Posted on 11/19/2005 4:24:36 AM PST by Leisler
ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush.
Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."
He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."
Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."
Vonnegut's comments are sharply at odds with his reputation as a peace activist and his distinguished war service. He served in the US 106th Division and was captured by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge.
Taken to Dresden and held with other POWs in a disused abattoir, Vonnegut witnessed the appalling events of February 13-14, 1945, when 800 RAF Lancaster bombers firebombed the city, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians.
The experience inspired his book Slaughterhouse Five - the title of the novel coming from the barracks he was assigned in the POW camp. The book became an international bestseller and made Vonnegut a luminary of the US literary left.
But since Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.
In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive.
The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".
But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American let
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." (Horace.)
This should be true, as far as it goes, when one peppers and punctures our national foes. (Sorry! Couldn't resist.)
Blowing up planes and hotels full of civilians doesn't exactly correspond to patriotic self-sacrifice in my mind, though.
I read several back in the mid 70's and have absolutely no idea what they were about. I guess it was only because I had time on my hands and a black and white TV.....
Hmm. A limo liberal...
I wonder if he would laud suicide bombers if they blew up his grandchild and his bride at their wedding some sunny Sunday morning?
How can a country hope to win a war when we are overrun with traitors?
Give him credit, he's made quite a career out of very limited literary gifts.
In Iraq the other day suicide bombers Muslims killed 70 Muslims in the mosques. I wonder what this amoral Vonnegut idiot thinks about that? I know he likes to see Jews and Westerns killed by suicide bombers That for him the barbaric Muslim murderer is a noble savage with pure ideals
In Iraq the suicide bombers are always the Sunni-Baathist-Zarqawi gang mass murdering Shi'ites. I've never heard of the opposite
I wonder what Vonnegut believes in. Selling books and making money?
Of course, you are quite right. Any delusional asshole can kill others for his beliefs. Did'nt Nazi do this? Were they brave? According to Vonnegut, yes. Vonnegut is a doddering old fool. Any reading of Vonnegut's logic would make Stalin, Pol Pot, et. al. heroes.
These sniveling cowards always seem to shoot their mouths off when their overseas. I so hate these people.
This is fundamental. Western culture has wrecked most indigenous cultures it touches. This is because the mass of people throughout history have lived poor, hard, often precarious lives. Given the chance, they want enough food to eat, reasonably honest governments, a steady job, modern medicine, painless dentistry, etc. Given a chance, ordinary people vote with their feet for a chance to share in what we take for granted.
Those who are threatened by this are, of course, the privileged classes of the old order who have been doing quite nicely, thank you, lording it over the peasantry in various third world cesspools. U.S. and European leftists, operating on the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle, project their own anti-capitalist project onto entirely dissimilar third world conditions. This is how the modern left ends up allied with the most corrupt, brutal, and repressive elements on the planet. But they are too blinded by their own hatreds to figure this out.
We ain't perfect, not by a long shot. But before they start talking about the dignity and self respect of indigenous peoples, folks like Vonnegut should pause long enough to learn something about the realities of the native cultures they (ignorantly) romanticize. But that would require thinking, which is not their strong suit.
Spot on!
Senility.
My thought exactly. I don't have any problem with a suicide bomber who charges a tank with explosives strapped to his back. If he's on our side, give him a medal. If he's on the other side, let's hope we shoot him in time, but we can respect him as a soldier. But blowing up places of worship, hotels, and markets is a different matter.
I get the feeling that many commentators on the left have already implicitly accepted terrorism as a legitimate form of warfare. I suspect this has mainly to do with contempt for the victims, but it is clear that very few of them have any idea just how slippery is the slope on which they are standing.
So, it's not okay for the U.S. troops to die for our country, but it's okay for terrorists to murder innocent women and children, brides on their wedding day, and others, for their evil cause/purpose.
A young stupid bastard becomes an old stupid bastard unless he learns the ways of conservatism.
Kurt didn't learn a thing in eight three years.
Vonnegut is the Grand Old Man of limosine liberals. Now he's a perfect example of what Shakespeare called "the tragedy of too long a life."
NOT
I used to like Vonnegut when I was younger... till I realized how much I despise him.
Bingo. I was probably stoned full-time for each of the Vonnegut books I read. Now I see it as a phase. I grew up. Apparently Kurt didn't.
Yeah, at one time my description of desperation and depression was to "pray to Kurt Vonnegut to let you out of the book".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.