okay, I'll surely have to go check out the Flannagan book...
I certainly accept the 'acceptability' lol of a more complex set of positions than "pacifist" versus "NOT a pacifist"..
okay...here are some choice quotes from the Flannagan book ( I really got to getround to reading more of that thing!).
pg277- 278, describing how Bill Carter, a Californian trying to make a documentary about the people of Sarajevo coping with the Serbian siege, comes to interview U2 before their concert in nearby Verona Italy.
"..After some initial questions about ZooTV, Carter asks Bono why, in spite of the lessons of history, people keep returning to the barbarism of war.
"It's the subject of a lot of our songs," Bono says a little awkwardly. "I come from Ireland. Ireland is also divided. Again, they say its religion, but you know its not religion. See, the human heart is very greedy. It seeks many excuses for that. Religion is a convenient one., color is a convenient one. I've been through various different stages in working this out. One must be political at times, but sometimes you have to look beyond that to just the state od the human spirit. I guess that's where I 'm at right now. I'm examining my own hypocrisy. I'm examining my own greed. I've stopped even pointing at politicians." He laughs. "I've found there is enough subject matter in my heart to keep me going.
"I was very inspired by Martin Luther King. He was a character in the middle of a very dangerous situation--civil rights for Aftrican-Americans in the sixties. It could have gone very wrong...The word peace is like bullshit a lot of the time, its like flowers in the hair hippie talk, but he held onto a much stronger idea, a much more concrete idea about peace and respect, and he just kept pummeling it. The idea was that he'd live for his country but he didn't want to die for it and he would never kill for it. And he did die for it. It's a hard thing to hold onto. There must have been an incredible urge...People deserve the right to defend themselves against evil and they must decide how to do that. But if there's any other alternative, obviously you've got to seek it. I know that's what you guys have been trying and you haven't been allowed, and I'm really really sorry to hear that. And I understand any reaction. But I just hope that even in the middle of that you don't become like the animals attacking you. Dignity. Self-respect. These are things that people can't take away. And humor. Humor is the evidence of freedom".
I think that is a very interesting statement that shows complexity here...he seems to be saying that yeah, I understand how people have the right to and the need to and the urge to defend themselves against evil. Sure then, one would imagine sympathy with the 'war against terror', with the desire to defeat people trying to blow you up, plotting to destroy you...maybe even a sympathy with bush's rhetoric about 'evildoers' lol! I never meant to imply that I think Bono could never be for invading afghanistan or for coming in and stopping 'ethnic cleansing' because of some total 'pacifist' position. Hell, I was for going in and getting the taliban in afghanistan and even not against iraq invasion before I knew it was all based on crap evidence. I was actually for going to baghdad back in gulf I, so I can appreciate variability in positions...
But then later, on page 284-285, bono actually calls himself a pacifist! albeit one who is about to change his tune a little...
he is conspiring, after his meeting with bill carter and hearing more and more about sarajevo, to get the band to agree to performing at a disco where people listen to their music as a way of drowning out the bombs going off overhead, trying to convince them to go to sarajevo to play there.
And he's got larry and adam and is about to try with bill flanagan.
"...Bono heads back outside to continue his recruiting drive. "I'm involved with a group," he says, "that sends food and supplies in there. And you know, this guy Bill Carter got to me tonight. He said , 'That's all right, but you're feeding a graveyard.'. As a pacifist it is hard for me to justify sending arms to anybody, but God, if these people are being slaughtered you have to at least let them defend themselves."
Bill Carter explained to us earlier that the Bosnian situation has completely fallen apart since May, when Europe rejected US efforts to organize NATO intervention. "It's just wholesale murder now," Carter said. "They know no one's coming to the rescue."
That image is driving Bono to distraction. "For once the US had it right," Bono declares, "and Europe fucked it up! THe US wanted to go in and the English wouldn't agree with the French and the French couldn't agree..."
"Bono," I interrupt. "What good can a rock n roll band do in there?"
"THe only thing a rock and roll band is good for," he says. "We can make a lot of noise!".
cheers all!
edit: and sorry bonosloveslave for all the typos and spelling errors!
I mispelled flanagan's name too...and probably mispelled mispelled...I have a very slow modem connection so corrections are a huge hassle!
all I have to say at the moment is I was damn happy to see U2 on Conan.
... ONE.
