AL Kennedy20 December 2003
Now, as we all know, years of flag-burnings, drug use, Anglican gay love discos and long-term exposure to the records of Billy Bragg cause the leftist brain to warp irrevocably. This cerebral degradation can cause brief, incoherent bursts of precognition, which is why a few weirdoes and dissenters were able to predict that, after the declaration of War Against Evil and the invasion of Iraq, the world would become hugely unstable and a great many people would die in grotesque ways. But that is the only reason they got it right.
Just because one event follows another, it doesn't mean one causes the other. Which is why it would be ludicrous to link resistance to the occupation of Iraq with the occupation of Iraq. And we shouldn't link the US throwing its weight around like a drunk sailor at an Amish wedding with turmoil in North Korea, South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bali, the Philippines, Taiwan, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Russia, Georgia - oh, just pick a name in your atlas, if it's not right now it soon will be.
But there are no links. So the Pentagon suddenly takes an interest in the numbers of dead Iraqi Muslims - so what? There is no connection between the Pentagon and the dead. Take Riad Khalas Abdallah, for example - one minute he was 25 years old and driving along in Kirkuk in an unarmed way, the next he was dead. This had nothing to do with the US troops who shot at him. Muslims die very easily, they are delicate and can blow up at any time - but this isn't because of anything. They're just made that way. You simply have to bulldoze their homes, concentrate them in secured areas and hope. Every Iraqi in Awja is much safer now it's razor wired shut, and look at the long-term joy those walls are bringing Gaza.
It's wisest to lock up individuals, too. So Algerian lieutenant Benamar Benatta has been in a New York prison for 26 months and counting, even though the FBI admits he's not a terrorist. Benatta will eventually be deported, which brings us to another link you shouldn't make.
When the US secretly deports Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria, it's not because prisoners are known to be tortured there. And it's a coincidence when he happens to end up being tortured. And a complete fluke that US companies export "crime control" equipment to regimes known to torture systematically. Torture is not US policy.
Which is why you shouldn't link it to claims that British Muslim Moazzam Begg (currently held in Guantanamo Bay) was tortured to produce his "confession" of James Bond-style skulduggery. And you shouldn't link that to the recent appearance of pensioner Fred Korematsu at the US supreme court. Fred was awarded the Medal of Freedom for his attempts to resist the mass internment of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and now he's filing a brief on behalf of detainees in Guantanamo Bay - who can say why?
You also shouldn't link: a) Draconian suppression of US dissent by hardline police chiefs like Miami's John Timoney, the FBI and private security companies with Republican funding; b) "embedding" of Republican journalists with police departments during anti-war demonstrations; c) Cheney and Halliburton kickbacks; d) Perle and Boeing kickbacks; e) the epidemic introduction of dodgy Diebold voting software before the next presidential elections; f) the Universal National Service Act 2003. If you do link them you'll just get this queasy, deja vu, Nazi feeling and have to lie down.
And there is no Nazi link with George Bush, grandson of one of the Reich's bankers, now overseeing Operation Iron Hammer - the charming revival of a Luftwaffe codename for the attempted crushing of the Iraqi resistance. And don't link George's famous dodging of national service, the last time it was all the rage, with any trouble he might have relating to (non-Wehrmacht) military types, leading him to defraud them of benefits, put them in the way of death and amputation, disappear their casualties, embarrass them with premature victory banners, jazz up his foreign trips using fake Thanksgiving photo ops involving a "model" turkey dinner - perhaps because a real one would have been too heavy and caused George's arms to shake. Lord knows, that's the kind of heart-breaking distress you wouldn't want to force on anyone.
And don't ever, ever link George with Tony, with (at best) using intelligence data the way goats use a fondue set and with Rumsfeld's immortal description of just where those WMD's are - "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Remember - life is chaos. The fewer the links, the greater the joy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4823608-103677,00.html
