Amen, brother. Sort of reminds me of the Nixon hagiographies that started flying around after his death (if for only a couple of weeks). Death can be really good PR, I guess.

P.U. was an a-hole and misty eyed apologist for the plague called communism. Old lefties never die they're just reinterpreted.
Tim

Bravo, bravo, bravissimo! I never understood that whole de mortui nil nisi bonum thing. Seeing as you can't libel the dead, it seems like a perfect opportunity to slag them off. Look at the fun Private Eye had after Maxwell ended up in the drink.

Being an apologist for mass-murdering tyrants is not an amusing foible (although imagine the obloquy Ustinov would have attracted had he been, say, of Diana Mosley's somewhat revisionist view of WWII). And he was a crap Poirot: David Suchet did a much better job.

I saved an article about him that appeared in the Arab News online dated July 25, 2002. Here are a couple of excerpts.

And here’s the Sir Peter Ustinov who makes many people proud: The outspoken UNICEF ambassador, quibbling with George W. Bush’s description of Palestinian bombers as “cowardly”: “They require the kind of courage that none of us would have. It’s a kind of courage that’s very hard to understand. And it’s our duty to try to understand it because it is the courage of desperation. And what is the difference between somebody who goes into a coffee house with the intention of killing as many people as possible — and does so — and somebody who’s in an aeroplane at the height of five miles, unobtainable by any anti-aircraft gun, and lets their bombs drop as scientifically as possible, in order to kill as few people as possible? I guarantee that the one who tries to kill as few people as possible will kill many more than the one who goes into a snack bar and blows himself or herself up. But in this campaign, I wonder how many of the people who have been killed were terrorists? I think very, very few. To my mind, it’s a big lie.”...

Ustinov on Russo-American relations: “There was a great campaign to make life difficult for Vladimir Putin when he came in. Nobody ever mentions that George Bush senior was head of the CIA. What’s the difference between the CIA and the KGB? Except that probably the KGB are more thorough, intelligent, and more respectful of foreign traditions.”

Thanks for the info about Ustinov. Here in the US nothing was known of his politics. What a revelation! What does it say about UNICEF, perhaps the only remaining UN agency with popular support, that he was their spokesman?

I can't claim to know much about Peter Ustinov or his opinions but certainly from what I have read in the above comments I think the criticism is very harsh.

On his point about the suicide bombers. What I think he was trying to get across is that they are in no way cowardly. It is not a question of bravery when it comes to the suicide bombers it is a question of wrong or right, good or bad.

Also, his quote on George Bush Snr and Vladimir Putin is completely true. It is all perspective. This perspective of Putin and his Siloviki being evil, ruthless men because they are from the KGB is just a hangover from the Cold War.

I think people just need to gain a bit of perspective of events and not let their views get manipulated by the media and government.

Andrew: when the FSB (modern-day KGB) has been gutted by the Russian equivalent of the Church Commission, and has full oversight in committee in the Duma, and doesn't go around putting bombs in people's cars, then maybe, just maybe, one will be able to draw some moral equivalence between it and the CIA.

You say you don't know much about Peter Ustinov - well, those of us who do think if anything the above criticism is somewhat mild.

You wrote an honest column. I mean there is that famous passage "ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee" but in reality there are people right now on the world stage who tried to justify 9/11, who were gloating in fact and saying that America had it coming. How am I supposed to feel as an Ameican and a resident of New York City should I leearn that one of these people has passed on? Am I supposed to be praising? Human nature doesn't work that way.

Thank you for the information, Stephen. I had no idea what Ustinov had been saying.

A dreadfully unfair piece; you have knowingly taken things out of context. Further, some of the "logic" you employ is quite extraordinary. It's news to me that anyone who opposed the Iraq conflict is by definition a supporter of Saddam Hussein. Presumably you also believe that Pope John Paul is a supporter of tyranny, given his opposition to the war in Iraq?

I found this to be a disappointingly average and unoriginal piece.

You might as well have said "I hate him because he was left wing", it is impossible to take anything more from this piece than that, once you've fished out all the slander, fallacious logic and quotes taken out of context.

Tom and mjs,

You both accuse the article of taking Ustinov's quotes out of context, but you do not give any examples. Without examples, you come off as simple whiners. I would love for you to show otherwise.

I have an example of *your* misquotes: spokesmen at the Vatican have made clear that the pope was *not* in "opposition to the war in Iraq" but rather was concerned that the process leading to the war was done properly.

"""""""""""""""""
In his book, My Russia - a grotesque piece of Soviet sycophancy - he conceded only that Stalin had caused "suffering" to "thousands" - as if the gulags were a nasty outbreak of food poisoning on a busy night in a Solihull balti house. Then there was his television series, Peter Ustinov's Russia. Noel Malcolm's review said it all: Ustinov showed "all the investigative inclinations of an Intourist guide with a coach party and a lobotomy".
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No where in this piece does pollard get close to proving that ustinov was a stalinist apologist, however much he tries to. yet he manages to take that utterly unproven and slanderous conclusion and then compare it to another hugely twisted point, about business...

"""""""""""""""""
"The formation of the committee for the World Criminal Court is very important because there are corporations more powerful than many governments." Stalin: OK; business: criminal;
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All he quotes from Ustinov on this is a utterly self-evident statement - that some businesses are more powerful than states (and you can presumably take the obvious implication that this is a threat to democracy hence the need for a international court etc). He manages to turn that into a general position that all business is "criminal" and even more amazingly, that business is somehow worse than stalin (however incomparable the two are).

TBH, it's disappointing to read this sort of self-congratulatory crap from either side of the political spectrum. You see it quite a lot sadly, the "lets not partake in a serious debate but instead make ourselves feel better by employing a variety of simple logical fallacies to construct a flimsy argument that makes us feel good".

As I say, there is nothing new here, per se, this is just a rehash of a generic attack on leftist positions with the only difference that this is dressed up as an attack on a dead man.

If leftist positions include an apologia for Stalin's terror, then they deserve to be attacked. At best, Ustinov's stance on Soviet communism was praising it with faint damnation ('thousands', indeed). Throughout his life, Ustinov never gave any indication that there was a leftist totalitarian he didn't like, That condemns him in my book. If you can't bring yourself to uneqivocally execrate Stalinism then you have no moral compass. Being a bon vivant and raconteur doesn't get you off the hook.

Rory - given that the US decided upon unilateral action in Iraq, a course of action the Pope was strongly against, then I think it's safe to say that he did not support the war. Throughout his 24 year papacy, Pope John Paul has consistently opposed conflict, not least because, like Ustinov, he realised that often war causes more problems than it solves. Ustinov and millions of others were against the Iraq conflict because it was both legally and morally wrong, not because they support Hussein. Indeed, before the conflict began, not even Bush and Blair considered that Hussein's tyranny alone provided sufficient justification for war.. it was all about WMDs. I think many are now waiting for the inevitable attack on Mugabe - after all, he's a despot too.

David - Regardless of your views on Ustinov, surely you accept that he does not deserve to have his words twisted and misquoted? All men deserve to be treated fairly.

Tom

Ustinov and millions of others were against the Iraq conflict because it was both legally and morally wrong, not because they support Hussein.

It makes no difference, believing that is naive. The anti war brigade never had any other ideas on how to get rid of the tyranny. And I'm sick of hearing how the war was illegal. It is a meaningless concept to talk of law without courts and policemen. And the world's policeman would be.........?

As to Mugabe, I'm sure that most people who support the concept of democratising the Middle East would love to extend it to Africa.

"And I'm sick of hearing how the war was illegal. It is a meaningless concept to talk of law without courts and policemen. And the world's policeman would be.........?"

The concept of International Law is obviously something you are unfamiliar with. Is the International Court of Justice not a court? Have you heard of the United Nations?

As a member state of the United Nations, the US is obliged by law to pursue peaceful means in international relations, as stated in the UN Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2:

"All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered; and, All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner consistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

The US attack violated international law, hence it was illegal.

I always knew that Ustinov's politics were abominable. I remember him as a moral relativist long before the term became fashionable. He used to do voice overs on Soviet aircraft on the Discovery Wings at War program here in the USA and you could hear him gushing over the supposed Soviet MIG superiority. He swallowed the Soviet line hook, line and sinker. A talented actor and dircetor but a useful idiot. Fortunately for him he ran no risk of losing his life in a suicide bombing.

Never knew Ustinov's politics until now, but I can say that it was some of his work that inspired me to become a pro-Reagan conservative when I was a kid, despite lefty indoctrination in school. It's not in his IMDB listing, but in the very early Eighties, I remember that he introduced a small made-for-TV pseudodocumentary that showed an American classroom after a U.S. takeover by an unnamed "They". It showed a pretty young presumed communist teacher in green fatigues (no insignia) charming a class of youngsters into disrespecting the U.S. flag, and learning how to praise "their Leader" and not have "wrong thoughts", all in the space of half an hour. This was several years before the "Amerika" miniseries on ABC. That's about all the info I have, but I remember Ustinov's intro and coda to it, and it struck me as being very anti-communist/anti-totalitarian and pro-American. No success at Googling this yet, but I'll see if I can't turn it up.

Tom:
No, the International Court of Justice is not a court, in the domestic sense.
It does not apply an established code of law, agreed by democatic consent of the governed, but merely mediates disputes when the parties agree to such mediation.

The United Nations may or may not be a useful forum for international diplomacy, but it is no more the fount of moral worth than the League of Nations was, which is to say not at all. It is a means, not an end. The elevation of it beyond its utility recalls the futile advocates of pacifism and League security in the 1920's and 30's, and the road to perdition that they walked.

Being a member state of the UN does not oblige the US to regard it's charter or the pronouncements of its organs as holy writ. The are merely another treaty, to be adhered to or broken as necessary in pursuit of higher ends. The fact that France and China are permanent members of the security council hardly obliges one to regard a war as morally justified or not consequent on approval by the butchers of Tiananmen and conquerors of Tibet in Beijing, and the opportunistic cynics in Paris whose slogan was "No war, for oil".

Not that it matters, but as Chapter 1, Article 2 you cite says "...against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner consistent with the Purposes of the United Nations" then as the US/UK Coalition intends no annexation of Iraq, the war was legal.
Again, not that it matters; if it were illegal, so much the worse for the farce of international law, and its elevation above the requirements of security and the imperatives of morality.

"International law" has become just another puerile phrase alongside "Not in our name. No war for oil. Blood on your hands. Shame on you." To hell with it.

John - To hell with what? Morality? As regards the rest of your post, I hope it salves your conscience, because I don't accept a word of it.

David Giles seems ingorant...willful or not I can't say...of such CIA acts as injecting unaware citizens with LSD, it's plotting and overthrow of democratically-elected governments all over the globe, its occasional assassinations, its disinformation campaigns against American taxpayers to support murderous military campaigns, etc. etc. Funny how some folks will apologize for any damn horror as long as they dress it up in an anti-Marxist shirt and trousers.

Wait, it's not funny, it's sick.

Tom:
No, not morality. Self-righteousness posing as morality, while disregarding both humanity and security.
International law, insofar as it exists at all, is not an ethical imperative, but an instrument; and most appeals to it lately appear to come into the same category as the other slogans of the appeasers: glib evasions of reality.
My conscience seems to be in no need of a salve, in this regard at least.
Look to your own.

An American on BBC Radio 4 this morning was saying that USA must pull out of Iraq in the interests of its own security. Oh, the irony. Mind you, I'm not sure the Iraqi people will be laughing, given the anarchy that their country is fast descending into. Still think the war was morally justified?

It's all very well to think that that international law is not an ethical imperative, not least because of some misguided belief that the US is the world's policeman, but it does beg the question "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

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