You're right. It doesn't have to do with The Edge, but what I would have tried to say to him or give to him in a letter.
Bono has made too many apologies about the Bush administration. It's fine if he wants to get help for Africa, but this decade he's made eerie appeals to aggressive American nationalism to appeal to conservatives on AIDS, and this has consequences insofar as him saying something different might have had an opposite influence. I'm all for sticking to AIDS, but he needn't have encouraged the bombing and killing of many and the imprisonment of hundreds of innocents in Guantanamo Bay that were the result of the Afghanistan War he so proudly endorsed on Leno in 2001. It's shameful, really.
1980s and early 90s Bono wouldn't have ever encouraged the indiscriminate use of American power. He's also made apologies for the Bush administration being well-intentioned in Iraq when that's not been the case at all.
U2 used to stand for policies, not men, but Bono and The Edge have attended Bill Clinton's Presidential library inaugural. Bono's too cosy with giving unequivocal support to, at best, morally ambiguous men and ideas, and this is very disturbing.
U2 should either shut up about such men and their terrible policies or speak out against them. Right now, they're kissing American ass, which only encourages the worst elements of a wonderful people to go on killing people based on the most superficial notions.
Bono has called the Islamic fundamentalists evil or what they do evil, and it is (though I don't think they are necessarily), but far more evil is what Bush has done to the world when he could have brought it together. This bullying of Iran (for wanting a nuclear program to defend itself against regime change; 9/11 doesn't even compare with what America has done to Iran under the Shah, then by supplying Saddam Hussein in attacking Iran, and now by constantly threatening innocent Iranians with war.) and Palestinians, based on hypocritical standards, must stop. Even Russia was able to do what it did in Georgia because of America's precedent; America has no moral authority and should be begging forgiveness from the world.
Bono is intentionally being pro-American. He's also served on the board of a company that designed a video game in which the player assassinates Hugo Chavez. Whatever their problems, Chavez and Castro have done far better for their peoples than any dictator America has endorsed, and Bono knew this and even wrote about it, however subtly, on The Joshua Tree.
I'm not arguing for anti-Americanism and used to be quite pro-American, but I am arguing for moral equivalence. America is not morally superior. Moreover, Battlestar Galactica shows exactly how peoples are in their misguided philosophies and ideologies and racist and homogenizing practices.
Look, people can make mistakes. Bono has long had a problem with insecurity and wanting to be loved and it has grown worse as he's aged; it's led him to kiss American butt and make apologies and try to even fight against the anger liberal Americans need to feel about what this administration has done; he's fighting against correct historical interpretation. He needs to apologize for the stances he's taken in the past, such as Afghanistan and the video game, and to look to how he can better portray what's going in the world by not simply uplifting America by telling the nation it's better than everyone else and barely needs to question anything.
I also would have told The Edge that "Achtung Baby" was the album that turned me onto music when I was young and that U2 shouldn't ever question that better music doesn't have to appease the mainstream; The Fly is far better than Vertigo.
the title of the movie is from what edge said during filming.
