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| 2004-02-28 | |||
| Many Americans who know little about either Britain or Tony Blair have uncritically hailed both for their support during both the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns. Nelson Ascher examines the way in which Blairâs intervention may have set back the War on Terror and ultimately cause GWB his presidency. BLAIRâS MISTAKES By Nelson Ascher The aftermath of the Iraqi war is one of the strangest phenomena Iâve ever witnessed. Even among the antiwar crowd, one will be hard put do find, besides the usual suspects from the lunatic fringe, anyone who would have a nice word to say about Saddamâs regime and its history or murder, torture, genocide and external aggression. Everything points to the fact that even his Arab and/or Muslims neighbors, with the exception of Syria, are relieved that he and his regime are gone. But the antiwar left, having failed and been proven wrong in all its apocalyptic predicitions, hasnât given the battle up. Its members are still trying to win their Iraqi war, and nowhere as much as in the UK. In spite of my admiration for him, an admiration that has been much reinforced by seeing him defend his position like a lion in the House of Commons, I blame Tony Blair for all this mess. Why? I cannot prove it, but hereâs my hypothesis. Blair was directly responsible for all that UN circus surrounding the inspections and then the war. Though he seems to be as self-assured a leader as one could find, conscious, maybe somewhat over-conscious, of the power of his charisma, the truth seems to be that he is a deeply divided man. He may once have felt that his partnership with president Clinton was a match made in heaven. Surely heaven is not the place where his current partnership with Bush has been forged. We have to go back more than half a century, not to Churchill/Roosevelt, but actually to Churchill/Stalin to find, below an artificially harmonious surface, such an uneasy alliance of opposite temperaments and projects as the present one. Iâd bet that, ever since 911, a considerable part of Blairâs thought was dedicated to finding out a way of avoiding any kind of American âoverreactionâ. Unlike opportunist foxes like Chirac or Schroeder, the trouble with Blair is that he likely believed in his own nice words, that is, he was sincerely in favor of international institutions, the UN, the EU and all the trans-nationalist stuff, not because all this advanced his, his partyâs or Britainâs interests, but, well, because he believed that was good for the future of mankind. He clearly saw that 911 meant or could mean the death of all those nice semi-utopian hopes of the 90s. But it seems that, even then, he could not give up on them. And he heroically chose to try and tame the proverbial post-911 American âbull-in-a-china-shopâ, to see how much of what had been built throughout the 90s he would be able to save. While the French and the Germans played to the tune of their own naked, short-term and possibly misguided ârealpolitikâ and self-interest, Blair tried to remain the idealist, putting his very job in the line in an effort to preserve both a Western block and an âinternational architecture of rules and institutionsâ that were, at best, optical illusions. And he did all this while keeping himself surrounded by a whole bunch of unreliable people, from Robin Cook to Clare Short, people whose goals were evidently at odds with his own.
As it happens, Blairâs position was more delicate than anybody imagined. While the American population on the one hand, and the Old European peoples on the other were all solidly behind their respective governments, Britain was and continues to be deeply divided between the Europhiles and the Atlanticists. Blair attempted what was basically impossible: to get the Europhiles in the Atlanticist boat, but they, possibly with the full backing of Old Europe, did, and are still doing, their best to destabilize the Blair government. Thus, Britain became the US war effortâs âheel of Achillesâ. The antiwar left scored an important victory because it succeeded in alienating even more the British population from America. It is at least arguable that, had the UK remained far from the hostilities, a larger part of its people would be now supporting the US. Blairâs problems come from the fact that he actually lied. He didnât, in the end, send his troops to Iraq because of WMDs, nor did he do it to advance the geopolitical re-organization of the Middle East and to defeat the Islamists decisively. He did it to save a world order that was mainly erected during the 90s, to save the UN, to save the EU (and to place Britain at its heart, as he himself often repeats), in short, to save things, agreements, institutions and ideals the innocence and purity of which he is probably the only world leader to have believed in.
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| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #3 I would of turned large unpopulated areas of the Muddle East to glass. With an additional 20 to 30 dummiy warheads targeted for specific residences. With an absolute and unequivical warning. Hand over every mother f****r even remotely involved in 9/11 and the speading of the fifth that helped instigate it or on 9/13 they would have an awful lot of "splaining" to Alhah to do |
| Posted by: Cheddarhead 2004-2-28 8:29:11 PM |
| #2 The lefties would have gone absolutely bezerk had we taken Rumsfeld advice. Can you imagine the hue and cry from the media had we spurned the UK and not groveled before the security concil for a while? As it is now they believe the UN is the only legimate wielder of force in the world. Personally my unmeasured response to 9/11 would have turned much of the middle east to glass, but the WoT would have been over on 9/12. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-2-28 6:25:50 PM |
| #1 Now, immediately after 911 Don Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq. It is easy to see he was right and how many troubles would have been avoided if he had had his way. This has to be the genesis of Rumsfeld's comment that the US could go in with or without the Brits - which caused a big controversy in the UK - just before the Iraq campaign kicked off. Rumsfeld had waited 1-1/2 years for this crucial event, even while diplomatic and popular American support dribbled away, thanks to Blair's delaying tactics. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-2-28 5:02:21 PM |