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 Entertainment | March 2007 
Middle East Theater: In the Last Act, America Self-Destructs
 Michael Winship - t r u t h o u t
| | Lawrence Wright, a New Yorker writer, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism. (More info HERE) |
I love the theater but never come late. Or try not to. I had a girlfriend many years ago who so consistently was late for the theater that I fantasized about publishing a book of the first acts of plays we'd missed because of her pokiness.
I'll go see almost anything. I once attended a revival of "West Side Story" performed entirely by six-year-olds. The gang war between the Sharks and Jets was interrupted for a juice box break. Adorable.
But I'm especially a sucker for a one-man or one-woman performance. If I'd been around in the days when Mark Twain went from town to town reading chapters from "Huckleberry Finn" or Charles Dickens acted out "The Death of Nancy" from "Oliver Twist," I would have been fighting for seats up front and on the aisle.
Solo performers are the matadors of the stage. I've seen some great ones, including Hal Holbrook impersonating the aforementioned Mr. Twain (he's been performing the role longer than Twain actually did), the British actor Emlyn Williams as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, Anna Deavere Smith's remarkable one-woman, journalistic meditations on race riots in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
So Saturday night I was looking forward to a performance at the Culture Project, in downtown Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, of a one-man show called "My Trip to al-Qaeda." I wasn't disappointed. It's thoughtful, informative and dramatic.
The play's "star," Lawrence Wright, would be the first to admit that he's no actor. De Niro can rest easy. Wright's a journalist and screenwriter who has spent time in the Middle East with, among many others, supporters of al-Qaeda. He's a fine, soft-spoken storyteller with a lot for us to listen to when it comes to the war on terror and the current morass in which we too often behave with the grace, subtlety and understanding of an anvil. What he has to say is illuminating and entertaining but, ultimately, dismaying.
Wright co-wrote a 1998 film, "The Siege," which, with startling prescience, foresaw terrorist attacks in the United States and subsequent waves of anti-Muslim prejudice, detention, surveillance and allegations of torture. "In the month after 9/11," he notes, "it was the most rented movie in America, making me the first profiteer in the War on Terror."
Guilt and curiosity sent him east, resulting in a superb book on the history of al-Qaeda, "The Looming Tower," and now this play, which will run in New York City until mid-April.
Wright speaks of the roots of radical Islamic fundamentalism, its feudal anti-intellectualism, mistreatment of women, the profound feelings of humiliation and impotent rage (especially against the Saudi royal family) that lead to global violence and death. "Perhaps al-Qaeda can best be understood as an engine that runs on the despair of the Arab world," he says, "especially its young men, whose lives are so futile and unexpressed. Al-Qaeda offers them a chance to make history. All they have to do is die."
The plan, according to Wright, is to "draw America deep into conflict with the Muslim world, until we are so overextended and financially exhausted we pull out entirely from the Middle East.... Then, by the year 2020, they will form an Islamic army that will engage in a final apocalyptic war with the unbelievers." But, Wright continues, they have no plan to govern, no solutions for joblessness or health care or protecting the environment. "Al-Qaeda doesn't believe in politics. Because it doesn't believe in the future. It has no vision. It's not a movement, it's an instinct, a reaction, like a snakebite."
But America's reaction? "Illegal eavesdropping, secret renditions, torture, suspects locked up with no due process, no Geneva Conventions, no rights at all ... What happened to that [post-9/11] promise we made to ourselves that we were going to be different people now, better because of the need to stand for something, for true American values?"
"When I talk to Arabs, they often tell me how disappointed they are with America. Even those who hate us. America stood for something in their eyes. They were angry at our policies, but they envied our society - our transparency, our system of justice, our freedoms."
A young Syrian filmmaker tells Wright, "Okay, I live in a police state. But America is supposed to be the land of the free! When I look at you now, I see us!"
All you have to do is pick up the paper. On Friday, there was a report from the Associated Press: "A videotape showing Pentagon officials' final interrogation of al-Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla is missing, raising questions about whether federal prosecutors have lost other recordings and evidence in the case ..."
"US District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost. 'Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?' Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month."
Echoing the words of that young Syrian filmmaker, Human Rights Watch lawyer John Sifton told Newsweek, "This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi. It is simply not credible."
In "My Trip to al-Qaeda," Lawrence Wright concludes, "There is a hole inside us. It is a black hole. The country we were is being sucked into it. Al-Qaeda cannot destroy America. Only we can do that to ourselves."
Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes a weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York. He can be reached by email at bartlebymw@aol.com or in Manhattan at (212) 989-7622. |
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