22.8.03
Chaos Theory.
A duke rides through Sarajevo and is shot. One country whines, another balks. Treaties are ignited, ignored, avoided. The largest conflict in recorded history breaks out.
We learn no lessons.
A painter resents the poverty enforced on his shattered nation. He is ill, sick in his head, and fifty million die. The largest, and most barbarous conflict in recorded history breaks out.
Still, we learn no lessons.
Korea, The Gulf, Afghanistan (twice), Chechnya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, The Cold War, Algeria, Burundi, Vietnam, Chad, Cameroon, The Balkans, The Congo (twice), Iraq, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Argentina, South Africa, Bosnia, Zambia, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Uganda...
It goes on.
It makes me wonder what I'm seeing now. In half a century will they ask how we were so blind? Or, more terrifyingly, if we saw, and walked forward anyway?
Towers fall, and people die. Afghanistan is levelled and rebuilt for a second time. Iraq follows.
In a smaller, no less culpable nation, a journalist is sloppy, a weapons inspector takes his own life, and the government begins unravelling.
Reruns of Watergate and Chaos Theory.
If the bloody duke had just stayed home, if the damned painter had been a little less embittered, if we didn't seem to live for revenge, if nations abided by the laws they set for themselves, perhaps I would not be wondering if my children's grandchildren will spend their days apologising for another atrocity, carrying another backpackful of ancestral guilt, or if, instead, they'll be persecuted, hounded, and squeezed from the edges of society.
Perhaps I would not be sitting here, witnessing a pissing contest between Blair and BBC, witnessing both of them fail to measure up. Perhaps I would feel a greater amount of shock and worry that I care much more for the broadcasting company, and am much more disappointed in their lack of integrity than the government's.
A duke rides through Sarajevo and is shot. One country whines, another balks. Treaties are ignited, ignored, avoided. The largest conflict in recorded history breaks out.
We learn no lessons.
A painter resents the poverty enforced on his shattered nation. He is ill, sick in his head, and fifty million die. The largest, and most barbarous conflict in recorded history breaks out.
Still, we learn no lessons.
Korea, The Gulf, Afghanistan (twice), Chechnya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, The Cold War, Algeria, Burundi, Vietnam, Chad, Cameroon, The Balkans, The Congo (twice), Iraq, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Argentina, South Africa, Bosnia, Zambia, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Uganda...
It goes on.
It makes me wonder what I'm seeing now. In half a century will they ask how we were so blind? Or, more terrifyingly, if we saw, and walked forward anyway?
Towers fall, and people die. Afghanistan is levelled and rebuilt for a second time. Iraq follows.
In a smaller, no less culpable nation, a journalist is sloppy, a weapons inspector takes his own life, and the government begins unravelling.
Reruns of Watergate and Chaos Theory.
If the bloody duke had just stayed home, if the damned painter had been a little less embittered, if we didn't seem to live for revenge, if nations abided by the laws they set for themselves, perhaps I would not be wondering if my children's grandchildren will spend their days apologising for another atrocity, carrying another backpackful of ancestral guilt, or if, instead, they'll be persecuted, hounded, and squeezed from the edges of society.
Perhaps I would not be sitting here, witnessing a pissing contest between Blair and BBC, witnessing both of them fail to measure up. Perhaps I would feel a greater amount of shock and worry that I care much more for the broadcasting company, and am much more disappointed in their lack of integrity than the government's.
