OFF-BROADWAY ARCHBISHOP

It seems like a lifetime ago.

In August 1998, a few days after I had had a routine dinner at the Waterfront's "Planet Hollywood" with some local friends, a Muslim fundamentalist tossed a bomb into that same restaurant in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Cape Town, killing one and injuring over two dozen, including five members of one British family.

That attack took place just weeks after al Qaeda had blown up the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. (And, amazingly, the enemy did that long before the "evil" Bush administration announced it could not observe "Kyoto".) Those latter bombings especially were part of the same global war, we know now -- with other large-scale "operations" in that war being launched by the enemy in 2000 and 2001.

The Cape Town pipe bomb thrower and compatriots apparently didn't care too much about the significance of the local majority rule they were then enjoying, and which Tutu had spent a lifetime working to bring about. (Just rule by a different set of infidels.) And they probably didn't revere President Mandela either. (Just another really old infidel.) Bomber and bomber-backers were probably much more interested in the creation of a new "caliphate", and saw anything remotely deemed American as getting in the way of their creating that earthly "paradise".

Forward to October, 2004. The BBC reports:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is to appear in a New York off-Broadway play highly critical of the US handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. . .

. . . Once a leading campaigner against apartheid, Archbishop Tutu is a vocal critic of the Guantanamo system.

Now he is taking the unusual step of agreeing to take part in a play which portrays the plight of the British nationals being held without trial along with hundreds of others suspected of being linked with terror organisations including al-Qaeda. . .

To digress for a moment: "British nationals". Comforting words, aren't they? Those who spit on British nationality, or are British only for convenience, are suddenly oh, so attached to Britain . . . after they discover that nationality's true value, upon getting caught involved in nonsense that turned out to have a steep price of a sort their local "cleric" had not advised them about.

. . . Okay, and we're back. In the the BBC review of the play's London performance, we get this:

Theatre has broken in where international law was locked out.

Urrr, wow, now that's powerful. However, on the issue which some might think is perhaps more relevant, overall -- why a warped religiosity leads people to want to crash hijacked planes into buildings -- the BBC reviewer (and therefore, apparently "the play") has nothing to say.

Anyway, back to the Archbishop's New York debut.

As I scanned the piece, I searched eagerly for when we will be treated to Tutu making an appearance in a stage production on the taking and final moments of Flight 93. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed on that score.

. . . The play, which has drawn warm reviews from New York critics, is a damning indictment of the Bush administration's policies.

Well, this is big. For, previously, "New York [theater] critics" had been widely-known for their warm support of the Bush administration.

You just know, too, that had the F.B.I. broken up the suicide-hijackers' plans, raided the planes just before take-off, and pulled Mohamed Atta and the others off the planes before they were able to commandeer them aloft and crash them into skyscrapers . . . well, we'd probably learn how he was "innocent" too, of course -- just a humble student who had worked hard toward the British equivalent of an MSc in town planning in Germany, and later trained as a pilot in Florida, before being arrested "for no reason" by the "evil" Americans. And Atta's portrayed "mistreatment" in some non-Guantanamo captivity would probably even now be bringing tears to the eyes of other suitably distressed theater goers, as they "experience" some other play that "damns" some other Bush administration policy on some other grounds.

Many "New York [theater] critics" and others have worked themselves up into a fantasy-frenzy, decrying the Bush administration as oppressive. But such critics really could use a lesson in the reality of what "true dissent" in the face of a oppressive regime usually entails.

After all, they hardly face being "banned" or even being sent to prison for anti-government activity, over warmly reviewing a play such as this one -- as they would have, had this play been produced in, say, Johannesburg during the days of Henrik Verwoerd. In contrast, in today's New York under this administration, such "reviews" are only going to get them a collective yawn, and a "Yeh, what else's is new"? The difference is called freedom.

Archbishop Tutu's involvement comes at a highly sensitive political time with the US presidential election now just weeks away.

Of course, we all know that many a U.S. presidential election has been swayed by the wide-ranging impact of an off-Broadway play.

Anyway, to be blunt: Thousands of Americans backed Tutu's cause two decades ago, a cause over which WE GAVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF ANY DOUBT, because he told us he was intimately familiar with it, FREEDOM DEMANDED IT, and WE THOUGHT IT RIGHT.

And now Tutu dabbles in castigating us about which he knows little -- on the likes of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. jurisprudence, and the nature of a conflict in which Americans are the ultimate targets, whether they be in New York or in his Cape Town.

Yet, rather than granting US SOME BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT in OUR CAUSE, which WE THINK IS RIGHT, Tutu instead chooses to back a theatrical whitewash of the anti-freedom, medieval outlook that blows up embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, tosses bombs into restaurants in Cape Town, and crashes hijacked civilian airliners into buildings in New York and Washington, among other "fun" (such as blowing up holiday makers in Bali and shooting schoolchildren in Russia).

So, many thanks for the "moral clarity", Archbishop.  ¶ by Robert, Sunday, October 03, 2004