laden.
Many families of the US 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, 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 favor 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.
c Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
It's a word that can mean all things to all men, but it's also a concept
used in the current conflict to suit many different purposes
by Mary Riddell
War has a face. It belongs to Hamid Ullah, aged one. He lies in a hospital
bed in Quetta, near to his mother, Radigul, whose eyes were burned and arm
shredded by the US bomb that struck her hamlet outside Kandahar. 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 lumped around
in the cause of the varied photocall desired by a 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
US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, a cultural benchmark
acceptable to the Tory leader 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 Civilizations, 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 Mr 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 as completely as the President. It shows. When Bush talks of saving
civilization, he implies, beyond adventurism, some wistful nostalgia for a
lost Utopia.
Even for those more skeptical 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 US 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 reason than that they are easier to hurt than Bin Laden.
Many families of the US 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, 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 favor 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.
c Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001