Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008)

Harold Pinter

Artist: Justin Mortimer

As I'm sure you know, the playwright Harold Pinter died on Wednesday. Common Dreams has published his Nobel Prize lecture of 2005. Please read it. No excerpt can do it justice but I'll just give you this to whet your appetite:

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

You may not know the rest of this story - the accurate version, that is. You may only know what the Reagan administration insisted was the truth. But I beg you to click through and avail yourself of this eloquent summary. And let us do what we can to expose this truth to other Americans. (The rest of the world already knows, to our shame.)