Nobel laureate flays Bush

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Jun. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI

Gunter Grass, celebrated German novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, sculptor and commentator, is a living legend. When this Nobel laureate speaks, people listen.

His address in Berlin to the annual Congress of International PEN, the worldwide organization of writers, had been much anticipated, especially given his long admonition to intellectuals to speak up on the political and moral issues of the day.

He himself has done so all his life, most famously against the Nazi past and contemporary neo-Nazism and xenophobia. He has not always been right, of course, having opposed post-Cold War German unification.

Grass, at 78 still spry and energetic, quickly gets into his topic, "The hubris of the world's only superpower," and proceeds to offer a sweeping critique.

His words find resonance among the writers gathered here, including another Nobel laureate, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

"Armed force is used by this superpower to defeat the terrorism it is itself responsible for," Grass says, citing Osama bin Laden, the by-product of American support for Afghan jihadists in the 1980s. "The war (on Iraq), deliberately started in blatant disdain of the laws of civilized societies, produces still more terror."

Yet George W. Bush is searching for new enemies and targets.

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