Helen Scott's Closing Statements

Well, I wasn't born in America, but I never actually lined up behind the Union Jack. Because I come from a nation that was the biggest imperial power for a long time. But I'm not anti-America. In fact if there is much to celebrate about American people, I think about the American Revolution, which overthrew British tyranny. Or the valiant Black and White heroes who fought in the Civil War to end slavery. Or the Civil Rights Movement that ended segregation. The Women's Liberation movement that forwarded women's liberation. I'm for all those things.

And the U.S. soldiers who ended, or as Will said, helped end the Vietnam War. When they realized that it wasn't a just war. When they turned around and said we're not fighting for things you told us we were fighting for. And we are going to continue to be heroic to end this war. There's a lot to celebrate about American history. But I am against the policies of the U.S. state, when they deny large sections of the world democratic freedom. Will has that terrifying list of all the democratic governments that have been overthrown by the U.S. state. I teach Caribbean literature. And all of the novels that I read tell the same story, Grenada, Jamaica, Guyana, Bishop Manley, Gaja, all democratically elected figures, who were overthrown, whose governments were overthrown by the U.S. state. So what I'm saying is that we need to add to the heroic list of all the things Americans have done, or the things that Americans have struggled for, and we need to stop the CIA and the political-military establishment from training terrorists. And I think where I do agree with Rose is that when you are cheering for the U.S. military victory; you are at the same time cheering for a military loss of the other side. And I wanted to actually share with people one of my favorite pieces of writings by Mark Twain, a much-unsung anti-imperialist. In a fantastic piece that he wrote called the 'War Prayer.' And he wrote it in reference to the Spanish-American War. And he was disgusted by the use of religion to bolster militarism and war. And so he wrote this piece that is set in a pro-war rally in a church where people are praying for their side to win. They're wishing victory for their side. And he imagines a messenger coming down from God who insists on putting into words everything that's not being said in that prayer for victory. And this is what the messenger says:

Oh Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer & the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave & denied it -- for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

And I feel that Twain could be writing that about now, about Afghanistan. And I think that's the role that we will have; to sound the voice against war; to stop the kind of attack happening to a people that have already been devastated; to stop the attacks on immigrants in this country -- which are terrifying right now -- and to use our democratic freedoms, which we do have to hold onto that we're being threatened of being taken away from us now. We have to protect democracy by taking democracy away is not a logic I ever understood. But we do have some democratic freedoms and I think we need to use them to protect our civil liberties, and also to stop our government from denying people across the world those same democratic liberties.