US-UK mutual admiration society set to oust Saddam
Rime Allaf, April 8, 2002
Letter from London
LONDON: “Good job,” said President George W. Bush to his weekend guest in Crawford, Texas, after the two had just finished addressing the media. As he shook hands with Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush looked satisfied, as indeed he should be, for in spite of the mass of advice he has received from his own people in the past few days, Blair heeded none other than Bush’s.
After weeks of vocal opposition to British participation in an attack on Iraq, many here were hoping that Blair would use the weekend summit to warn the American president against such an action, and to persuade him that it would risk inflaming the whole Arab world even more, especially in the absence of evidence against Saddam Hussein.
With the Israeli incursions into Palestinian towns, critics found this not only gave Blair more reason to control America’s urge to start another war in the region, but that it was also time to contain the double standards applied by the superpower. In pleading or downright blunt tones, the media cautioned the prime minister.
A telling example of the ever more irate public opinion was a direct warning from the hugely popular tabloid, The Mirror, traditionally a pro-Labour daily. On Friday, with a gigantic front-page headline condemning Bush (and his “collaborator” Blair) of being a “hypocrite,” journalist John Pilger accused Bush of only asking Israelis for restraint so that he could “lay his own war plans.”
Asking why Blair condemns Iraq as he remains silent on “Israel’s current bloody and illegal rampage through Palestine,” Pilger declares in a long and scathing attack: “It is time Tony Blair came clean with the British people on his part in the coming violence against a nation of innocent people. As the crisis in Israeli-occupied Palestine deepens, Tony Blair will meet George W. Bush today to plan an attack on another country, Iraq.”
The perceived subservience of Blair toward his American ally was hinted at repeatedly before the prime minister traveled to a summit about which many have misgivings. Pilger considers Blair will be “in admiring attendance” while other papers have described him, again, as Bush’s “poodle.”
Sarcasm and anger have both been mounting in Britain. Blair’s refusal to allow a discussion on the Middle East as Parliament convened last week to pay tribute to the Queen Mother is far from forgiven, and most of the media was sympathetic to the MPs who chose to stay away that day. In fact, having been denied a chance to speak in Westminster, some voiced their frustrations directly to the media or, rather, in the media.
Veteran Conservative MP Sir Patrick Cormack simply wrote a letter to the editor of The Times on Thursday, expressing concern about the Middle East and blaming Ariel Sharon for both the intifada and the present carnage. “His response to terror, based on his Beirut excesses in 1982, has been that of the terrorist, not of the statesman.” Cormack hopes that Blair and Bush will make it plain to Sharon that “the current Israeli regime deserves to stand condemned in the eyes of all who call themselves civilized.”
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker explained in The Independent on the same day why he boycotted the tribute session while “meltdown is now in sight” in the Middle East. Not taking sides, Baker argued for British involvement “in helping to persuade President Bush to rein in the Israeli government and put pressure on the Palestinians to prevent further suicide bombings.”
But as has been the case for the past few weeks, the prime minister has chosen to ignore his people, his Parliament, his Cabinet, and his media. After standing alongside Bush in total agreement about the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq, he knows that he must still, somehow, sell the Bush policy to all of them.
It is unlikely that much praise will be awaiting Blair in Britain, when he returns just in time to participate in the Queen Mother’s funeral on Tuesday. As of this writing, reactions to the joint press conference held on Saturday have not yet emerged, and there will be many after Blair’s speech on Sunday. Judging from local feelings in the past weeks, Blair is likely to encounter a storm of hostility when he faces his home crowd.
Even setting aside the Iraq and Palestine issues, Britons have grown tired of their prime minister’s constant support of America, and particularly for its president. There is now a sense of fatigue about the intensity of the “special and unique relationship,” and many were probably alarmed to hear Bush’s admission that he and Blair “have a common reading of history.”
Many Britons, who had hoped Blair would convince America to rein in Israel’s Palestine incursion, partly credit him for Bush’s sudden turn-about Thursday when he said “enough is enough.” Although this would be ignoring the divisions within the American administration and the apparent momentary success of the State Department, the perception that Blair had some influence on Bush’s sudden call on Israel to withdraw is in fact a double-edged sword. For if he does have influence on the American president, Blair obviously chose to use it selectively.
With regard to Israel, and following Bush’s claim that “we share a vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and in security,” Blair was confident in his support, especially of Israel. “I think that most people in Israel will realize that they don’t have two greater friends in the world than the United States of America or Britain.”
As for Iraq, if there were any doubts before the Crawford summit, there are none now: Blair gives his full backing to America’s plan to remove Saddam Hussein. In praise of his support, Bush said: “The thing I admire about this prime minister is he didn’t need a poll or a focus group to convince him of the difference between right and wrong.” While these words were certainly meant as a compliment, Britons will surely interpret them as Blair’s casual dismissal of their opposing stance.
But for all the unity displayed by the two leaders, Blair did differ slightly in his approach to justifying and defining the removal of Saddam Hussein, seeming anxious to clarify that “how we approach this, this is a matter for discussion. This is a matter for considering all the options.” Blair was clearly addressing his own home public, trying to imply that no decision had yet been taken on the actual logistics. Even more indicative of his concern over British resistance, in spite of the bravado he had tried to show so far, Blair made a point of mentioning the UN, which obviously did not concern Bush. “There is a reason why United Nations resolutions were passed, nine of them, calling upon him to stop developing weapons of mass destruction,” insisted Blair just before the meeting ended.
Blair will have many more opportunities to explain himself on Iraq, and on where he plans to take his country. While it seemed easy for him to agree to everything George W. Bush said in Crawford, he will be facing a much less pleasant mood when he returns to confront the wrath of a good number of Britons. When Bush said “history has called us into action,” they will probably want to know who, exactly, is “us” and what, exactly, is this “action.”
