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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 571
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WCL 571 Oct 2007
Atonement
The novelist Ian McEwan watched the largest demonstration in English history wending its way through London to protest against the illegal attack on Iraq in 2004. He wrote a novel on the subject. But his earlier, more celebrate novel "Atonement" may have even more relevance. It tells the story of a 13-year old whose crime leads to a life of regret. It includes a graphic account of the rout of the British army in 1940 and its retreat to Dunkirk.
A description of scenes from the disaster, including the sight of a boy's leg hanging in a tree, leads on to the time of the wounded brought back to a London hospital. There the grown girl, now at work as a nurse, has to clean wounded men: one has his face half-shot away, another with a gangrenous thigh. More others have hideous wounds. Her atonement for her childhood crime endures for her life-time.
Have readers of these powerful chapters wondered if the idea of Atonement means anything to Tony Blair and the cabinet whose decision to launch the illegal attack on Iraq has inflicted similar suffering in body and mind to millions of people in Iraq? What atonement will they make for the killing and destruction they have inflicted upon an already distressed country? Pleading that they were misled by an even greater set of criminals is no defence.
Morality is deeply imbedded in all of us. However badly we may behave at times, we know that some things we do are wrong and we sometimes recognize them. Usually we prefer not to confront them. But the scale of the degradation that launching a war entails is of another order to our everyday crimes, petty and large. And unless we are ready to atone for those crimes that have great consequences they will haunt us for life. The rulers of Britain - and elsewhere – who took the killer decisions should ponder those consequences.
Tony Blair, the chief architect of the British decisions to murder and pillage in Iraq, is a stalwart moralist. Although he does not - thankfully - talk as much about his solidarity with God as his American co-religionists, he relies on a Church to offer solace and absolution for sin. It seems that he will need all that it can give; but still - how will he atone for what he has done?
John Roberts
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