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
Personally, I'd put that peak point at "Breakfast of Champions" but your point is still well taken.
Kurt himself admitted that thanks to his status, as ONE of the greatest living US writers, he can now write any crap and get it published and acclaimed as great writing.
I learned something new about the contemptible Kennedy family.
He's been watching too much Palestinian TV, they use the same terms.
Vonnegut's imbecility forces others on the left to expend energy defending or refuting him, much like Pat Robertson's asinine comments often leave us in the same position. So as a distraction, Vonnegut's remarks are a net positive.
Would Mr. Vonegut be as 'tolerant' of a Christian Fundamentalist who blew himself up in an abortion clinic filled with women? Methinks he would not.
I'm not saying the firebombing of Dresden, was morally correct or incorrect, but I believe it has to be viewed in light of the fact that the British had endured the continual indiscriminate bombing and rocket launches from the Germans for a couple of years, and were looking for some payback.
You left out Jimmy Carter!
Carter needed to shut up when he was about 30 and the media needed to ignore him way back then.
Now there's a surprise, the superior culture wrecks inferior cultures...who woulda thunk it?!
Oh, that Kurt...he's so sharp (for a senile ba$tard). No doubt he'd like to pretend that South Korea's American-found prosperity makes them worse off than their North Korean neighbors, but few literate people would buy such nonsense.
I hear ya. Tried to read "Slaughterhouse Five" many years ago and just couldn't do it. Like staring at a Picasso painting. Awful stuff.
I enjoyed CAT'S CRADLE a lot too......
Exactly right!
Amazing lunacy. His family shouldn't let him do interviews.
Moonbat!
How so? Most prominent "peace activists" support insurgent wars against democratic or democratizing governments, or regimes friendly to the democratic west (and the rest refrain from criticizing or questioning their warmongering cohorts). It's only wars fought BY democracies that they have a problem with. It's been thus throughout my entire life, anyway. (Born '61.)
These deaths were the direct responsibility of the German government and military. The German air force bombed British civilian targets first. And, if memory serves me, their goal was to demoralize by killing civilians. It seems to me, without looking it up, that Dresden was bombed because of the military industrial targets therein. NOT for the expressed purpose of murdering civilians. Again, the left purports a moral equivalence where there is none.
For a very interesting take on that subject, you ought to read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton.
Great post, s.
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