• liberation literature

Why a brain surgeon was critical of anti-war protesters who carried slogans such as "Not in My Name"

This is an extract from Saturday by Ian McEwan,  an award winning novelist.

Ever since he treated an Iraqi Professor of Ancient History for a cerebral aneurysm, saw his torture scars and listened to his stories, Perowne has had ambivalent or confused and shifting ideas about this coming invasion. Miri Taleb is in his late sixties, a man of slight, almost girlish build, with a nervous laugh, a whinnying giggle that could have something to do with his time in prison. He did his PhD at University College, London, and speaks excellent English. His field is Sumerian civilisation, and for more than twenty years he taught at the university in Baghdad and was involved in various archaeological surveys in the Euphrates area. His arrest came one winter's afternoon in 1994, and was witnessed by all his students, outside a lecture room where he was about to teach. Three men showed their security accreditation, and asked him to go with them to their car. There they handcuffed him, and it was at that point that his torture began. The cuffs were so tight that for sixteen hours, until they were removed, he could think of nothing but the pain. Permanent damage was done to both shoulders. For the following ten months he was moved around central Iraq between various jails. He had no idea what these moves meant, and no means of letting his wife know he was still alive. Even on the day of his release, he didn't discover what the charges were against him.

...

They've hung their banners from the windows, along with football scarves and the names of towns from the heart of England - Stratford, Gloucester, Evesham. From the impatient pavement crowds, some dry runs with the noisemakers - a trombone, a squeeze-ball car horn, a lambeg drum. There are ragged practice chants which at first he can't make out. Tumty tumty tum. Don't attack Iraq. Placards not yet on duty are held at a slope, at rakish angles over shoulders. Not in My Name goes past a dozen times. Its cloying self-regard suggests a bright new world of protest, with the fussy consumers of shampoos and soft drinks demanding to feel good, or nice. Henry prefers the languid, Down With this Sort of Thing. A placard of one of the organising groups goes by - The British Association of Muslims. Henry remembers that outfit well. It explained recently in its newspaper that apostasy from Islam is an offence punishable by death. Behind comes a banner proclaiming The Swaffham Women's Choir, and then, Jews Against the War.

...

Opinions are a roll of the dice; by definition, none of the people now milling around Warren Street tube station happens to have been tortured by the regime, or knows and loves people who have, or even knows much about the place at all. It's likely most of them barely registered the massacres in Kurdish Iraq, or in the Shiite south, and now they find they care with a passion for Iraqi lives. They have good reasons for their views, among which are concerns for their own safety. Al-Qaeda, it's said, which loathes both godless Saddam and the Shiite opposition, will be provoked by an attack on Iraq into revenge on the soft cities of the west. Self-interest is a decent enough cause, but Perowne can't feel, as the marchers themselves probably can, that they have an exclusive hold on moral discernment.

Thanks to Marcus at Harry's Place for drawing attention to this new novel

Pamela Bone has referred to the extract from Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, which is quoted in the above entry, in an Age article on March 25.

She goes on to note that  "it was possible for people of goodwill to be for or against the invasion"  and that "opinion in support or opposition to the war could also be accidental" depending on the luck of your past experiences or encounters.

That is a feature of McEwan's book, the lead character, a surgeon, is against the war because he has treated an Iraqi professor with torture scars.

Pamela Bone goes onto explain her background reasons for supporting the war:

In my case, it was having talked to Iraqi women exiles who told me of the atrocities of the regime, including Saddam's orders that prostitutes - who were in some cases not even prostitutes but critics of the government - should be beheaded and their heads nailed to the doors of their houses as a lesson to others. And by having been in Rwanda after the genocide, and seeing how the world failed to stop that horror. And by a strong and long-held personal conviction that genocidal dictators should not be allowed to get away with it.

I'm half way through reading Ian McEwan's novel Saturday which is set on 15 February 2003 the day of the first massive anti war demonstrations in Britain. Also I saw him interviewed about this novel tonight on SBS as part of the 5pm NewsHour program.

McEwan is a great writer and I'd really recommend this book, his characterisation, vivid descriptions of everyday events and exploration of the inner self is amazingly good.

McEwan's views on the Iraq war as expressed in the novel and in the interview are ambivalent. He explores both side of the argument - that Saddam has to go and the the Americans will make a botch of it all.

The dialogue about the war is extensive throughout the book but it forms the backdrop of a much bigger novel about the human condition, modern anxieties, pleasure and the genetic lottery.

McEwan describes himself as a materialist, here is something he said about that recently:

What I believe but cannot prove is that no part of my consciousness will survive my death. I exclude the fact that I will linger, fadingly, in the thoughts of others, or that aspects of my consciousness will survive in writing, or in the positioning of a planted tree or a dent in my old car. I suspect that many contributors to Edge will take this premise as a given—true but not significant. However, it divides the world crucially, and much damage has been done to thought as well as to persons, by those who are certain that there is a life, a better, more important life, elsewhere. That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound.

   Ian McEwan

His views about the Iraq war are unfashionable for most intellectuals but hopefully becoming more accepted now as the reality of the goals and methods of al-Qaida become more and more obvious.

His views about Tony Blair's Labour Party (at the bottom) are also relevant to the industrial relations reform thread on LastSuperpowers.

The full interview is here

SPIEGEL: But isn't the West providing the best advertisement for terrorist recruiters by being in Iraq and killing Islamic civilians, torturing Muslim prisoners a la Abu Ghraib and spreading pictures of the deeds around the world?

MCEWAN: I don't think terror needs a breeding ground. I don't buy the arguments in the Iraq war. What keeps getting forgotten here is that the people committing massacres in Iraq right now belong to al-Qaida. We're witnessing a civil war that's taking place in Islam. The most breathtaking statement was the one of al-Qaida claiming responsibility for the London bombings saying it was in return for the massacre in Iraq. But the massacres in Iraq now are being conducted by al-Qaida against Muslims. I also think it's extraordinary the way in which we get morally selective in our outrages. When there was a rumor that someone at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the lavatory, the pages in The Guardian almost caught fire with outrage, but only months before the Taliban had set fire to a mosque and destroyed 300 ancient Korans.

SPIEGEL: In your book, the Iraq war still hasn't happened yet. And the day in which the book takes place, Feb. 15, 2003, is the day in which massive peace demonstrations took place in London. Henry's daughter Daisy is among the protesters and he is full of ire and sarcasm about them. He doubts they can rightfully claim morality for themselves. Do these passages echo your own ambivalent views on the matter?

McEwan: Yes, it does. I never thought that in the run up to the war we were discussing simply the difference between war and peace. We were discussing the difference between war and continued torture and genocide and abuse of human rights by a fascist state. I missed any sense of that complexity in the peace camp. I certainly had the feeling that whatever the strong moral arguments were for deposing Saddam, the Americans would not be good nation-builders. But I had a moral problem with this view among the 2 million protesters that you should leave Saddam in power in a fascist state with 27 million Iraqis under him. The problem is that they felt good about it. I thought they should have opposed the war but also felt bad about it.

SPIEGEL: Do you think invading Iraq was a mistake?

McEwan: I think if Bush and Blair could press a button and we could all fast forward backwards, rewind the tape, they'd probably do this differently. But I don't think they fully grasped, and even the anti-war (movement) could have never fully grasped the fantastic viciousness of the insurgency against its own people.



SPIEGEL: Let's talk about politics for a few minutes. What do you make of the historic third term of Tony Blair, obviously having weathered all the accusations and standing bigger now than ever?

McEwan: Two months ago, he was the villain. The day after he won the election, the press erupted in a furious, spiteful rage. It was incredible. You would think he'd just been found guilty of child murder. He'd been returned with a reduced majority, which I think was actually a perfectly mature, democratic decision. It was about right. There was no other game in town, there was no other party that could actually reasonably take power. The Tories couldn't do it. So to have him back with his power diminished in parliament seemed to me to be a pretty good communal decision -- at least if you think of democracies as being like people at a séance, with a Ouija board spelling out letters that nobody can quite predict. I take a very unfashionable view of Tony Blair. I think he's the least bad prime minister we've had.

SPIEGEL: The least bad prime minister?

McEwan: There have been gross mistakes, but for those who have nostalgia for old Labour, they must reflect on 30 percent inflation, 3 million were unemployed, public service was a total chaos, the government was constantly on its knees to the International Monetary Fund and there was a sense of real decline. Old Labour was a disaster, an absolute disaster. And I've never forgiven the right for their 18 years in power here, either. The fact that we've now got money pouring into education and we're finally beginning to restore the public health service is a real achievement. If you had told someone on the left in 1975 that there would be a Labour-led government with 3 percent inflation, a 2.5 percent growth rate, 800,000 unemployed and a minimum wage, they would think you were in fantasy land.

SPIEGEL: But isn't that foundation been laid by the government of Margaret Thatcher?

McEwan: She did the dirty work that no left wing party could do. But Thatcher was terrible to live under. Yet now, looking at both France and Germany, if the social model is keeping 20 million people unemployed, then that's a human tragedy.

The full interview is here