American blunders
Taki
From my open window in Cadogan Gardens I can hear a woman’s lovely voice singing something from Mozart’s Requiem; at least I think it’s Mozart’s oeuvre. One can never go wrong with Wolfie at a hot and brilliant sunny day’s end, especially when the rest of the world’s slobs are out there singing football songs and other such rubbish. God, I find football boring. Even more boring than claycourt tennis. The only team I’m rooting for is Germany, but it has nothing to do with the Wehrmacht. The Germans are playing attacking football, and will pay the price for it, but who cares? Better a German blitzkrieg that ends in tears than an English hold-them-for-ever-after-gettinga-lucky-goal and putting everyone to sleep.
England is a good team which plays very boring football thanks to an extremely boring coach. If Sven makes love the way he teaches football to be played, I feel very sorry for his girls. They must think of many strange things, but obviously not of English football, in order to stay awake while doing it. And while I’m on the subject of football, it is supposedly still a sport. So what were all those Israeli flags protesting about the Iranian presence doing when Iran took the field against Mexico? Israel is not in the tournament. So why bring Middle East politics to Germany during the greatest sporting event in the world? I’ll tell you why. After 39 years of Israeli occupation, Palestinians living under Israel are treated with contempt. For decades Palestinians have been losing their lands and their basic rights — the 1967 border no longer exists, thanks to Israeli development.
The Pentagon people are jubilant right now, having killed Zarqawi, but the Iraqi insurgency is like Hydra, and there’s a hell of a lot of killing to be done if the worst foreign-policy blunder in American history is to be reversed. The trouble is, of course, American policy-makers don’t read history. Roosevelt’s unconditional surrender policy against the Axis empowered all the wrong people. The firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, and the two nuclear strikes against Japan, were both completely unjustified; if one cares about murdering innocents, that is. Maybe if we kill enough Iraqis — say, a couple of million — the insurgency might come to a halt, but then it might not. Let’s put it this way. As long as the Palestinian problem festers, there will be no peace anywhere, and if others tell you it ain’t necessarily so, believe old Taki and send them to hell.
What defines the violence in Iraq is its cruelty. We haven’t experienced anything like it since the Middle Ages. Apparently, Shiite militias use drills to bore holes into heads before executing their victims, a nice human touch. Sunnis only chop off fingers and toes before cutting their throats. This is the blood madness of horror comics. It makes Saddam seem like a benevolent tyrant by comparison, and, if it keeps up, he could almost win a democratic election as a result. In the meantime, the neocons back home are wriggling, and blaming Bush and the generals for not having done more — like invade Iran, for example.
But enough of such horrors. I returned to a London heatwave to find my flat with the heating on, no water, and some nice builders upstairs talking about the beautiful game rather loudly at 8 a.m. It’s nice to be back and find that nothing has changed. Except manners, that is. At the wonderful Christie’s dinner in Claridge’s ballroom following the Princess Margaret sale — why are gossip-columnists after her son for selling things which belong to him? Will any of them pay for his bills or the death duties? — I noticed a hatchetfaced American fund manager by the name of Louis Bacon shaking hands with the Queen of Greece with his hand in his pocket. Nice one, Bacon, but over here we show respect to all ladies, Queens included, and take our hands out of our pockets. But I forgot. You’re nouveauriche and an American.
Previous page
