9 Questions about Britain that you were too embarrassed to ask.(via twitter & WaPo)

[Luminous Animal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/09/03/teju-coles-9-questions-about-britain-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/

Teju Cole parodies his sometimes editor, Max Fisher's "9 Questions About Syria That You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask.

Last week, as the U.S. signaled it may launch limited strikes against Syria as punishment for allegedly using chemical weapons, I posted an explainer titled “9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.”
On Sunday, novelist Teju Cole, whom I’ve had the privilege of editing, parodied it on Twitter. His composition, which we might call “9 questions about Britain you were too embarrassed to ask,” is posted below. Following it is a brief Q&A I did over e-mail with Cole, who was writing from Australia.
Cole’s parody is partially premised on conflicting reports that the United Kingdom may have allowed a British arms exporter to sell chemical components to Syria. (He also at one points writes that the U.S. sells chemical weapons abroad, which isn’t actually accurate.) In any case, it is true that Western countries sell lots of weapons to shady non-Western countries, and his larger points stand. Here it is:

@tejucole

US considers surgical strike on UK over sale of chemical weapons to Syria, but won't seek regime change in London

@tejucole
Nine questions about Britain you were too embarrassed to ask. (Before we begin surgical strikes on Oxford, Bath, and Hull.)

@tejucole

1
Q. What is Britain?
A. Britain is a country in Europe. Its people are called the Britons. Elizabeth II is the Queen of the Britons.

2
Q. Why are the Britons selling nerve gas chemicals to Syria?
A. Money, innit.

@tejucole

3
Q. That's horrible. How did it all go so wrong in Britain?
A. It's an old country with a violent past. Old habits die hard.

@tejucole

4
Q. But don't Britain and the US love each other? The US sells chemical weapons too, no? What about the Geneva Convention?
A. Hush, puppy.

@tejucole

5
Q. This is all feeling really bleak and hopeless. Can we take a music break?
A. Sure. British music is great.

@tejucole

6
Q. Why hasn't the US fixed this yet?
A. It's complicated. ed. To burn down Oxford would be sad. Do nothing, and Britain remains dangerous.

7
Q. So why would Obama bomb the UK if it won't solve the problem?
A. To wipe that smirk off Cameron's face. They won't cross us next time.

@tejucole

8
Q. What's the big deal over chemical weapons? Conventional weapons sales kill millions.
A. (redacted)

@tejucole

9
Q. So, what's the big take-away? What's going to happen? Are we going to bomb the Britons?
A. LOL. No. Because. Reasons

.

WorldViews: What made you write this? What was the moment when you had the idea?

Teju Cole: I’m always thinking about alternative ways to think about the news, particularly where “the Other” is concerned. My first tweet–”US considers surgical strike on UK over sale of chemical weapons to Syria, but won’t seek regime change in London”–was just a straight reaction to the hypocrisy around weapons and punitive strikes (the question of who has a right to use which weapons was the chief pretext for the Iraq war). It seems to me that, without quite thinking it through, we’ve divided the world into two: countries we can imagine bombing and countries we can’t imagine bombing. It’s a question of imagination. The idea that the US would launch missiles into London in 2013 is beyond absurd. But the tragedy is that it’s all too easy to imagine the U.S. launching missiles into other cities in other places in the world. I wanted to bridge that gap, in the little drive-by way of troublemaking that Twitter allows.

WV: Obviously the U.S. is not going to bomb the U.K. But it may very well bomb Syria. How do you see that distinction and why call attention to it?

TC: I don’t like to make false equivalences. There’s a serious question here about the use of chemical weapons which is related to, but distinct from, their proliferation. I understand the difference between someone gassing a town and bombing it. To the dead and mourning, the difference is relative, not absolute, but there does seem to be an ontological shift in the violence there: chemical weapons are a new level of “indiscriminate.” Still, every weapon means different things is different from every other in terms of accuracy, morality, effectiveness, etc. Nuclear bombs, missiles, mines, drones, machine guns, etc, are, at heart, simply different technologies for one single awful goal: the killing of human beings, the increase of human suffering.