Harrelson has a plan to save us from … us

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2002 | by John Elvin

We knew, of course, that actor Woody Harrelson was a paid-up member of the blame-America-first club. He's in London for three months, acting in a play. Apparently that leaves him some time for thinking grim thoughts and writing heated letters to the press. At any rate, he wrote one to The Guardian newspaper headlined "I'm an American Tired of American Lies."

Harrelson's angry that a lot of people in Iraq may die in the course of our effort to get one man, Saddam Hussein. But the "one-man" argument doesn't hold water. It's not as though Saddam is the D.C. sniper. He's more like Adolf Hitler. After Hitler died in his bunker, the Allies didn't just say, "Okay, everyone can go home now." Instead, they arrested hundreds of Hitler's top political and military operatives and put many of them on trial at Nuremberg.

Harrelson goes on to say the "warmongers who stole the White House" are conducting a "racist and imperialist war" against "any nonwhite country they choose to describe as terrorist." Again, Harrelson seems stuck in superficiality. Does he imagine that if a country which he might describe as "white" were planning our destruction, or harboring those with such plans, we would stand idly by?

But when you think simple thoughts and pot-shot from the sidelines, everything is easy. Harrelson could fix this country in a jiffy, he says. Here's how: "I'd honor [the] Kyoto [Protocol]. Join the world court. I'd stop subsidizing earth-rapers like Monsanto, DuPont and Exxon. I'd shut down the nuclear power plants ... [stop] the war on noncorporate drugs [and] cut the defense budget in half."

All of this will save the country "half a trillion bucks" somehow. That windfall then would be applied to some of Harrelson's favorite projects, such as windmills and making fuel from hemp. While it wouldn't seem Harrelson has a snowball's chance of getting the opportunity to implement his schemes, he does have one idea that might draw a crowd: "I'd give $300 billion back to the taxpayers."