‘He is sedated,’ said Bill Clinton’s heart surgeon on Tuesday. ‘But he is arousable.’ I’ve never doubted it.
That seems as appropriate a thought as any with which to consider the state of the new war three years on. Like former President Clinton, much of the West is sedated. But is it arousable? On the eve of this week’s anniversary, hundreds of children were murdered in their schoolhouse by terrorists. Terrible. But even more terrible was the reaction of what passes for the civilised world, the reluctance to confront the truth of what had occurred. The perpetrators were ‘separatists’, according to the Christian Science Monitor — what, you mean like my fellow Quebeckers? They were ‘commandoes’, according to Agence France-Presse — you mean like the SAS?
‘We have been confronted with a deep human tragedy,’ said the Dutch foreign minister Ben Bot, speaking for the European Union. ‘I am appalled that a school and its pupils are being used for political ends,’ said Unesco’s director-general Koichiro Matsuura.
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