- Americans, it is clear, have a love-hate relationship
with author Gore Vidal. Equally clear is that Vidal has the same mixed
feelings about Americans and the United States, though he's skewing these
days in one direction because of his fierce opposition to George Bush
and the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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- Vidal is so upset, in fact, that he is speaking out more
prominently, including tonight in a sold-out event at Herbst Theatre in
San Francisco, where he and other notable panelists will address the
topic "Understanding America's Terrorist Crisis: What Should Be
Done?"
(A transcript of the event will be posted at - www.independent.org next
Thursday.)
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- "Must we have a war with Iran, Iraq and
Korea?"
Vidal asks in a phone interview from Los Angeles before flying to the Bay
Area. "Bush enjoys 82 percent popularity, according to polls. Well,
those polls are fake. You can get any answer you want out of a question
like, 'The president is trying to save us and get revenge on Osama bin
Laden. Are you with him or not?' Bush is going to end up the most
unpopular
president in history. Remember, I said that here first."
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- Vidal, who is now 76, has always been brash and
controversial.
He is the author of 22 novels, five plays, numerous screenplays and more
than 200 essays, and his latest opus is "Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated" (Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation
Books;
160 pages; $10), which features a charged essay that argues that the
United
States may have provoked the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. It's an
unpopular
position to take, but Vidal doesn't care if he's viewed as a self-hating
American or some kind of "bizarre" and "morally
offensive"
provocateur (to cite one of his critics) who's lost his literary
way.
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- "I don't pay much attention to my critics,"
he says. "First of all, most of them are 'neo-cons' with all sorts
of agendas that I could shoot holes into any time I felt like it. They
write everywhere and they have a list of enemies, and I'm pretty much
at the top of it. They haven't had much effect on me or the
country."
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- Among well-known writers, Vidal is not alone in his
post-Sept. 11 vitriol for the United States. In the latest issue of
Granta,
which is devoted to the subject "What We Think of America,"
playwright Harold Pinter writes that the United States is "arrogant,
indifferent, contemptuous of International Law. . . . This is now the
most dangerous power the world has ever known -- the authentic 'rogue.'
"
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- Vidal stands out for reasons beyond his views. For two
years, he had a correspondence with incarcerated Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh, who Vidal says was misunderstood and wrongfully
prosecuted
as the primary suspect in the 1995 bombings that killed 168 people.
McVeigh
wrote to Vidal after reading his 1998 Vanity Fair essay that criticized
U.S. authorities for the war on drugs, increased monitoring of Americans'
phone calls, the lack of national health care and other perceived wrongs.
That essay is reprinted in "Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace."
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- "He was a complex figure," Vidal says of
McVeigh.
"He declared war on the federal government, as many of those do who
call themselves 'patriots.' I did write him, advising him that he had
not chosen perhaps the happiest way of demonstrating the war. You don't
kill innocent people because the federal government killed innocent people
at Waco."
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- The thousands of innocent people who died on Sept. 11,
Vidal says, were victims not only of the terrorists who perpetrated the
attack but also of American foreign policy, which has been imposed around
the world and has sparked enmity and wrath. It's a policy, Vidal says,
that is driven by the United States' need for oil.
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- "We need Afghanistan because it's the gateway to
Central Asia, which is full of oil and natural gas," Vidal says.
"We've demonised Iran so we don't have to put a pipeline across it.
One of the best ones would be across a tame Afghanistan. That's what it's
all about. We are establishing our control over Central Asia."
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- The essay at the heart of "Perpetual War for
Perpetual
Peace" was rejected for publication last year by Vanity Fair and
the Nation (Vidal's publications of choice in the United States), which
deemed it too over the top. In it, Vidal calls George Bush
"weak"
and a "silly-billy," says the Afghan and Arab prisoners brought
to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were "kidnapped" and writes that
"understandably (bin Laden) dislikes the United States as symbol
and as fact."
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- Vidal's publisher in Italy included that essay as part
of a Vidal anthology there, and the book rocketed to the best-seller list,
then was picked up with similar success in other countries before the
Nation contracted to release it in the United States this month.
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- "In one week, it was the No. 1 best-seller in Italy,
in a country that doesn't pay all that much attention to our internal
affairs," Vidal says. "Ditto Germany, ditto France and ditto
all around the world. And then the Nation came along, shamefacedly having
turned it down the first time around, and they said, 'Can we publish it?'
I said, 'Go ahead.' "
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- How much satisfaction did he get from the about-face?
"The four most beautiful words in the English language," Vidal
says, "are 'I told you so.' I'm an expert at turning those words
out."
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- It would be a mistake to think that Vidal feels only
enmity toward the United States. He's proud of his best-selling novels,
such as "Burr" and "Lincoln," that have dug out facts
about American history. And although Vidal lives in Italy much of the
year, he maintains a home in the Hollywood Hills and always enjoys his
time in Los Angeles.
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- "This is where I live when I'm in America,"
he says. "I'm up in the hills. It's like being in the country. If
you're going to live in an American city, this is just about the best
one. (Novelist) Alison Lurie had it right when she said it was the Nowhere
City. You can make up anything here. It's quite a good place."
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- http://www.sfgate.com
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