Victims never forget

February 10, 2023 11:47 AM

John le Carré was probably always a critic of American hegemony. But as he grew older he was less subtle

once upon a time, David Cornwell was a "spy", a person working for British intelligence. But while he was still in the job, he wrote a novel, The Spy Who Came In from The Cold that became a bestseller and a film, and he quit spying and embraced noveling. Yes, spellcheck, I know that isn't a word yet.

During his career, he wrote a bunch of entertaining and critical spy novels in a realistic tone. But when Tony Blair supported the war on Iraq, he went on fire and became one of the foremost critics of UKs engagement in the war.

You had to be alive then to understand that criticizing the Iraq invasion was broadly seen as un-american and perhaps communist, and if anything, Blair loved America and was not a communist. I can find stuff on the internets that Cornwell wrote, but since the sites are marginal they seem edgy and conspiratorial. He wasn't wrong at all, but there was a wide consensus across party lines that "we", the West, had to eliminate Saddam Hussein.

Hillary Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq. It was mainstream.

The interview is about a lot more than Iraq. It's about values, democracy and class and other things.

posted by mumimor (24 comments total)

Michael Idov on le Carre's letters.:

“Russia is a kind of Czarist Wild West, but tortured by guilt, religion, laziness, and its own unbelievable waste of talent.” John Le Carré in a letter to @stephenfry, September 13, 1993, on point as always

posted by spamandkimchi at 1:14 PM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

You had to be alive then to understand that criticizing the Iraq invasion was broadly seen as un-american and perhaps communist

Well, I feel old as hell now.
posted by brundlefly at 2:46 PM on February 10, 2023 [21 favorites]

I marched in NYC on Feb. 15, 2003. In town to hear the Allman Bros. at the Beacon.

It didn’t work.
posted by aiq at 3:05 PM on February 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

"Poor George. Life's such a puzzle to you"

-Ann Smiley.

"Q: You seem to have an attitude to the United States that is perhaps a classically European one: You seem to suspect the U.S. of representing, with immense power, dangerous value systems. Your Americans seem almost to be zombies, without apparently any personal moral or intellectual dilemmas of their own.

A: (le carre) Well, the American intelligence outfit as I see it in the book actually represents two kinds of Americans. There's the tweedy. Yaley sort, who's Martello, the Allen Dulles ecole, you know: "We're elitist chaps, used to privilege, so it's no problem for us to exercise these rather extraordinary powers." And then there are the gray men, who should be feeding computers with information from the satellites. These are the figures one saw around the edges of the Vietnam War, who had all sorts of pretty words for "kill." They're scary."
posted by clavdivs at 3:10 PM on February 10, 2023 [11 favorites]

You know, English people getting snotty about imperial wars is an interesting choice.
posted by Galvanic at 3:17 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

This is as good a place as any to quote my favorite anti-war protest sign around the time "we" (well... more or less) were finally taking to the streets and protesting post-9/11 endless war :

"I shaved my pubic hair, now read my lips : NO MORE BUSH"
posted by revmitcz at 3:36 PM on February 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

While the antiwar protests were pretty futile in the face of the neocon ascendance, my favorite sign at the time was "LABIA: Lesbians Against Boys Invading Anything!"
posted by Wretch729 at 4:48 PM on February 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

the Allen Dulles ecole, you know: "We're elitist chaps, used to privilege, so it's no problem for us to exercise these rather extraordinary powers."

...yyyyyeah, I don't think that school was invented by an American.
posted by praemunire at 5:15 PM on February 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

On the other hand, maybe it takes someone from the Land of Eton to really recognize the rot.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:26 PM on February 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

~You had to be alive then to understand that criticizing the Iraq invasion was broadly seen as un-american and perhaps communist

~Well, I feel old as hell now.

Try being old enough to remember the same sentiments being thrown at you if you were against the Vietnam war.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 PM on February 10, 2023 [16 favorites]

"You know, English people getting snotty about imperial wars is an interesting choice."

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE is how we used to retort when I was a schoolkid.

Doesn't stop the original observation being accurate though.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:57 PM on February 10, 2023 [11 favorites]

I think that's called speaking from experience.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 7:12 PM on February 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

You know, English people getting snotty about imperial wars is an interesting choice.

What an irksome comment. Am I supposed to pretend that other countries don't have them? I know they say imitation is the best form of flattery, but it's not necessary.

Anyway, huge swathes of the population in Britain did not support the war in Iraq, there was one of the biggest protest marches in our history in London, and le Carré fitted in to large group of the commentariat. Britain itself has a complicated relationship with what it imagines America to be, but yes there was majority support for the Iraq war by politicians because they wanted to support America. It was not punished particularly had at the next general election, so I guess you could say most of us acquiesced.
posted by plonkee at 1:02 AM on February 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

Eton shall earn the nickname Eat em' one day.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:26 AM on February 11, 2023

You know, English people getting snotty about imperial wars is an interesting choice.

You know, English people didn't get a referendum for that. Shitting on people who didn't have a say in it is also an interesting choice.
posted by Acey at 10:05 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

What an irksome comment

Clapbacks often are.

You know, English people didn't get a referendum for that

I know nothing of the sort; the British people happily reelected the government that went to war in Iraq in the 2005 general election.

The English, until very very recently, have done quite badly in reckoning or acknowledging their imperial past -- and that's true of all levels of people, not just the rich or politicians. That moral high ground that Cornwell is standing on is actually a pile of skulls.
posted by Galvanic at 10:25 AM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's a mistake to think of le Carré as a left-wing anti-imperialist. He was an old-school British patriot who regretted the decline of British power and the rise of American hegemony.

I suspect he would probably have agreed with Harold Macmillan's famous remark about the British being the Greeks in the Roman Empire. 'You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans – great big vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt.'

I've always felt that much of the power of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes from the fact that le Carré puts some of his own views into the mouth of Bill Haydon:

He had remained content with Britain's part in the world, till gradually it dawned on him just how trivial this was. In the historical mayhem of his own lifetime he could point to no one occasion: simply he knew that if England were out of the game, the price of fish would not be altered by a farthing.

I'm sure that was Le Carré's opinion too. He opposed the invasion of Iraq not because he thought that imperial wars were a bad thing, but because the sight of Blair cosying up to the Americans was such a painful reminder of the loss of British power.
posted by verstegan at 10:44 AM on February 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

There's a reason tu quoque has a name and appears on lists of common rhetorical fallacies.
posted by Slogby at 11:54 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's a reason tu quoque has a name and appears on lists of common rhetorical fallacies.

I'm not saying Cornwell's point was wrong, I’m saying that it’s an impressive display of hypocrisy, like a serial killer complaining about the crime rate.
posted by Galvanic at 5:46 AM on February 12, 2023

I read Tinker, Tailor and The Constant Gardener. Tinker, Tailor felt like the disdain for the whole of the cold war just oozed through? Like, what the hell was the point. There wasn't much on display from memory of Their System and Our System. The soviets were just the opposition, more than they were communist.

The Constant Gardener was really... man the ending. It felt like you could set that ending in Belarus during the cold war and swap CIA for KGB, no problem.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:16 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've always felt that much of the power of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes from the fact that le Carré puts some of his own views into the mouth of Bill Haydon:

I find the Bill and Jim dynamic part of this in the sense of betrayal. How Jim was brought home despite Haydons treason. Control sends Jim in testing his theory, would bill betray his friend. A startling aspect to his work, love is stronger then the state, even when stiffled or killed. It's stronger as it shapes the state.The Russia House for example.
But sometimes le Carre absolutely hits the heirarchy that is British intelligence even through Lacon.

"I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British."
posted by clavdivs at 5:34 PM on February 12, 2023

While the antiwar protests were pretty futile in the face of the neocon ascendance, my favorite sign at the time was "LABIA: Lesbians Against Boys Invading Anything

My favorites (maybe going too early) were “Men suck dicks, women lick labias, US out of Saudi Arabia!”

And “Your tax dollars buy the guns, that are killing priests and nuns!”
posted by vitabellosi at 6:20 PM on February 12, 2023

verstegan, I think you're seriously misreading Carre. He's a humanist through and through! My first introduction to him* was in Russia House, where the basic message is that "this twilight contest between empires is not worth the loss of a single human life". It's not exactly James Bond! Or in favor of imperialism.

Ditto with his other books, which center the narrative on the Panamanians rather than the US invaders, the Czechens over the Russians, and in large part in part the Palestinians over the Israelis. He's consistently written about the corruption engendered by the security services and how it warps people and societies over time. To top it all off, basically all of Carre's villains since ~2005 have been Trump prototypes, e.g. brutish oligarchs who sit at the nexus of finance, crime, and government. In summary, Ron_Paul_HeTriedToWarnUs.jpg


* it turns out that basically all of Carre's books were co-written with his wife:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/13/my-father-was-famous-as-john-le-carre-my-mother-was-his-crucial-covert-collaborator
Which made soooo much sense when I first learned about it; their books have a deepness of characterization that male authors basically never achieve (on their own).
posted by Balna Watya at 11:10 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

He resembles Dick Francis in that regard, whose wife Mary played a massively important role in writing his books.

But I wouldn’t overstate: Le Carré was already a well established author before he and Jane married.
posted by Galvanic at 5:34 AM on February 15, 2023