I once threatened to blow up New York with a mini-nuke unless the United States paid me … hell, it was so damn much I forget how many zillions now. But rest assured: I could have been living like, well, King Mswati III by now.
Fortunately, in the nick of time, Hollywood star Bill Cosby, better known as a TV comic, hunted me down and — with a single blow — knocked me out. I had it coming. Aside from the greed, I think my motivation was a little cockeyed.
This, I hasten to add, was a while ago during a brief career as a movie actor. I was cast as the terrorist baddie against Bill Cosby’s noble secret agent in a film called, er, Top Secret. I won’t bore you with the plot, so dire that even though I have a video I can’t bare to watch it again. Bill Cosby’s secret sleuth was called Agent Strict, for heaven’s sake. ”His mission, to track down a shipment of plutonium stolen from a US military base,” burbles the blurb. ”The future and safety of the world are in the agent’s hands.”
Till recently I’d largely forgotten this daft flick, even when New York was actually hit by al-Qaeda. But that phrase — ”the future and safety of the world” — has been bandied about a lot, and during the recent Iraqi conflict there seemed to be a disturbing confusion between fact and celluloid fiction. Even the title, ”Operation Iraqi Freedom”, had a hollow Hollywood ring to it.
The plot, too, is shot through with implausibility. Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, coined the term, ”McGuffin”. The McGuffin is the plot device that drives the drama. It doesn’t matter what this is — even if we forget what it is — so long as everyone wants the McGuffin badly enough to keep the plot hurtling to a climax. In Iraq, weapons of mass destruction were the McGuffin. It started the plot rolling, but by the time the action was over most of the audience had already forgotten the McGuffin.
Motivation? The analogy pro-pounded by many is with 1939 and ”appeasement”. In that case, a closer comparison would be: Bin Laden, Hitler; North Korea, Mussolini; Saddam Hussein, General Franco. Logically, the ”appeasement” argument would have the 1939 British government saying, ”We’re fed up with those fascists” — and promptly bomb Falangist Spain.
As Michael Foot, former leader of the British Labour Party, wrote: ”Some of us on this side of the Atlantic who actually remember those pre-1940 debates find it a little irritating to be instructed on these matters by two such highly placed members of the Republican Party as [US Defence Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [US President George W] Bush. If our fate had rested with Republican America in 1940, Hitler would have won the war.”
Foot recalled, ”[United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony] Blair sometimes talks as if the special relationship was already in operation when it was needed in 1940. Not so. In fact, Republicans sought to impeach Roosevelt if he dared to move in that direction.”
Then there’s the cast: the so-called ”co-coalition of the willing”. At the outset, US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced there were 30, 15 of whom did not wish to be named. Imagine a film so rickety that half the cast want their names taken off the credits.
Following the US superstar, the co-stars in Europe (Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy) were old colonial powers. Australia, with its own history of genocide, sent 2 000 troops. Oddly, Israel, an obvious beneficiary, didn’t appear on the list. Slovenia was named, but the US quickly had to announce they’d confused it with Slovakia. The Czech Republic also rebutted the US claim of its support. The rest were extras: non-speaking, non-acting.
Reading the uncensored roll-call is like staying to the end of the film credits: you know, second grip, make-up, catering unit. It’s worth studying: Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Turkey, Uzbekistan.
Later the following were added: Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Kuwait, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, Palau, Panama, Rwanda, Singapore, Solomon Islands and Uganda.
Ignoring the fact that quite a few on this list have nasty human rights records, one might ask: coalition of the willing to … what? Willing to suspend belief? Willing to bomb people without producing the evidence? Willing to do anything the US demands?
The confusion of fact and fiction was finally confirmed to me when I read a report of an alleged row between Sir David Omand, the new head of UK Homeland Security, and my old colleague Alastair Campbell, now Blair’s spin doctor, over a dossier on Saddam that was to be made public. Sir David apparently accused Campbell of sprinkling too much ”magic dust” over the facts.
Magic dust? Okay, a Hollywood producer might demand more fantasy from his script-writers. But sprinkling bull dust to fraudulently change intelligence reports? For such deception, on any newspaper I’ve worked on, I’d be summarily sacked. But Campbell is still in his job and publishers estimate that when he steps down his memoirs will be worth £1-million. It sure sounds like showbiz.
And for the sequel to Saddam? Bush and Rumsfeld are punting Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted crook, responsible for a $200-million bank fraud, for which he was sentenced, in absentia, in Jordan to 22 years in prison. So, the plot’s the same — place a rogue or gangster in power, arm and finance him, and when he gets out of control, depose him, and put in … another villain.
When Cosby foiled my plot in Top Secret, the world was without doubt a safer place.
But now, with Bush apparently imagining he actually is Agent Strict?