Category: Music

U2’s Bono is an interesting guy in the music world.

He’s not a conservative, but he admits that capitalism helps poor people improve their lives better than government (or what serves for government in the Third World).

So his comments reported by the Independent Journal about ISIS are worth considering:

In recent weeks, many different strategies for defeating ISIS have been proposed. Russia and France (among others) have engaged in airstrikes. President Obama has suggested more “gun control.”

U2’s Bono and the Edge? “Music.”

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Bono and the Edge sat down to discuss their dedication to returning to Paris as a venue, despite the fact that a rock concert was so recently the target of a horrific attack.

Zakaria mentioned the Paris resident who, following the attack at the Bataclan, dragged a piano out into the streets and began to play John Lennon’s “Imagine.” He asked if Bono felt that music was a proper response to terrorism. Bono explained:

“That’s poetry in music, and humor…

All fascists are afraid of humor. That’s why Hitler outlawed the dadaists, the surrealists. Violence is their language.”

He then addressed the philosophical side of the issue:

“Think about the idea of outlawing music. A child sings before it can speak. It’s the very essence of our humanity.”

And he added a few words of caution for Americans:

“If you only take Christian refugees… this is not the American idea. I’m always reminding people that America is not just a country – it’s an idea.

If they change the nature of the United States and the way people think and the pluralism and inclusiveness, then they win.”

The Edge added his perspective as well:

“Everything that we hold dear seemed to be the target.

And France, the birthplace of the enlightenment movement, which gave birth to America. It’s like the place where the modern Western world was born.”

And he added the historical significance:

“There have only been a few movements that have targeted music specifically. The Taliban banned music, and during Mao’s cultural revolution some music was banned.

We think of music as the sound of freedom. We think that rock and roll has a part to play.

Defiance. Resistance, as it were.”

U2, after canceling a performance immediately following the attacks on the Bataclan and surrounding areas, returns to Paris for back to back concerts December 6th and 7th. They are determined to be a part of that “spirit of defiance,” said Bono:

“[ISIS] is not trying to take lives. They’re trying to take away our way of life.

They’re a death cult. We are a life cult.”

And ticket sales indicate that Paris is ready to embrace U2 and the music Bono referred to as “defiant joy” – all but 300 seats were sold to the rescheduled shows in a city still reeling from the effects of a terror attack.

Even if you don’t agree with all of their analysis, most of it is correct. Certainly if humor includes ridicule, humor is a useful weapon against ISIS. Whether or not they are legitimate, every video that shows a terrorist blowing up himself by accident deserves to go viral. (As observed by someone decades ago, comedy is tragedy that happens to someone else.)

No war is ever won merely by bombs and soldiers. World War II, for instance, required not just the military defeat of Germany and Japan, but, in Japan’s case, the elimination of the militaristic facets of their culture, and in Germany’s case the elimination of the Nazi culture. That takes decades in some cases. The last thing that pushed the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries into the dustbin of history was the fall of the Berlin Wall, pushed there by young East Germans wanting to live in the more prosperous and more free West.

Donald Trump has been wrongly advocating for the elimination of Muslim immigration. (The fact that Jimmy Carter stopped Iranian immigration during the Iran hostage crisis proves only that two wrongs don’t make successful strategy.) Were Trump serious about the cultural war between radical Islam and our culture, he would have gone to Paris (unlike the other presidential candidates, he certainly can afford the trip) for the U2 concerts and demonstrated to the world that he’s not afraid of radical Islam.

Wars are not won by hiding in your bunker and fencing yourself off.