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| Britain |
| Getting the Brits all wrong |
| 2005-07-08 |
| LONDON, July 8 (UPI) -- The London terrorists may have paid an unexpectedly high price for their brief 24 hours of headlines and disruption and underground slaughter in the British capital. They have obliterated the most inviting political strategy that was available to them, by making it politically almost impossible now for any British government to back away from the commitments they have made to President George W. Bush, to the Iraqi government and the wider hope of modernization and democracy in the Middle East. To back away now would seem like caving in to terror, and that is not how the British see themselves. One of the intriguing political phenomena of the last three years has been the way that Prime Minister Tony Blair instinctively supported the American ally, after 9/11, and in the Afghan war against the Taliban (in which the British were the only other ally that took part from the beginning), and in the Iraq War. But Blair did so while very large numbers of the British people reacted like the other Europeans, questioning the Iraq war and accusing their leaders of taking them into the war under false pretences. From the summer of 2002 until the very eve of war in 2003, the British opinion polls were against the Iraq war, and only moved to support it when the French make it clear they would veto any second United Nations Resolution authorizing the war. The British then supported the war while it lasted and well into the summer and fall of 2003, when the insurgency made it clear that the war's aftermath would be long and cruel and expensive. Blair won re-election in May of this year, but with a parliamentary majority slashed from 160 to just over 60, despite delivering the best economic performance in British history. And those lost votes largely represented Labour supporters who refused to vote for Blair and his war. In short, there was a serious political play to be made by al-Qaida or whatever branch of Islamic extremists launched this week's bombs. President George Bush's coalition for the Iraq war, and now for the Iraq peace and the anti-insurgency campaign for Arab democracy, has a soft underbelly in British public opinion. A smart al-Qaida would have worked on that, comprehending that the most important political gain they could hope to make would be to force Britain out of Bush's coalition. They might also have hoped to drive a wedge even deeper between the countries of the West, recalling that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have so far done a better job of splitting the West and dividing NATO than the Soviets ever managed to do during the Cold War. But by bombing London during the G8 summit, they forced all the leaders of the West, and of all the world's major countries, to condemn with one voice the terrorism and to declare as France did "We are all Londoners now." And the terrorists have blown it, blown it with those three explosions on the London Underground and the bus bomb that ripped open one of London's totemic red double-deckers like a can of cheap sardines. To have watched the British people and the Londoners undergo the ordeal by terror of the past 36 hours is to see a city and a nation that takes its history, its sense of nationhood and the sustaining myths of its culture very seriously. People in the streets, on talk shows and when interviewed by the media seemed to reach as if by instinct for that most familiar of historic precedents. "It was just like the blitz," they said. Or as Dorothy Watson, 81, said after walking three miles back to her daughter's house after being evacuated from a bus heading into the stricken Tavistock Street, "It was nothing like as bad as the blitz." It was not just the ordinary Londoners who reached back into their collective memory to remember the Luftwaffe bombing of the winter of 1940-41, when the Underground stations were a refuge from the death from the skies, rather than the scene of slaughter. It was the Royal family as well that recalled their own historic role, of King George and his wife refusing to leave London, despite the urgings of the politicians. "I could never look the East End in the face if we fled," said Queen Elizabeth. And she stayed, and visited the bombed-out east-Enders, where she swapped stories of the nights of horror and of the bombs that hit Buckingham Palace. So her grandson Prince Charles Friday did the royal duty of visiting the injured, but harked back to resilience of his people then and now, in the face of the World War Two bombings, and this week as victims of a newer, Islamist fascism. And his wife, Camilla, long unpopular for daring to replace the believed Princess Diana, finally found a way into public favor by declaring, as countless others had on TV and radio and at family firesides, that the reaction of the peoples "Makes me proud to be British." This is not the kind of reaction that make it remotely inviting to suggest that the British may be getting what they deserve for their latest military venture into the Middle East. The only people who have tried so far are one sacked Labour Party politician who used to be an honored guest in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad, and who commented Thursday that "London paid the price," and a warmed-over left-wing student radical of 1968, Tariq Ali, who called the bombing "The Price of Occupation." Scion of a wealthy Pakistani family, Oxford graduate and now a prosperous TV producer, Ali should know all about price. Neither of these men is taken very seriously, even though Galloway likes to don the mantle of martyr as he sues publications that dare suggest he was on Saddam's payroll, or makes a flying visit to testify before a U.S. Senate committee that accused him of benefiting from Saddam's 'oil for food' scam that has tarnished the reputation of the United Nations. He won re-election to parliament as an independent in the East End of London, in a majority Muslim district (mainly of Bangladeshi immigrants) with a well-funded campaign that was backed by the mosques, in the name of a [party called 'respect' that traded on Islamic resentments. If the election were held again today, after bombs on the doorstep of the Bangladeshi district, and with all the mosques and British Islamic groups denouncing the terrorists, Galloway would have a problem. In times like these, as New Yorkers found after 9/11, cities reach into themselves for a sense of their own pride and identity. New Yorkers believed they could recover from anything. The British know they can take anything and still come up fighting. This carries the powerful political implication that reveals the seriousness of al-Qaida's strategic defeat; the British will not back down now, will not change their ways, and will not even do Tariq Ali and Galloway the ultimate honor of banning them. The British will continue to believe in free speech, even when they despise the speakers, because the British still believe in themselves. And that is something al-Qaida will never understand. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Thanks again guys,we are going to defeat you, and the funny part is that you are going to do all the work. Now, when you set off a dirty bomb in a major american city we'll finally have the public support to snuff your shitty stink from the face of the planet. |
| Posted by: Unomomp Snesing6221 2005-07-08 22:12 |
| #2 ..AND HOW CONVENIENT THAT HURRICANE DENNIS JUST HAPPENED TO TIME WITH ALL OF THIS TOO. COINCIDENCE???? |
| Posted by: MACOFROMOC 2005-07-08 17:48 |
| #1 So if the London subway & bus bombings make it politically impossible for Britain to pull out of Iraq/GWOT, then that must mean the true force behind the bombings is ........ Karl Rove (soon to be announced on DU.) Of course I mean this as sarcasm, but I bet there's a whole bunch of people who actually believe it. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2005-07-08 17:32 |