Themes of power and politics in David Hare's Stuff happens

Stuff happens and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things [Hare 2006: 3].

This quote was so shocking that it formed the inspiration for the title of the play.

The historical political situation, to my mind, has been fully explored within the text: characters of George W. Bush, Colin Powell and the rest of the US administration are shown as discussing the situation in the Middle East (the USA’s involvement in the Palestine-

Israel conflict, its relations with Iran, etc.). They are concerned with how to leverage this situation for the political advantage of the USA. Other characters, representing the UN, more specifically France and the United Kingdom headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, respond to the US’s “war on terror”, declared in light of the politically ambiguous 9/11 tragedy, with ‘terror being synonymous with Saddam Hussein’, as Bush says in both the play and real life. Furthermore, the scenes of public speaking at the press conferences are all taken as direct quotes from the actual records the reader can easily look up online.

All in all this creates a true sense of the scope and significance of the events. The depth to which Hare delves in terms of the minute moments of international affairs is astounding and gives a truly convincing quality to his piece. Britain’s disposition to the events is especially well-developed, as you can see the binds in which Tony Blair finds himself in – a truly no-win situation: on the one hand it’d be the right move to help the US in the Iraq invasion for the benefit of US-UK relations, on the other hand ‒ it would mean breaking UN law.

During the first meeting of George W. Bush and Tony Blair we can also see one of the major themes of this play: the fact that political interactions between those who are in power occur in a very specific manner:

Blair: Some of your people genuinely respect the UN. Whereas, with others, let’s say, there’s a sort of contempt, an almost obsessive hatred…

Bush: It’s me that’ll make the decision. I’ll make the decision. I’m the President.

Blair: Yeah. To me, it’s an opportunity. The UN is an American-built institution. America built it [Hare 2006: 40].

They are polite, informal, and yet every word is intentional and deliberate, confrontational in a sense, carrying weight and having numerous implications. Their words always have built-in agendas and they want those agendas to prevail in the verbal battle. They speak in, what is best described as, the language of power.

They always stare into each other’s eyes, neither of the debaters yielding; they talk over one another, thus trying to verbally dominate the other’s speech into silence; make silent pauses with the intention of making their opponent feel uncomfortable or throwing them offguard. Their debates are not so much analogous to the careful game of chess, as they are to the cowboy-style, bravado-infused trash-talk of western movies, the only difference being that, instead of carrying revolvers, those people command armies and intelligence agencies.

The important thing to note in that scene is how Powell portrays the notion of power in his speech:

… You can see everyone in the room thinking; ‘OK. Then why didn’t you tell the French to f*** off?’ … And it’s worse in this country – it’s worse for me than it is for Jack, because here everyone’s also thinking, ‘Hey – this is the most powerful country in the world, we’re the world’s only superpower, and we’re wasting time while this guy tells us what some hippy Euro-peacenik foreign minister wants – why do we have to listen to him?’ You can’t win.

In this job. You always seem weak [Hare 2006: 48].

In the reality of the play, war has nothing to do with true strength – the strength of character and willpower, the attributes that make George W. Bush’s presence so overwhelming in that particular scene – he can say yes or no to the notion of war and neither one will look weak, as long as he is the one saying it.

This obsession with strength and power is projected into the realm of politics. The first thing that Bush comments upon, when he is elected President, concerns Clinton’s handling of the Israel-Palestine situation and how ‘They left this country (USA) looking weak‘[page 10]. It’s later acknowledged that – with US being’the world’s only superpower‘ – they are’not having the need of UN’s approval‘, and yet appearances make all the difference. Even before 9/11 (which plays an essential role in the story) Bush says the following:

You know, sometimes, in my experience, a real show of strength by just one side can clarify things. It can make things really clear [Hare 2006: 11].

The theme of power (and of the appearance of power) is highlighted in the 8th part of Act 1, in which, when the UK agents find Osama Bin Laden, US pulls them out. After 9/11 it’s imperative to the USA to be the one and only country to find and kill Bin Laden, otherwise it may look like they can’t take care of their business – it’d be bad for the country’s image.

But, more importantly, citizens of America want revenge and so do its elected politicians. The eye-for-an-eye principle of revenge extends to the realm of international relations here, which is shocking in a sense. Even though those people ‘who will play parts in the opening drama of the new century’ [page 8] are the most powerful and resourceful men and women of the world – they are still people with their own flaws and weaknesses. George W. Bush wants his country to be the one to kill Bin Laden and he will not allow Tony Blair to take that away from him. (Because of that decision, Osama Bin Laden will continue to enact his terrorist activity for an entire decade).

When after a heavy debate about war they go on a break and eat lunch, laugh and talk about the weather, it feels almost impossible to believe that those are the same people that were discussing the prospect of using a factory that looks like it could be used for weapon manufacturing in Iraq as an excuse for a politically justified invasion.

So, in a weird twist of fate, this power-play of appearances (using 9/11 and ‘evidence’ of a weapon manufacturing plant as excuses for invasion; preventing British agents from capturing Bin Laden) is actually a real, significant and important move that will ensure the USA’s safety. It’s not childish arrogance that informs the decision to pull UK agents from capturing the Bin Laden – it’s the basic understanding of how the real world, and its politics, works. The reason why those particular individuals and not others are in those ruling positions is because they are attuned to the power-play that governs human relations. They speak the language of power better than other people. Bush, Powell, Cheney, Rice, and others live by the principle of politics and this principle is the same as the one that is present in all of human civilization:

Power doesn’t make deals, Prime Minister. Power doesn’t need to do deals. Power does what it wants [Ibid.: 111].

If you aren’t dominating, you’re submitting. Hare is not pleased with this motto, yet he realizes that this is the inescapable status quo: if you’re aren’t the one descending from the skies in a parachute and ‘thanks to an artful arrangement of jumpsuit groin straps… show balls to the world‘ [page 113] then you are the one whose country is being pillaged and looted.