Actor pours scorn on Bush and Iraq conflict
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian,
Saturday May 31 2003
Sean Penn has issued a damning indictment of President George Bush, the Iraq war, and the American media - in the shape of whole page advertisement in yesterday's New York Times.
In a long and reflective essay, the film actor warns that the US flag is in danger of becoming "a haunting banner of murder, greed, and treason against our principles".
Penn visited Baghdad before the war and was vilified in the US for doing so. In the ad, he pours scorn on the motives for the war, which he suggests is now mainly benefitting US business. Although the New York Times does not give details of how much has been paid for a specific ad, a member of its advertising department said yesterday that a similar "advocacy" ad would cost $125,647.
In the essay, Penn mocks President Bush's recent landing, dressed as a fighter pilot, on an aircraft carrier off California.
"He seemed quite pleased with this, his military service," writes Penn. "He likes it better now than when he was a member of the Texas national guard, when in 1972 he simply failed to show up for duty for over a year in wartime.
"I certainly wouldn't want to remind him that, were he Awol in a time of war, that would amount to treasonous desertion."
Describing the attacks on him after his Iraq visit, Penn wrote that he "experienced first hand the repressive condition of public debate in our country...I was beginning to feel the price paid by a citizen exercising a position of dissent."
In a law suit, Penn has claimed he was dropped from a film project because of his anti-war statements.
He went on: "Our flag has been waving, it seems, in servicing a regime change significantly benefitting US corporations." He takes a sideswipe at the newspaper in which his ad appears for its "unchallenging" coverage of weapons inspections: "We see chaos in the Baghdad streets but no WMDs."
And he criticises TV for showing "grateful" Iraqis "with no true acknowledgment that true poverty will bring the best of us to our knees".
He concludes: "Osama bin Laden's agenda is being furthered by our fear, promoted by the invective language of media and a congress that shamefully cowers from criticism."
He also criticises Democrats for failing to challenge President Bush: "It has been an obscene and cowardly betrayal of their constituents." He urges everyone to vote when the time comes.
Figures who have offered much milder criticism, as did the Dixie Chicks in London this year, have been subjected to death threats and boycotts.
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