Having read the article, and then reading the text of Pinter's speech, I feel a profound sense of collective guilt, as strong as if I'd had directly bombed or shot or tortured the last human standing. If there is anything that has convinced me that Atheism is worthwhile, this speech has. Pinter, in few words, has illustrated for me the ethical and moral vacuum of our culture since, at least, the Second World War. Pinter has defined what it means to be "An American," and we ARE not without guilt, any of us. We have let this virus, this contemptible political virus, invade the very being of our lives, without remorse for the millions who have suffered from our imperial hegemony.

Yet for all this history, where are those of self-professed morality? The religious crusaders and Bible believers? Worried about partial birth abortion? Worried about same-sex marriage? The material actions of past administrations and the current one will never be called to account before a world court. I believe the only court of appeal resides in the the hearts and minds of those, such as myself, who have developed and acknowledged our guilt.

I'm getting short on patience for all the whining about how terrible America is by the literati and various other elites. If not for the US, Pinter would be writing his literature on the wall of his fucking prison cell after being jugged with all the other "intellectuals" in whatever hellish "benevolent" dictatorship he thinks is superior to our way of life. Don't these people realize that the people they accuse of being war criminals are the ones keeping their ungrateful asses free? I guess not.

I would like to answer two other responses to Pinter's speech that have been posted on this website. First, I would like to address the comment of W. Green which frankly astounded me. I found absolutely no basis or qualification behind his little rant (or was it a plea) and I would like to ask of him, or anyone who subscribes to his views, what 'free world' or freedom he beleives the current governments in place in both the U.S. and Britian can be said to have ensured for their citizens, and in what conceivable way they are the last thing that stands between us and utter subjugation. Does he beleive, I wonder, not only in the 45 minute claim for the launch of WMDs but also of a full invasion, political coup, and establishment of a unmitigated Middle Eastern dictatorship in our otherwise triumphantly democratic lands, or perhaps for this virtual Armaggeddon he offers a more conservative estimate of an hour. Of course, I can only conjecture. I wonder also what he believes we have to be "grateful" for: the 'War on Terror', more justifiably termed the 'War of Terror'; or perhaps it's the thousands of Iraquis mudered in our names, in an illegal war, under the banner of so-called democracy. I'm still flummoxed - I'm afraid this Pyschology 101 is getting me nowhere. Rather, I am forced to accept that W Green just doesn't have a clue.

Second, I take issue, in part, with the letter posted by Petralyn. Whilst I second her appreciation of Pinter's attack of the U.S. governement and Britain's sycophantic compliance led by Blair, I take issue with the point she makes about Pinter's speech convincing her that "Atheism is worthwhile". Regardless of whether Pinter is an atheist or not I don't see how his speech argues explicity, or even necessarily implicitly, for Atheism in any way. I suspect that she may have picked up on the point in the speech where he hypothesises about being Bush's speech writer and has Bush talk about his God versus the enemey's God. Here, we are meant to understand that Pinter is parodying the banal antitheses that Bush often employs not that every conception of God, be it Christian American or otherwise, is equally foolish. I cannot be certain that this was her reason for talking about the Atheism of the speech but if it is I feel it is one that needs correcting. Similarly, I feel she misinterprets Pinter when she claims that he defines what it means to be 'An American'. The notion that a non-American could provide such an all-encompassing defintion is in itself alien to me, but my greater contention is with the fact that she suggests that Pinter blames the citizens for their governments' attrocities. When he ironically recalls the political use of the phrase the 'American people' his irony is directed at the phrase not the people themselves. He attacks this as an example of the manipulation of language by politicians that create what he refers to as a "hypnosis" that traps and makes victims of us all, and it is in this sense that I again question the abounding freedom for which W. Green demands that we be grateful.