The rough with the smooth
Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Marina Hyde in the Guardian today on Foreign Office's satellite phones stolen in Iraq (one of the phones was used to run a sex chat line, running up a bill for £594,000):

Freedom-wise, forget hearts and minds. Everyone knows groins and pockets is where it's at. Downtown Baghdad naturally has yet to reach the heights - or indeed the depths - of the San Fernando valley, the Los Angeles suburb known as the pornography capital of the world and which contributes billions of tax dollars a year to the US kitty. But watching Iraq take its first teetering steps on a journey that we know ends in Red Hot Forty Plus - well, the PM ought to be weeping public tears of pride, as opposed to getting in a tizz about a phone bill. Pretty soon we'll be able to take off the Iraqi people's stabilisers and marvel as the line representing their electoral turnout begins its sharp descent, in exact counterpoint to the line representing the number of Temptation Island reruns being watched in the region. Clearly, they are currently far too interested in politics, so the sooner the debate shifts to whether or not the first Iraqi Big Brother contestants will have sex live on TV, the better.

You could run and run with this. So I'm going to. Would "Iraq has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the Middle East" headlines be deemed a victory for Western values? Shouldn't we be encouraging the country's young men to put down their AK47s and turn away from thoughts of insurrection and pick up their cheap cans of Stella Artois and turn to thoughts of vomiting, headlocks and grunting bunk-ups?

What about telling Al Qaeda that there are those who find the concept of happy slapping almost as, if not more, terrifying as televised beheadings? The sooner Baghdad develops its own curtain-twitching, reactionary and paranoid middle class, the sooner Al Qaeda can switch from a campaign of terror based on bombing and beheading to one of being gay, claiming asylum, scrounging from the benefit system and hanging around in groups on street corners. I mean look at it over here. A bunch of knobs blow themselves up on the tube, the nation shrugs and turns back to Eastenders. But tell them there might be a nonce at the local school or asylum seekers are moving in across the street and it's like the ballroom scene in The Poseidon Adventure when the water starts coming in.

I wonder if it crossed the minds of the Greater Good when they drew up their plans for Iraq that you can't export democracy without some of the more unsavoury aspects stowing away in the shipment. Liberation with sexlines via stolen satellite phones. Voting with binge drinking. The rule of law with poor sexual health. A free media with happy slapping. The freedom to walk to streets with the freedom to be accosted by a screeching hen party.

We should go the whole hog. Why not send bunches of squaddies into downtown cafes to glass the regulars? Start a range of "cheeky", not-at-all misogynistic, "empowering to women" magazines so Iraqi parents can't take their kid to the newsagent to buy them a comic without the child being presented with an eye-level image of Abi Titmuss on all fours offering herself to the viewer. Make sex the cornerstone of Iraq's popular culture and then refuse to give its children the emotional and educational tools to deal with the information. Why should it be just us that suffers? (I'll shut up before I start to sound too much like Rorschach from Watchmen.)

It just goes to show that you can't build a new Eden without the slugs and the snails and the cockroaches getting in and chewing on the flowers. Tony Blair should embrace this fact and give a speech, "Only when the streets of Baghdad are slick with Bacardi Breezer vomit and its gutters lined with inebriated teenagers having emotional episodes will we bring the troops home. We owe it the Iraqi people." Then we can bomb them again when they start exporting anti-social behaviour and refuse to implement a culture of respect.


3 Comments:

On March 07, 2006 4:31 PM, Anonymous Luis Enrique said...

Freedom is messy, son.  


On March 07, 2006 6:29 PM, Blogger Justin said...

Gloriously so, Luis. But it won't be mission accomplished for me until a Baghdad court serves its first ASBO and Iraqi cafes are warning women about the dangers of leaving their drinks unattended.  


On March 08, 2006 12:47 PM, Anonymous redpesto said...

Playboy's 'Babes of Basra', anyone?  


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