war on terror

Mark is just a mark on blank space. Mark is warlike, martian. He’s a book-mark. He notices and notes things. He is a plain or marked card that marks your place. I am a book (already read) that wants to kill you. He’s a joke in a football game when each team has a player with his name: “Mark, mark Mark!” I made him up (or: he created himself). He’s the non-existent “Mark, king of Scotland” in Macbeth. But now I want to let Mark speak for himself.

I was watching the TV with my Dad. The latest episode in the “War on Terror” was on. Or maybe it was a repeat. One of the presidents said it was a crusade. One of the terrorists said it was a jihad. America is a devil; al-Qaeda is a demon.
“We are all terrorists.”
“Eh, what’s that Mark?”
“We’re all terrorists – we’re all terrified of each other, or of ‘the others’.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“You should be. I am here to replace you.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s why people have children isn’t it? To keep the numbers up – to replace themselves. That’s why people are always panicking about the Asians, the Catholics, the Muslims – they are replacing themselves better than “us” – whoever “we” are. But anyway you’ve done your bit – replaced yourself with me – I’ll fill your space up when you die. No-one else can barge in there. Shame you and Mum didn’t manage a girl as well.”
“No, that’s not it. We wanted children because ... well it’s a natural result of our love for each other. And we wanted you – to make us complete as a family.”
“Yes. Okay. But it’s also about conquest. Like Bush on the TV. Let’s spread the American Way of Life across the globe. Those people are stopping the American way from reproducing itself in their country, and they are infecting the rest of the world, endangering his children. That’s how he sees it. Or maybe he really does think of it as a crusade. Perhaps he believes his own spin. Let’s convert them by force. Love our flag or we’ll kill you. Like the other crusaders – it’s okay to kill the infidel as he’ll go to hell anyway; and if you can get the conversion instead – well RESULT!”
“You’ve got to give them some credit. I mean if you really believe that people will go to hell if they don’t get a chance to hear about Christ.”
“You don’t buy that.”
“No – it was wrong. But this is different – they’re threatening our lives!”
“So do traffic accidents, alcohol, bad diet, smoking, the shit way most countries neglect their people’s rights. But we don’t challenge those kinds of threats very aggressively. No - this one suits us because it gives us a chance to demonise someone and to strengthen our belief in ourselves. But who are we kidding. We made the demon, we are the demons. I’m a real terrorist. I hate America. I declare war on the U.S.A. Bring it on, Bush!”
“Steady on!”
“It’s all a load of crap. Our history teacher today was on about it – these medieval knights who thought that they were Christ’s soldiers miles Christi. Christ didn’t want bloody soldiers! It’s the Jedi knights syndrome again.”
“What do you do when faced by evil.”
“I’m not faced by evil, except when I look in the mirror. We are all evil. You can’t shove it out, put it into someone else and then kill it. Apart from anything else, as soon as you kill it you become evil yourself, even if you’d managed to get the stuff out of you in the first place. We’re all responsible, we’re all evil. Perhaps we just have to face that. Yes, I am alive because some Iraqi child is dead. I’m here because you have to die. You can’t put yourself above it. You can’t be a Jedi - we’re all nasty, selfish – dancing on the corpses of our fellow humans.”
“Mark ...”
“Okay, I know ‘steady on, old chap’ – I’m just, I s’pose, letting off some steam.”
“Have you had a rough day at school ...?”
“No – actually it was mint. These Buddhists came in to talk about Milarepa. He did all this sorcery to get revenge on his evil uncle. Funny thing was, when he decided to give it all up and start practising the Dharma, his teacher kept catching him out – he’d ask him to kill some bandits who were hassling the monk or something and he’d do it. Then Marpa – that was his teacher, his lama, this translator guy - would tell him that he wouldn’t teach him anything until he could undo all the bad he’d done with his magic. Told him he didn’t deserve to learn anything when he acted like that, that anyone else would just have killed him for doing something so nasty. It seemed to take him ages to learn that – but it’s so obvious – you can’t pretend to be good and do stuff like that. But maybe you can’t stop doing those things. So we should just not pretend to be good and be done with it.”