V2 mention: The Theatre of Good and Evil By Eduardo Galeano

[Doug Millison]

The Theatre of Good and Evil 
By Eduardo Galeano 
from La Jornada September 21, 2001 
Translated by Justin Podur

In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the
people who get
killed.

The terrorists killed workers of 50 countries in NYC
and DC, in the name
of Good against Evil. And in the name of Good against
Evil President
Bush has promised vengeance: "We will eliminate Evil
from the world", he
announced.

Eliminate Evil? What would Good be without Evil? It's
not just religious
fanatics who need enemies to justify their insanity.
The arms industry
and the gigantic war machine of the US also needs
enemies to justify its
existence. Good and evil, evil and good: the actors
change masks, the
heroes become monsters and the monsters heroes, in
accord with the
demands of the theatre's playwrights.

This is nothing new. The German scientist Werner von
Braun was evil when
he invented the V-2 bombers that Hitler used against
London, but became
good when he used his talents in the service of the
US. Stalin was good
during World War Two and evil afterwards, when he
became the leader of
the Evil Empire. In the cold war years John Steinbeck
wrote: "Maybe the
whole world needs Russians. I suppose that even in
Russia they need
Russians. Maybe Russia's Russians are called
Americans." Even the
Russians became good afterwards. Today, Putin can add
his voice to say:
"Evil must be punished."

Saddam Hussein was good, and so were the chemical
weapons he used
against the Iranians and the Kurds. Afterwards, he
became evil. They
were calling him Satan Hussein when the US finished up
their invasion of
Panama to invade Iraq because Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Father Bush that
particular war against Evil upon himself. With the
humanitarian and
compassionate spirit that characterizes his family, he
killed more than
100 000 Iraqis, the vast majority of them civilians.

Satan Hussein stayed where he was, but this number one
enemy of humanity
had to step aside and accept becoming number two enemy
of humanity. The
bane of the world is now called Osama bin Laden. The
CIA taught him
everything he knows about terrorism: bin Laden, loved
and armed by the
US government, was one of the principal 'freedom
fighters' against
Communism in Afghanistan. Father Bush occupied the
Vice Presidency when
President Reagan called these heroes 'the moral
equivalents of the
Founding Fathers.' Hollywood agreed. They filmed Rambo
3: Afghani
Muslims were the good guys. Now, 13 years later, in
the time of Son
Bush, they are the worst of the bad guys.

Henry Kissinger was one of the first to react to the
recent tragedy.
"Those who provide support, financing, and inspiration
to terrorists are
as guilty as the terrorists themselves," he intoned,
words that Son Bush
would repeat hours later.

If that's how it is, the urgent need right now is to
bomb Kissinger. He
is guilty of many more crimes than bin Laden or any
terrorist in the
world. And in many more countries. He provided
'support, financing, and
inspiration" to state terror in Indonesia, Cambodia,
Iran, South Africa,
Bangladesh, and all the South American countries that
suffered the dirty
war of Plan Condor.

On September 11 1973, exactly 28 years before the
fires of last week,
the Presidential Palace in Chile was stormed.
Kissinger had written the
epitaph of Allende and Chilean democracy long before
when he commented
on the results of the elections: "I don't see why we
have to stand by
and watch a country go communist because of the
irresponsibility of its
own people."

A contempt for the people is one of many things shared
by state and
private terror. For example, the ETA, an organization
that kills people
in the name of independence in Basque Country, says
through one of its
spokespeople: 'Rights have nothing to do with
majorities or minorities.'

There is much common ground between low- and high-
tech terrorism,
between the terrorism of religious fanatics and that
of market fanatics,
that of the hopeless and that of the powerful, that of
the psychopath on
the loose and that of the cold-blooded uniformed
professional. They all
share the disrespect for human life: the killers of
the 5500 citizens
under the Twin Towers that fell like castles of dry
sand-- and the
killers of 200 000 Guatemalans, the majority of whom
were indigenous,
exterminated without television or the newspapers of
the world paying
any attention. Those Guatemalans were not sacrificed
by any Muslim
fanatic, but by terrorist squads who received
'support, financing, and
inspiration' from successive US governments.

All these worshipers of death are in agreement as well
on the need to
reduce social, cultural, and national differences to
military terms. In
the name of Good against Evil, in the name of the One
Truth, they
resolve everything by killing first and asking
questions later. And by
this method, they strengthen the enemy they fight. It
was the atrocities
of the Sendero Luminoso that gave President Fujimori
the popular support
he sought to unleash a regime of terror and sell Peru
for the price of a
banana. It was the atrocities of the US in the Middle
East that prepared
the ground for the holy war of terrorism of Allah.

Although the leader of the Civilized World is pushing
a new Crusade,
Allah is innocent of the crimes committed in his name.
At the end of the
day, God did not order the Holocaust against the
followers of Jehovah,
nor did Jehovah order the massacres of Sabrah and
Shatila or the
expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Aren't
Allah, God and Jehovah
are, after all, three names for the same divinity?

A tragedy of errors: nobody knows any more who is who.
The smoke of the
explosions forms part of the much larger curtain of
smoke that prevents
all of us from seeing clearly. From revenge to
revenge, terrorism
obliges us to walk to our graves. I saw a photo,
recently published, of
graffiti on a wall in NYC: "An eye for an eye makes
the whole world
blind."

The spiral of violence creates violence and also
confusion: pain, fear,
intolerance, hatred, insanity. In Porto Alegre, at the
beginning of this
year, Ahmed Ben Bella warned: 'This system, that has
already made mad
cows, is making mad people too." And these mad people,
mad from hate,
act as the power that created them.

A three year old child, named Luca, told me: "The
world doesn't know
where its house is." He was looking at a map. He could
have been looking
at a reporter.

--distributed by Znet


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com