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Sunday, May 28, 2006

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Will Bono please be quiet, please?

This is probably a sign that I'm watching too much ESPN, but the channel's ads for the World Cup are driving me nuts. Adweek's Kathleen Sampey describes the ads:

Music from U2 is also used in the campaign from Wieden + Kennedy, which carries the theme, "One game changes everything."

The first spot is voiced by lead singer Bono, and broke last week on ESPN properties. This execution and the other spots will also be in rotation off-channel.

"It's a simple thing. Just a ball and a goal," Bono says in the spot as U2's “City of Blinding Lights” plays throughout. "That simple thing ... closes the schools, closes the shops, closes a city and stops a war."....

ESPN's senior vp of marketing Katie Lacey said in a statement, "Our goal with this campaign is to make World Cup soccer meaningful and relevant to American sports fans. We show the passion that fans around the world have through compelling stories that are set to the music of U2 and narrated by the band members themselves." (emphasis added)

These ads have induced excitement in some quarters, but at the risk of besmirching Bono's reputaion for saintliness, the claim that soccer stops war is just a bit much for me.

The conflict-reducing powers of the World Cup is based in what happened when the Ivory Coast quaified for this year's cup. As Bono explains in another ad:

After three years of civil war, feuding factions talked for the first time in years, and the president called a truce. Because the Ivory Coast qualified for the World Cup for the first time. Because, as everyone knows, a country united makes for better cheerleaders than a country divided.

This sounds great, and indeed, there are tentative signs that the Ivory Coast is trending in a positive direction.

However, in National Geographic, Paul Laity explains the precarious role of soccer in that country's political process:

Over the past six years, the Ivory Coast's southern-based regime has fomented hatred of immigrants and Muslims, yet many of the country's best soccer players are from Muslim and immigrant families, so the national team has become an irresistible symbol of unity. At the end of the Abidjan victory parade [for qualifying], the head of the Ivory Coast Football Federation addressed a plea to President Laurent Gbagbo: "The players have asked me to tell you that what they most want now is for our divided country to become one again. They want this victory to act as a catalyst for peace in Ivory Coast, to put an end to the conflict and to reunite its people. This success must bring us together." The party on the streets lasted another whole day....

Everybody—on both sides of the war—is willing the team to do well in Germany. But the mix of soccer and politics can get ugly. When the Ivoirians lost for the second time to Cameroon in the qualifiers, and it was believed their chance had gone, [striker Didier] Drogba—who had played brilliantly in the match and scored two goals—received threats and menacing messages from fans, and was worried enough to consider not playing for the national team. In 2000 Gen. Robert Guei, who had just engineered the country's first military coup, held the national team in detention for two days as punishment for being knocked out of the African Nations Cup in the first round. He stripped the players of their passports and cell phones, publicly denounced them, and suggested they should learn some barracks discipline. "You should have spared us the shame," he said.

With qualification for the World Cup secured, there is, for the time being, no shame. By itself, soccer will never bring about national reconciliation. (emphasis added)

Furthermore, Human Rights Watch just issued a rather pessimistic report on the country:

Government forces in Côte d’Ivoire, their allied militias and New Forces rebels alike are committing serious abuses against civilians with impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. These abuses and the impunity that fuels them raise serious concerns about the potential for violence in the run-up to the October elections....

Human Rights Watch found that members of the government security forces continue to prey on civilians by extorting, robbing and, at times, beating those they are entrusted to protect. These abuses typically take place under the guise of routine security checks during which police and gendarmes inspect the identity papers of individuals they stop at road blocks, in markets or other public places. Nationals of neighboring states and Ivorians from the north of the country are particularly signaled out for abuse, on the basis of suspicions that they support the northern rebels. Individuals from these groups are targeted and frequently subjected to arbitrary arrests, beatings, torture and sometimes murder, particularly during episodes of heightened political tension.

In the northern part of Cote d’Ivoire, Human Rights Watch found that New Forces rebels routinely extort money from civilians through threats, intimidation or outright force. In the zone administered by the New Forces, citizens accused of common crimes are sometimes subject to arbitrary arrest by rebel-administered police officers, and the imposition of custodial “sentences” of questionable legal authority continue to occur with no independent judicial or executive checks.

The report notes how neither the Ivorian authorities, the leadership of the rebel New Forces, nor the international community has taken meaningful steps to bring to justice those responsible for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Côte d’Ivoire. Unless measures are taken now to combat impunity, a repeat of the violence experienced during the 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections could occur. In 2000, political, ethnic and religious violence in the run-up to the elections resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people and injuries to hundreds more.

HRW's history of the conflict says nothing about the World Cup qualifying as a trigger for peace.

[Isn't this a bit curmudgeonly?--ed.] Well, part of it is that ESPN's ads don't mention the other times that soccer affected international conflict:

Tensions [between Honduras and El Salvador] continued to mount during June 1969. The soccer teams of the two nations were engaged that month in a three-game elimination match as a preliminary to the World Cup. Disturbances broke out during the first game in Tegucigalpa, but the situation got considerably worse during the second match in San Salvador. Honduran fans were roughed up, the Honduran flag and national anthem were insulted, and the emotions of both nations became considerably agitated. Actions against Salvadoran residents in Honduras, including several vice consuls, became increasingly violent. An unknown number of Salvadorans were killed or brutalized, and tens of thousands began fleeing the country. The press of both nations contributed to a growing climate of near- hysteria, and on June 27, 1969, Honduras broke diplomatic relations with El Salvador.

Early on the morning of July 14, 1969, concerted military action began in what came to be known as the Soccer War.

There's also the role that soccer played in igniting the Balkan wars of the nineties:

For many Croats, the war began not in June 1991 but on the soccer field on 13 March 1990. That day Red Star Belgrade met Dinamo Zagreb at the Maksimir Stadium, Zagreb to settle a long standing disputed league title. The Red Star Delije were led by Arkan, the notorious warlord and Serbian ultranationalist.

Ozren Podnar reports that the Delije held up signs in the north stands saying "Zagreb is Serbian", and "We'll kill Tudjman" . A reference to Franjo Tudjman, the pro-independence Croatian leader. Even before the match, the Delije were tearing the plastic seats of the Maksimir Satdium and hurling them. They then attacked Dinamo fans with knives, tearing down a fence that separated them from the field and the North stands. The Yugoslavian riot police, who were mostly Serbs stood by and took no action. Incensed by the Delije aggression and the police inaction, thousands of DInamo fans, the Bad Blue Boys took to the field en masse. It was the biggest invasion of football fans in history. They quickly tore down the North stand which buckled under their weight and made after the Red Star fans....

"The game that was never played will be remembered, at least by the soccer fans, as the beginning of the Patriotic War, and almost all of the contemporaries will declare it the key in understanding the Croatian cause," wrote Zagreb daily Vecernji list marking the 15th anniversary of the event. It must be, the historians claim, that the Croats saw in the fans' actions and Boban's intervention a symbol of the resistance against the 70-year long Serbian domination.

If FIFA, ESPN, and U2 want to claim that soccer -- and yes, I know, it's called football everywhere else -- was the cause of peace in the Ivory Coast, then they should also acknowledge it's less savory contributions to world politics.

UPDATE: Some of the reactions to this post presume that I don't like either soccer or the World Cup. Not true -- I, for one, am hoping that Team USA can build on its excellent 2002 performance, when it advanced to the quarterfinals and then lost to Germany despite outplaying them for 80 of the 90 minutes of the game [not that he's bitter about it or anything!!--ed.]. I simply request that the game not be assigned magical properties that it does not possess.

posted by Dan on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM

Comments:

C'mon, what about the most famous time that soccer stopped a war, the major event of the famous "Christmas Truce" of 1914 was a soccer game in the middle of no man's land.

Of course they just went back to killing eachother the next day, so maybe that isn't the greatest example.

posted by: Chris W. on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Chris W.: I think that truce had more to do with Christmas than soccer.

posted by: Dan Drezner on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Dan -- have you read about the incident when a civil war was temporarily put on hold so that Pele could play a football game ?

But here's something that really irritates me -- baseball being called a World Series despite the fact that only a countries outside the US play it.

posted by: erg on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I haven't seen the Bono commercials yet. Does he sing "I Got You, Babe"?

posted by: Zathras on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

On matters African, this Hewson moron is hardly more coherent than Angelina Jolie (who's arguably done more good for more of the continent's unfortunates than Hewson has). Paul Theroux's got his number: http://tinyurl.com/7mbdo

Excerpt:
Had Paul Hewson, who calls himself "Bono," looked closely at Malawi he would have seen an earlier incarnation of his own Ireland. Both countries were characterized for centuries by famine, religious strife, infighting, unruly families, hubristic clan chiefs, malnutrition, failed crops, ancient orthodoxies, dental problems and fickle weather. Malawi had a similar sense of grievance, was also colonized by absentee British landlords and was priest-ridden, too.

Just a few years ago you couldn't buy condoms legally in Ireland, nor could you get a divorce, though (just like in Malawi) buckets of beer were easily available and unruly crapulosities a national curse. Ireland, that island of inaction, in Joyce's words, "the old sow that eats her farrow," was the Malawi of Europe, and for many identical reasons, its main export being immigrants....

Africa has no real shortage of capable people - or even of money. The patronizing attention of donors has done violence to Africa's belief in itself, but even in the absence of responsible leadership, Africans themselves have proven how resilient they can be - something they never get credit for. Again, Ireland may be the model for an answer. After centuries of wishing themselves onto other countries, the Irish found that education, rational government, people staying put, and simple diligence could turn Ireland from an economic basket case into a prosperous nation. In a word - are you listening, Mr. Hewson? - the Irish have proved that there is something to be said for staying home.

posted by: thibaud on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Dan, The Aussies also call it soccer so Americans aren't the only ones who have it right. 'Football' in Australia is Aussie Rules football, at least in Victoria.

posted by: TN on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Soccer also had a hand in starting that little balkans issue:
http://www.soccerblog.com/2006/04/the_soccer_war_croatia_and_ser.htm

posted by: Factory on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Actually a soccer match has started at least one war :

http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/sierra/soccer1969.htm

And some of the Serbian militias that fought in the Yugoslav wars were based around gangs of hooligans supporting various soccer teams.

posted by: Martin Adamson on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Factory: Thanks, I updated the post to add that case.

posted by: Dan Drezner on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Erg,

Both sides in the Biafra War in Nigeria stopped fighting for two days because they wanted to see Pele play.

Dynamo Kiev played a game against a team of Nazis in the occupied Ukraine and rather than lose and survive, they won the game and became martyrs against fascism.

Nothing like striking a little balance there, Dan

posted by: Randy Paul on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

The Joga Bonita ads with Eric Cantona are much better anyway.

posted by: Randy Paul on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I suppose a spin off of William James's thesis that we should find a moral equivalent of war in sports has now been falsified.

Perhaps Tom Wolfe's analogy with single combat is more apt.

posted by: William James on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Seems to me team sports raise the same moral ambiguity at the community level that video games do at the individual level. Team sports
ritualize and abstract warfare, each in their different way (soccer and basketball look like mobile or revolutionary warfare, football looks like WW I and previous regimental warfare, baseball focuses on the individual hero, etc.) So, does ritualized warfare act like a pressure valve, bleeding off violent nationalism or community feeling that might otherwise lead to battle? Or does it catalyze aggression and lead to more real fighting? Same question: does Grand Theft Auto lead people to carjack and murder prostitutes, or do people oriented to carjacking and murder displace the urge into harmless keyboard tapping?

The proximate answer is certainly, some of both. I wonder what the marginal benefit is, though, and whether it varies by individual video game or type of sport.

posted by: mchanoff on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Dan,

Your point is valid, but as you say its a double edged sword. So there is some good to be derived as well. Like most valuable human products its a tool whose virtue is tied to those that seek to use it.

There are maybe four ads in total designed primarily to point to the unique nature of the event. Only one of them highlights the Ivory Coast. For most of this world its an even that eclipses the olympics, and it does have the potential to bring people together in a good way, and not merely the hooligan in the street sense.

I will be in Germany for all three US games and I am proud to say that I know the guys will do their best. It's one of the few events left where we are still the underdog. Unfortunately I will be totally conscious of the fact that as a nation we aren't very popular at the moment and so it makes for a precarious situation.

Watch the Gatorade add about our US National Team. I think that is more to the point.

posted by: Babar on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Could there be something less literal, less complicated going on here?

Soccer is simple. Within a stated interval resolution is achieved according to an inviable set of rules easily grasped by all. Appeal is universal.

Africa too is simple, a continent starving, oppressed and diseased that for an indefinte period has found no resolution owing to a lack of any rules whatsoever. Indifference has become universal.

Could Bono simply be trying to associate in the minds of people everywhere the directness, efficiency, passion and universality of World Cup Soccer with the need for an immediate, full and popular solution to humanitarian problems in Africa? (Do ya think?)

Please go to one.org. Notice the 80 or so NGOs that support Bono's effort - Oxfam to World Vision - Jews, Catholics, lefties, righties. There's something there to offend everyone, so re-read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, hold your nose and sign the petition!

posted by: Bill B. on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Reading anything by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a treat. For this subject, I recommend "The Soccer War".

From Publishers Weekly
Journalism at its most incisive, these phosphorescent dispatches from the front investigate Third World wars of 1958-1976, probing the forces of political repression and societies stagnating or in the throes of change. Like a contemporary Conrad footloose in Africa, Polish reporter Kapuscinski ( Shah of Shahs ) evokes a continent coping with a colonialist legacy, torn between dictatorships, anarchy and struggles for liberation. He writes of the murder of Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the mid-1960s Nigerian civil war which devastated the Yorubas, and Algeria's struggle to emerge from France's shadow. Drawing on his five-year stint in Latin America, he discusses torture in Guatemala and the 100-hour war between Honduras and El Salvador, triggered by a soccer contest in 1969, which left 6000 dead and many villages destroyed. More recent pieces in this powerful, impressive memoir deal with Turkey's invasion of northern Cyprus, Palestinian guerrillas and the internecine 1976 border dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia.

posted by: martin on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

BTW - Dan - a soccer match lasts 90 minutes not 60. So the US outplayed Germany for most of those 90 minutes, not "50 of the 60 minutes of the game".

posted by: martin on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Martin: thanks for catching that whopper of a mistake. Fixed now!

posted by: Dan Drezner on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Well it's just an ad. I think Bono and anyone with any sense will know that sport has little to do with ending wars. Probably best not to take that statement too seriously.

posted by: The_Consigliere on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Dan -- did you express equal annoyance over the Bush ads of 2 years back linking the Olympics with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ? [ The Iraqi football team was reportedly a little peaved]

posted by: erg on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

By the way, it's NOT Bono in the ad. The ads I've seen both had "The Edge" (Dave Evans) doing the voice-over.

Paul Theroux despises NGO's after having spent time in Africa. Anyone have any other links or the name of his book where he rags on them?

posted by: Patrick on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Quite the contrast to my first real WC experience. I was in Europe for the '98. What a great time. The theme song was by Ricky Martin, and its lyrics were almost Darwinian

La Copa de la Vida

La vida es
Pura pasion
Hay que llenar
Copa de amor
Para vivir
Hay que luchar
Un corazon
Para ganar

Como cain y abel
Es un partido cruel
Tienes que pelear por una estrella
Consigue con honor
La copa del amor
Para sobrevivir y luchar por ella
Luchar por ella (si!)
Luchar por ella (si!)

posted by: Mitchell Young on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

No one who has actually been to Celtic-Rangers match seriously thinks football is an agent for peace! I'd like to see Bono last five minutes in the stands at a UK-club versus Galitaserai match!

posted by: Bina on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

No one who has actually been to Celtic-Rangers match seriously thinks football is an agent for peace! I'd like to see Bono last five minutes in the stands at a UK-club versus Galitaserai match!

posted by: Bina on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Mitchell,
Lo siento, pero tengo que disentir. El uso del ingenio de Ricky Martin no me convence. Por otro lado, estoy harto de Bono también.

I am sick of Bono's pretentious posturing. He should give the money he wastes jetting around the world to the world's hungry and shut the hell up.

posted by: OpenBorderMan on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I don't know if soccer is peace-inducing or war-inducing, but it sure is boring.

Steve

posted by: Steve on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I don't know if soccer is peace-inducing or war-inducing, but it sure is boring.

Yes, compared to truly exciting dynamic sports like baseball or American football !!

posted by: erg on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

"I don't know if soccer is peace-inducing or war-inducing, but it sure is boring.

Yes, compared to truly exciting dynamic sports like baseball or American football !!"

Uhm... watching paint dry is boring. It's irrelevant whether it is more or less boring than watching grass grow, isn't it?

posted by: Steve on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

So Steve, what sports do you find exciting ? WWF ?

posted by: erg on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Steve's comment is indicative of the pathology of soccer haters. I find the NFL boring beyond belief. I find baseball to be dull as well.

I just don't have the need to go around trashing those sports. Perhaps the Steves of the world can afford us football fans the same courtesy.

posted by: Randy Paul on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

ok, randy. I find soccer boring beyond belief. I find it to be dull as well. Now we're even. I guess.

Erg. I don't watch sports. I run triathlons but don't watch anything. I also play ping pong. Not sure if that qualifies as a sport.

Steve

posted by: Steve on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Soccer? isn't that part of the black helicopter UN plot for "One World Government"....I hate it...it is against the NRA, God and the American way!!!

posted by: Ralph Reed on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

those funny foreign people...what fools. WWF and NASCAR now those are sports.

posted by: jonny 6-pack on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

dan:
if your concerned that the "game not be assigned magical properties that it does not possess," perhaps you could devote some of your blog space to religion--certainly a topic that is often assigned "magical properties that it does not possess."

it's your choice--it's your blog.

posted by: dinesh on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I'm a football(soccer) fan, but could not agree more with your article!

posted by: Daryl Edwards on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I already wasted my international sports excitement on the World Baseball Classic. Soccer is merely a game for small children and girls.

posted by: NMUMatthew on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Soccer is merely a game for small children and girls.

[BIG YAWN]

posted by: Randy Paul on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

soccer -- and yes, I know, it's called football everywhere else

Except for Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of Ireland, yes. "Football" in those countries generally refers to one of Canadian football, American football, rugby football (Union or League), Australian rules football, or Gaelic football. There's no reason that "football" has to refer to (Football) Association football, or soccer. There are plenty of codes of football, and "football," unadorned by a descriptor indicating which one, refers to the most popular code in the speaker's area.

But the cultural hegemonists among us like to pretend that only their favorite code of football deserves to be called "football," and that only it may be called football.

posted by: John Thacker on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Paul Theroux despises NGO's after having spent time in Africa. Anyone have any other links or the name of his book where he rags on them?

Dark Star Safari.

posted by: David Fleck on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I hate bono. So do you. Please join in the campaign to Make Bono History.

http://www.eliminatebono.com

posted by: anti bono on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

We know the world we live in. Radicals try to achieve their goals by any means possible. soccer is the number one language of the world. soccer events is more often than not the only time when foes from the same country or city, etc agree on something. when opposing factions from same regions meet through soccer, soccer sometimes fosters peace , most times, it is not lucky. But it is for now the only game that can acheive that effect with so many people. Soccer fans respect the game. As with anything you respect, you hate to see people bash it. We are just far from the muslim fundamentalists.

posted by: listen on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

I know I'm a little late for this, but...

You don't really think the football war, also known as the 110-hours war (between Honduras and El Salvador), was because of a football game, right? That was, supposedly the pretext. Actually, no one's really sure if it was the pretext, it may have just been called that because of how journalists overlapped war reporting with rioting from a series of football matches(wikipedia.com). The war happened because Salvadoran farmers were being deported in order to give the land to Honduran farmers. The reason this happened was because the great majority of the land was owned by foreign companies, making it difficult for the locals to compete. There's a lot more than a football game to this war.

Ok, that's all I wanted to say.

posted by: claveldelpoeta on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]

Oops, I meant 100-hours war, not 110-hours war!

posted by: claveldelpoeta on 05.28.06 at 08:07 PM [permalink]