Moby Depressed About American Foreign Policy

11/15/2002 10:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Mark Armstrong

(11/15/02, 10 a.m. ET) -- Moby has pondered American foreign policy and blamed America's leaders past for the political turmoil that the U.S. is currently experiencing.

"Yes, Saddam [Hussein] is bad, but wasn't he bad when he was using weapons of mass destruction in the '80s against Iran and his own people (in the south and in the north)?," wrote Moby in a journal post featured on his website. "Oh, but then he was our ally. And we sold him the technology to make weapons of mass destruction. And wasn't Noriega our ally? And didn't we give money and technology to bin Laden and the Taliban? (yes, in both cases we did)."

Moby added, "It all makes me so utterly ashamed to be an American. American foreign policy is so utterly f--ked up that it's actually kind of mind-boggling. Supporting despots just because they support our prurient and short-sighted interests? I can't help but think of the Clash lyric 'If Adolf Hitler were here today, they'd send a limousine anyway.' We ignore genocide in Rwanda but we give arms to the Taliban. We ignore genocide in Cambodia but we give arms to Saddam Hussein. and so on. Poor America. The country where I, ostensibly, live. So much promise. Such an amazing constitution. So many amazing people. Such utterly compromised and flawed government."

Moby summed up, "I'm sorry. I'm just a dim musician and a dim American, but I'm so depressed and disgusted by the horrifying things that have been done by my country in the name of 'freedom.' Supporting Saddam Hussein in 1985 was the support of 'freedom'? Supporting apartheid was the support of 'freedom'? And now that the Bush Republicans control the federal government who knows what horrifying things they'll come up with in the support of 'freedom'?"

-- Darren Davis, New York

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