Here’s the full text of Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s recent anti-Semitic diatribe. The quotes in the media don’t do full justice to its bile. Thanks to Meryl Yourish for posting it in full.
BEHIND THE BBC: A fascinating story that shows the pressure the BBC is now under. In a radio interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, there was a prior agreement that the question of the Iraq war would not be raised. But John Humphrys, a major opponent of the Iraq war, was the interviewer and broke the deal. The BBC then agreed not to broadcast the relevant section. Not a huge deal, but I do think the excised exchange is revealing:
John Humphrys: Can I turn this conversation to Iraq? Before you were enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury, you said, you signed a statement published in the Tablet, that said the war was immoral. Is that still your view?
Rowan Williams: At the time of course when I signed that statement there was no war. We were considering what might happen. Since that time I have commented on the possible risks of going to war before war broke out.
I have attempted during the period of the war to respect what’s going on and not to make idle or armchair pontifications about it. Since the war has drawn to a close of military operations, I have been reflecting on where we are now, and my view is still that there are major questions about that enterprise.
JH: Was it immoral?
(A 12-second pause)
RW: It seems to me that the action in Iraq was one around which there were so many questions about long-term results, about legal justification that I would find it very hard to give unqualified support to the rightness of that decision.
JH: You hesitated a very long time before you answered that, Archbishop.
RW: Immoral is a short word for a very, very long discussion.
JH: As Archbishop, do you not have an absolute responsibility as spiritual leader of this country to say very clearly, if we go to war, whether you believe that war is moral or not, and do you not have the sense that you are hedging a little here?
RW: No I don’t, because I don’t believe that the moral contribution that can be made by any spiritual leader is ever a matter of simply handing down something like the 10 commandments.
It’s a matter of trying to understand more deeply what sort of moral choices others are having to face, assisting with all the resource that I can bring to that and of course trying to live with the decisions that they make.
You can see what’s going on. The BBC interviewer wants another anti-war headline from the archbishop, who doesn’t want to go there. So he persists. The campaign by the leading media to distort and denigrate the liberation of Iraq continues. Even non-stories are now getting massive play to keep the pressure up.
MORE REASON: For Wesley Clark to become Howard Dean’s running-mate. It would be a great, centrist Democrat-Republican ticket.
PLUS CA CHANGE: Check out this post-war report. Grim news:
A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Europeans. Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word “liberation.” Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing, looting. You try to explain to these Europeans that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last was America was the hope of the world. They talk about the Hoover relief, the work of the Quakers, the speeches of Woodrow Wilson. They don’t blame us for the fading of that hope. But they blame us now. Never has American prestige in Europe been lower.
Except now, of course.
The Dish 