[IP] Terry Jones: Tony [Blair] must really try harder
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:54:37 -0600
From: Christian Traue <Christian_Traue@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Terry Jones: Tony [Blair] must really try harder
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Dave,
today The Guardian published a letter from Terry Jones, of Monty Python
fame, to Tony Blair's parents regarding the essay that Tony wrote for The
Observer last weekend (Why we must never abandon this historic struggle in
Iraq -
<<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1189906,00.html>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1189906,00.html>).
Terry Jones looks at the Blair essay and foreign politics effort as his 6th
form teacher... "I can only give Tony three out of 10 for this current
effort and must warn him to pull up his socks if he wishes to carry on in
this subject."
Here goes:
<<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1191333,00.html>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1191333,00.html>
Comment
Tony really must try harder
His essay on Iraq shows he has little grasp of his subject, world politics
Terry Jones
Wednesday April 14, 2004
The Guardian
Dear Mr and Mrs Blair,
I have just had to mark Tony's essay, Why We Must Never Abandon This
Historic Struggle in Iraq, and I am extremely worried.
Your son has been in the sixth form now for several years, studying world
politics, and yet his recent essay shows so little grasp of the subject
that I can only conclude he has spent most of that time staring out of the
window.
His essay, of course, is written with his usual passion and conviction,
but, in the real world, passion and conviction do not count for many marks.
Crucially, Tony does not seem to have read any of the first-hand accounts
that are easily available and describe what is really going on in Iraq. On
the recent escalation in violence, for example, he writes: "The insurgents
are former Saddam sympathisers ... terrorist groups linked to al-Qaida and,
most recently, followers of ... Moqtada al-Sadr." This is simply not good
enough. Tony ignores the multitude of reports indicating that revulsion
against the occupation is now widespread among ordinary people.
Tony's essay also displays a dismal ignorance of the key factors involved,
such as Paul Bremer's closing down of the small circulation newspaper run
by Moqtada al-Sadr.
To be honest, Tony seems to be totally unaware of what has been going on in
Falluja. Back in June 2003, David Baran described how Falluja was a town at
peace, until US forces took over, opened depots to looters, established a
military base in a school, and kept the residents under surveillance
through binoculars: "A gross invasion of privacy in a conservative area,
where women keep out of the sight of strangers."
When residents protested, the Americans responded with bullets and
grenades, killing some of them. Tony cannot simply ignore these factors if
he is to stand any chance of being taken seriously in his AS-levels.
In fact, I begin to wonder what goes on in the boy's head? Does he really
believe that the 600 Iraqis whom the US has now killed in revenge for the
four "civilian contractors", were all "terrorists" or Ba'athist supporters
- despite the fact that those manning the hospitals report that most of the
casualties are women, children or old men?
Tony's uncritical acceptance of information supplied by the US reveals a
naivety that would be surprising in any sixth-form pupil, let alone one who
has hopes of going on to university and then government, as I know Tony does.
He writes: "On the one side, outside terrorists, an extremist who has
created his own militia, and remnants of a brutal dictatorship ... On the
other side, people of immense courage and humanity ..." This might do in
the infants, but I'm afraid by the sixth form we expect something a little
more sophisticated.
He totally fails to place events in the larger political context, and seems
to imagine that the US intends to establish what he calls "a sovereign
state, governed democratically by the Iraqi people" with "the wealth of
that potentially rich country"
becoming "their wealth".
Does he really think that an Iraqi government that has been hand-picked by
the neo-conservatives in the White House is democratic? Does he really
think that the 120,000 US troops that will remain behind in Iraq will make
it "a sovereign state"? And does he really think that the forcible selling
off of Iraqi industry to foreign companies (mainly American) will help to
keep the wealth for the Iraqi people?
I can only give Tony three out of 10 for this current effort and must warn
him to pull up his socks if he wishes to carry on in this subject.
To be quite candid, Mr and Mrs Blair, it's lucky that your son is not in a
position of power, otherwise his lack of insight and his crass ignorance
would place us all in appalling peril.
· Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python.
Tony Blair's article appeared in the Observer on Sunday
www.terryjones.cjb.net
--
Christian Traue <Christian_Traue at acm.org>
"The distance between theory and practice is always
so much smaller in theory than in practice" </x-html>
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