Mad, mad world
By Michel Faber
Remember the dawn of our new millennium, when so many pundits shuddered at the horrors of the 20th century and predicted that in the future we would be too wise and war-weary to commit such idiocies? Remember the rhetoric surrounding the fall of communism, the twilight of dictators, the Irish peace process, the end of apartheid in Africa, the nuclear accords between the US and Russia, the supposed inevitability of a more adaptive, caring globalism?
Today, those same pundits are talking about a very different kind of 'new world order', a brave new world which can only be forged by bombing, shooting and terrorising human beings. Tabloid and broadsheet journalists alike are spouting Edwardian bluster about cheering on our brave fighting boys and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies. Armchair strategists are predicting that the 21st century will be characterised by 'us' attacking a succession of 'unstable countries' in order to render them harmless. Oil and construction firms are already squabbling over lucrative contracts in post-war Iraq, confident that an unprovoked invasion of an Arab state can just be filed away like a bit of paperwork. Where did the smart new millennium go?
Seventeen days ago, the Ministry of Defence trumpeted that the Iraq adventure would be the world's first 'clean' war and that there might well be 'zero' civilian fatalities. Within days, the battle descended into the sort of quagmire that the soldiers who fought 1914's War To End All Wars would recognise only too well. Who would've thought that the Iraqis would be so resistant to being invaded? Who would've thought that an explosive fired into the chaotic murk of unfamiliar territory could possibly hit the wrong target? Who would've thought that a crowded city could have innocent civilians recklessly dwelling in it? Who would've thought that the enemy leader would hide in a safe place while his people suffered?
And, while we're asking questions, who's going to pay George Bush $80 billion (£51bn) to fund this war when he's promising tax cuts to millionaires? Where were the billions of pounds the UK is pouring into this war when our schools and hospitals were begging for investment? Have the social problems that led to the deaths of Stephen Lawrence and Victoria ClimbiĊ½ -- the subject of so much hand-wringing and soul-searching such a short time ago -- ceased to matter now that we have more important stuff to do? And before this war began, did anybody in Britain have any reason to fear Saddam Hussein?
Now, deplorably but unsurprisingly, Saddam is making noises about sending suicide bombers to America and the UK. Of course, he is powerless to do this in any organised military sense, but it's conceivable that Arab rage against the West may reach such a pitch that an Iraqi already living in London or New York will blow himself up and take half a shopping mall with him. It seems like only yesterday that Britain was so safe it could afford to fret about the negligible possibility of catching mad cow disease from a hamburger. Give Bush and Blair long enough to inflame the Arab world, and we may learn what fear and danger really mean.
Oh, no doubt the American and British forces will eventually smash their way into Baghdad and declare themselves the winners. 'The tyrant who brought misery to his people has gone at last,' our spokesmen will say, standing knee-deep in rubble and blasted flesh. I only hope this 'victory' happens soon enough for us not to hear a re-run of that awesomely insane quote from the American military during the Vietnam War: 'To save the village it became necessary to destroy it.'
To those of us who are not convinced that piles of corpses, ruined cities and a tidal wave of hate are the ingredients of Utopia, the word 'insane' comes readily to mind when confronting this war. But war is insane in a deeper, truer sense than the merely rhetorical. Its rationales are disturbingly similar to those of individuals who, despite our best efforts to talk them out of it, fall victim to mental illness. Tony Blair, a vain but essentially well-meaning man who once wished to be the best-loved Prime Minister a happy and healthy Britain ever had, has undergone a shocking transformation. He is like the man in the psychiatric ward, who only recently was rational and well, and now harangues you, with glazed eyes, about the aliens and demons that allow him no rest.
This is war fever, a pathological rewiring of the brain that mirrors clinical psychosis. All the hallmarks of an individual going mad are there -- paranoia, gross over-reaction, fantastically unrealistic expectations, self-harm, lack of interest in previously cherished goals, imperviousness to logic, alienation from one's support network, anxious repetition of stock phrases, destruction of what one imagines one is preserving. Most heartbreaking of all, for anyone who has known or nursed a person fallen deep into mental illness, is the conviction that it is too late to turn back now, that we are in blood too deeply steeped, that we have boarded the train to hell and it cannot be stopped.
How would Blair have responded if someone had asked him in 1997 whether he could see himself attacking a foreign country illegally and without provocation; in a lonely alliance with the Spanish and American heads of state; in defiance of the EU; against the wishes of the electorate; to a background of Cabinet revolt, resignations, and millions of citizens taking to the streets in protest?
I think he would have looked around nervously for a security guard, in case his questioner -- clearly a deranged person -- suddenly pulled out a weapon. Now Blair has become that deranged person, and is waving his gun at the wretched citizens of Iraq, demanding their gratitude for the new regime the US will give them in exchange for their charred and mangled bodies.
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