Willy IV deutsche Übersetzung
von Konstantin Wecker

I am sorry, Willy, that I am bothering you again, in your deserved rest in peace. But there's something I really need to say and the conversations with you always were so easy, not politically correct at all. And many think how we talked together. It's just that they don't do it as loud anymore.

The country is mentally and verbally unrecognizable. There's a war, Willy, and it's our war too, now, as of late. And I am just as confused as the others Willy and I don't have the solutions either. But I just need to talk to someone and want to tell you how this happened:
A few insane, blinded, brain-washed criminals blew up the World Trade Center on the 11th September with airliners and slaughtered 4800 people.
Abominable.
So much sorrow. So many tears. Children, who will never see their parents again. Bereaved, whose life will never be as easy as before. Everyone is mourning. Germany mourns too, more than ever before. Especially in public and in front of the media.
They almost developed a mourning management.
And that, Willy, is something I don't really understand. My fellow citizens weren't that compassionate for the last couple of years.
No one mourned publicly when 200'00 Iraqi died in the Gulf War. When millions of Africans were slaughtered and mutilated in Ruanda. Sure, all of this is far away and it just doesn't touch us anymore, many say. But shouldn't we take this horror and really start thinking again? Do we not owe that the victims, rather than the weaponry or the cries for revenge?Or do we forbid ourselves from thinking about it because it could force us to literally check our gratuitous life style?

Is evil truly always outside of ourselves? Can it be fought with weapons? Is Bin Laden really the devil or maybe just a raging CIA agent? And if the big bad evil would really be defeated by the NATO, would the Catholic Church not suddenly be in a deep crisis? Cluster bombs and food - is this the right way to show the so-called uncivilized world how good our civilisation is? Which freedom are we defending now? The one of the mind or the one of the free market?
And don't we destroy exactly the rights we claim to defend with our new Anti-terror laws? Is someone already anti-American, because they worry about the same things they did before 9/11? Does this act of terror undo all the crimes of the Bush family, of the American foreign policy and the CIA? God, I am also against terrorism and no one deserves the Taliban or the murder gang of the Nord Alliance as a ruler but did we really have to arm them first? Alright, elite units to Afghanistan!
But why not also to the German Bank, the pharma concerns and to Liechtenstein and the Bahamas?
'Don't we have the best way of life?' Everyone keeps saying that and all of us nod at that, as if it was untrue that even the best systems need to be renewed, as if it was untrue, that we have to keep asking ourselves if what we do is still okay.
And how perfect is 'the best of all systems' really? Just because here around most of the people are financially well? And what do we do to stop unrestrained speculative fund managers, to stop the organised crimes against the environment or to stop 30 million people who starve every year and one million children, who are just blind because they are malnourished?


Who actually still fights for the state of nature? No animal, no tree, no river, no sea still has worth. They are worthless, 'cause they are not money. There is no right life in a false world - can you remember this sentence, Willy? There is no isle of bliss on a world full of misery. Now they'll gonna tell me again: "Oh, look at him, Wecker, the moralist" But you are my witness, Willy, I hate morals. Slaughter always starts with moral. I don't want to stop looking for the truth.
They say nothing is like it was.
But they continue to murder, to torture, to lie and to bribe, children are being exploited and work on noble brands of the west. Children, the ones who are truly always innocent, are waiting for mothers and fathers who will never return. They are being torn apart by mines, and walk with bloated stomachs of hunger.
And even if now everyone the confirmation of the campaign after the triumph over the murderous Northern Alliance, there is no reason for reassurance and every war has its own, murderous dynamics.
Five weeks of bombing have struck a gap between East and West, which can not be fixed again.
Also, I can no longer believe the selection of images that I'm flooded with. Which images of misery are hidden behind those of jubilation?
In front of an enthusiastic troop of elite soldiers, Bush boasted that this war was far from over. Just the beginning a long fight.
And now, the Alliance of those who first bring evil to the world and then liberate it from it will point to military success in Afghanistan in every future war.
Another perfectly staged myth.

Damn, Willy, I'm also happy with the cheering people in Afghanistan and wish them from the bottom of my heart the much-desired peace and liberation for the women.
But couldn't they have cut off the money and the weapons for the taliban long before 9/11? Without cluster bombs, with political and economic means. For example, when they were still courted as a business partner by the American oil lobby? And now, as always, there really seems to be no way out but to keep shooting. The logic of war is always consistent. Especially for the winner. First comes the war, then the fire is extinguished and then you let yourself be celebrated as a savior.
How far will that go?
Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Algeria - maybe Pakistan?
Americans make up less than five percent of the world's population and consume 25 percent of the world's oil production.
How unconditionally solidary one must actually be with a country, which claims publicly, the oil fields of Central Asia belonged to its vital interests? Whose president came to power only with the help of petrodollars? Whose intelligence is seriously reconsidering the introduction of torture?
But Willy, I still believe that you can not leave the principles of humanity! Even if they were hurt so shamefully.

Nothing has changed yet, Willy, since 9/11.
Unless we change.
All of us.
Unless each of us realizes that as human beings, no matter in which part of the world we happen to live, or which culture we happen to belong to, we are wholly responsible for the overall state of the world.

We have contributed to it through our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society, with its wars, its brutality and greed, and only when we see it clearly - not intellectually, but the way we feel hunger and pain - only when we clearly recognize that you and I are responsible for the whole world, we will finally act right.
Peace is not the state between two wars. Peace is not bought by victory. This peace, understood as the ultimate goal of the war, represents, rather than true peace, a final and lasting triumph of war.
You know, Willy, peace needs courage. Courage for the truth and the courage to change yourself.

Yesterday I buried Willy
And he'll be beaten, on and on and on and on.