Jethro Tull singer blasts false patriotism

Jethro Tull singer blasts false patriotism
November 13th, 2003

"Classic rock" station 94.5-FM "The Hawk" has not only stopped playing all Jethro Tull songs, they are urging anyone who attends the two scheduled Anderson shows in New Jersey this weekend to bring along an American flag, just to wave it in the Scotland-born rocker’s face.

So what did front man Ian Anderson of the band "Jethro Tull" do to offend the flag waving troglodyte right?

In an interview with Asbury Park Press reporter Mark Voger, Anderson said that he "despises President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair so much for invading Iraq", and that he thinks we are "despised by the world due to our invasion." Tull went on to express disgust in seeing "the American flag hanging out of every bloody station wagon, out of every SUV, every little Midwestern house" across the country.

"Unfortunately, the way the world sees it, we don’t look kindly on the flag-waving stuff anymore. In Europe the only time you see flag-waving is at soccer games when people beat the shit out of each other," Anderson told the Asbury Park Press. "But most of the time we keep the flag-waving out of normal society these days because we know that it just engenders old animosities. We old Europeans ... are a little sadder and wiser as a result of having the shit beaten out of us a number of times, and our cities and national monuments destroyed," the rocker said. "It’s easy to confuse patriotism with nationalism," he added.

Anderson said that Iraq should have been handled by the U.N., not a U.S. invasion.

"I mean, you know, to call the Iraq occupation a war is to attempt to dignify a spurious invasion as something that sounds rather grand. As a career-molding war for you-know-who. I mean, to call it a war is just a disgrace," he said. "We are all going to have to learn that sad lesson that what was done in Iraq is the wrong thing. We had Saddam Hussein pretty much under control. To do what was done by Blair and Bush is, I think, a great sin for which I suspect both of them will pay in terms of career and reputation in the way that it is written up in history."

America must work better with other countries if we expect to have peace, Anderson said.

"We have to work over the next two or three generations, not the next two or three months or years to step out into the world and gently show a kinder and more human face."