Juli Burchill on the Anti-War Movement

Saturday March 29, 2003 20:22

by Avi H.

Don't take my name in vain - JB's article in the Guardian

Someone once said to me that "depression is just extreme vanity", and
though obviously I don't think that everyone who's depressed is a wuss,
I'm starting to think there's something to it.
Some people have genuinely had their brain chemicals go wrong, for
whatever reason; they've got a right to be depressed. Also, I think that
people who were abused, sexually or otherwise, as children must suffer
despair and sorrow in their adult lives to a degree the rest of us cannot
begin to comprehend; they've got a right to be depressed. But I also
think that a lot of so-called depression comes from people having no
perspective on their problems - vanity, if you will.

It's all about me!

Sorrow is no more depression than a stubbed toe is an amputated leg.

Depressive writers (usually women, I'm sorry to say) routinely compare
their off-days to the experience of Jews during the Shoah, and for some
reason no one ever stands up and points out that this obscenity -
Holocaust appropriation - is just as bad as Holocaust denial. And as for
those terminally sad soap opera actors who plan to exercise their new
"right" to professional counselling if involved in a "traumatic" storyline
- well, I'm sure our underworked, overpaid nurses and firefighters
won't begrudge them it one bit. Face it, it's a dog's life having to raid
the dressing-up box for a living.

I've always thought that the last place you'd see the vanity of
depression in action would be on a protest march, especially one against war
in a foreign country, but I do believe that many of the anti-war antics
currently taking place are totally egotistical. Those who demonstrated
against US aggression in Vietnam and Cuba did so because they believed
that those people should have more freedom, not less. But does the most
hardened peacenik really believe that Iraqis currently enjoy more
liberty and delight than they would if Saddam were brought down? If so, fair
enough; if not, then they are marching about one thing - themselves.
That's why so many luvvies are involved; this is simply showing off on a
grand scale.

I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war
advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start
coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in
Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean
what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot - but to
millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they
count?

Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY
NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white,
western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the
bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their
brats' names are the worst - a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except
they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the
motorway, but in the whole wide weeping, striving, yearning world. We
don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed.
We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an
endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never
be won without help from outside.

Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard
not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the
same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of
the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the
protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total
coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the
most notoriously "difficult"and vain - Streisand, Albarn, Michael,
Madonna, Sean Penn? And Robin Cook! Why might anyone believe world peace can
be secured by this motley bunch?

Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and
self-loathing that often characterises recreational depression - an unholy alliance
of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you're scum, but also
that you're terribly important, too. For instance, what about the loony
who offered to be crucified on live TV if George Bush promised not to
invade Iraq? "Send your troops home and take me," she wrote to the White
House, adding later, "I don't want to appear as some nutter." Similarly,
there are the human shields - now limping homewards after being shocked
to discover, bless 'em, that Saddam wanted to stick them in front of
military installations as opposed to the hospitals and petting zoos that
they'd fondly imagined they were going to defend.

What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre
of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT
IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our
clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those
whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's
regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing
with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them
back their lives.

How embarrassing it will be for the peaceniks to have to explain to the
celebrants how much better it would have been for them never to have
been troubled by such joy!

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Comments (15 of 15)

good article but

by jh

Sat Mar 29, 2003 20:40

i have clinical depression,
people with depression actually consciously hold back their anger on some issues so as not to get it confused.

The Iraqi did not have freedom before the war and they will not have it after. This anti-war movement is about more then Iraq and I'm glad to say that it is about our rich, "free" western countries and about our freedoms.

Nice story Avi

by serial abuser

Sat Mar 29, 2003 21:16

But is it news ?

Anyway why aren't you out gunning down those striking commies in your own country ....

http:/tinyurl.com/8eaj

Just for a little bit of balance

by mr. equilibrium

Sat Mar 29, 2003 21:20

How about a view of the pro-war movement ... from a US veteran ... (predates US invasion of Iraq) ...

http://www.dailykos.com/archives/000197.html

Way to go Avi

by the propagandizer

Sat Mar 29, 2003 21:25

Check out the cool poster:
http://politicalhumor.miningco.com/library/images/blgoering.htm

I couldn't agree more

by Uncle Sam

Sat Mar 29, 2003 21:33

Glad to see that someone is on OUR side.

http://politicalhumor.miningco.com/library/images/blpropaganda-invest.htm

Some reality therapy for the pro-war goons

by clausewitz

Sat Mar 29, 2003 21:42

Hey Avi, maybe you and all those pro-war goons need a dose of reality therapy.

Take a deep breath and try this:

Invaders Can Not Take Baghdad: German Military Experts
German experts say invasion forces can not control Baghdad

By Khaled Schmitt, IOL Correspondent

BONN, March 29 - Military German experts ruled out it was impossible for the U.S.-British invasion forces to occupy and secure Baghdad as long as the current “unity and determination” - between the Iraqi regime and people - goes on, expecting “a bitter defeat” should the invasion forces opted for attacking the Iraqi capital.

Participants in an emergency research session to assess the current invasion, organized by the Unit of Military studies and analyses - affiliated to Hamburg University - (AKUF), noted that “the history of world wars never recorded one case of an invading army that managed to occupy and control a heavily-populated city - such as Baghdad”.

According to German Magazine Tagesspiegel Friday, March 28, the German experts unanimously believed that the invasion forces had only two options to occupy and secure Baghdad or Basra; either to flatten them completely or besiege them tell hunger played its toll on the people inside.

Pioneer of German military experts, Dr. Manfred Messer Schmidt, expected the U.S.-British invasion forces would lose the war as long as the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, remained in control of the country.

The prominent German expert considered it impossible for the invasion forces to control a city of million peoples unless they (invading forces) decided to “flatten it and bring every and each building upside down”.

Surprise!

Sat Mar 29, 2003 22:35

I'm getting to quite enjoy this...

Yeah

by schlomi

Sat Mar 29, 2003 22:39

Almost as much fun as a jeep trip in the Yehuda Desert .....

Julie bollixshevik bullshite more like it

by let them eat daisy cutters

Sat Mar 29, 2003 22:47

Julie bullshite 'i'm an aritistic writer, where's your swimming pool, pour me some more wine please dahhling', is a rich writer bourgeouis pig. It is typically out of touch of her to be pro war, one of tony's prize bollixshevik babes. Julie still thinks brit pop is cool, and Tony is superb husband material. Julie is brought out to graze on Tony's american pie everytime the US/UK soldiers flash their golden cheesy pecs. Julie would like to be parachuted into Iraq herself, where she can bite the heads off Iraqi children and lamposts. Lets liberate Iraqi people by killing them off so saddam doesn't have to murder them, too much work for him to do by himself, how to bomb people into liberation, very sensible and down to earth Julie, nice to know you haven't lost touch with reality in your luvvie luvvie world.

Embarrassed for lack of understanding.

by Fred

Sun Mar 30, 2003 01:31

I am grateful to JB for helping me to understand why we should attack Iraq, however, when I think about it carefully, there are still a few details I don't understand.

1. As the previous poster suggests, JB is herself self-obsessed. She makes her living writing provocative prose, and in this article, in the very act of accusing others of self-obsession she is once again serving herself. So is it, or is it not, a good thing to be self-obsessed?

2. Hers is a variant of the "what are you going to do about Saddam, then" argument. This is a trick question because it assumes that it is our job to do something about Saddam. It may or may not be, of course, but this is the very question at issue.

3. JB claims that we should invade Iraq to liberate her population from tyranny. By invading Iraq the Anglo-US military-industrial complex is attempting to steal her mineral resources from the French, Russians and Chinese, try out some new weapons, and resist the threat to the dollar represented by the euro. The difference between monarchy and tyranny is that a monarch rules for the benefit of his people, while a tyrant rules for his own benefit. We are therefore acting tyrannically. Is tyranny a good thing, or doesn't she think so?

4. JB suggests we are not concerned about the freedom of the Iraqi people, but arguably the most fundamental freedom a people can have is its own national sovereignty. This is precisely the freedom we are taking away by invading.

5. JB argues that the anti-war demonstrators are wrong because they are self-obsessed. It may very well be that we are self-obsessed, but that doesn't mean our governments are right to invade Iraq. In general, we cannot derive a conclusion about the status of a claim from a fact about the person making the claim.

6. JB says the Iraqi people can never win their freedom without outside help. But hold on a second. How is total coercion possible? The complicity of a subordinate population is always required to some extent. Take the example of the suicide bomber. Was Saddam going to kill him if he didn't suicide? How can he have been coerced? And what about the elite guards who, we are told, force the regular soldiers to fight. How are they coerced? Is Saddam going to shoot them all? In the end, he would have to shoot everyone in his country but himself.

Another problem for this argument is the soldiers who have been sent out wandering in the desert among the Bedouin to attack the Anglo-US. Now that they are on their own, they could easily desert or defect. Instead they fight on. Why? In fact, it turns out that one of the Apache helicopters, which crashed, or so we are told, was, according to more credible sources, shot down by a Bedouin using a bolt-action rifle. Those guys are goat-herders living in the high western desert plains, as far as possible from the influence of the Ba'ath party Sunnis in Baghdad. It's highly unlikely he was coerced to do that.

7. JB claims that the human shields were forced to deploy at military installations. At http://www.humanshields.org the shields themselves report freely deploying at civilian installations only, and decry JB's claim as tired western propaganda.

8. JB claims that the protester's self-obsession makes the Iraqi people disappear and that this in a kind of imperialism. But the anti-war folks are at pains to acknowledge the suffering of the Iraqi people at our hands. The pro-war folks seek to suppress representations of their suffering because this makes the Iraqi people visible. Imperialism is adventuring to foreign lands and intervening in their affairs, usually, in the minds of the imperialists at least, in order to benefit them. Examples include Soviet intervention in Hungary to liberate the people from capitalism, crusaders helping the unbelievers whose souls were damned and now Anglo-Americans helping the people of Iraq by bringing a superior form of government. This is imperialism. The withdrawal preferred by the anti-war movement is its reverse.

9. JB claims that a jubilant liberated people will dance in the street. How can she be sure? What if the Iraqi people fight strongly to defend their holy land from white invading crusader infidels, and continue to fight a guerrilla war even if Baghdad falls until the invader is repelled? This has happened many times throughout the long history of the region.

10. JB suggests we will feel embarrassed at this spectacle of jubilation. But likewise, she will feel embarrassed if things work out as I envisage. How does this speculation contribute to our understanding?

Hurrah for the pro-war activists !

by looney tunes

Sun Mar 30, 2003 01:43

Specially dedicated to Avi.

http://www.teshreen.com/daily/images/fr03-21/carem.gif

Julie Burpshit

by jeff

Sun Mar 30, 2003 15:26

She is a lovely person, and she really likes the Irish, not. Some bloke, John Twomey, was trying to get her up on incitment, because she called the Irish flag a rag reminiscent of abused alter boys, and that Ken Livingstones idea for a Patrick's day parade in London. was terrible because of all the scabbing we have done with their dole( conveiniently forgetting people like my uncle, who is a building contracter. She has made Islamaphobic statements as well, but apologised for them January 2002.

Scotland Yard decided to take no action against the bitch, proibably because we are only Irish, and the Guardian decided to stand by her opinions. The day she gets sparked will be a pleasant one, I hate her fat shit face, and would love to see her body recycled.

So fuck you Avi, you Zionist shit, hopefully a suicide bomber will find you-"Next year, Jerusalem!"

Burchill

by Aunty Avi

Sun Mar 30, 2003 17:58

The millions of people who came out to march against the invasion of Iraq, did so in a spirit of giving. Burchill, being a narrow-minded, self-obsessed yuppie, is incapable of understanding that.

When she looks at the peace marchers and sees self-obsessiveness, she is only projecting her own motives on to others.

The phrase "Not in my name" has very real meaning for people who believe in democracy, so the likes of Avi and Julie Burchill are unlikely to understand it.

Virtual Bravery

Sun Mar 30, 2003 20:25

Isn't amazing how brave people can be, when it comes to abusing others on the Internet, knowing of course that there is no comeback, as everything is anonymous. I wonder whether these are the type of people that crack up first in real combat situations?

Your own fault

by Vet

Mon Mar 31, 2003 02:47

Poor little Avi, feeling put upon. You do tend to attract the occasional barb from people.
PS How many commie strikers did you shoot today?

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Juli Burchill on the Anti-War Movement

Comments (15 of 15)