Iraq

[Allycat]

There were 6 mil marching all over the world, and at least twice as many who agree with them!

And thanks for the trust in my inteligence ... lol!

 

[Patran]

While surfing then 'net during a quiet time at work, I came across this article on the Guardian website (www.guardian.co.uk). It sheds some interesting light on the Anglo-US relationship. Is the writer correct? Or is he deliberately ignoring ocassions when the US did help what are meant to be their most loyal allies? Thing is, I can't remember the times when the US has helped. Blair might be expecting more from the US than they are willing to give, and it could be his downfall.

What a divine pleasure it was to hear the Republican congressman Pete King eviscerating the hapless French on our radios yesterday morning. It was a perfect way to begin the day: basking in the happiness of not being French, of not being, as Bart Simpson has it, a "cheese-eating surrender monkey".
The French are, according to Pete, an irrelevance - and useless, to boot. "They don't even have a working aircraft carrier," he kept repeating, between diatribes about France's heroic and longstanding commitment to the principle of capitulation. Garlic-swathed beignet-stuffed sexually dysfunctional trash-pop Petainist belching Gauloise-smoking hypocritical papist bastard haw-hee-haw Johnny bloody Halliday up-yours-Delors coward monkeys, the lot of them. From Biarritz to Lille. Via the town of Vichy. And apart from Emmanuelle Béart, of course.

For people like me, who enjoy a bit of spite and vituperation first thing, just to get the juices flowing, it was magnificent stuff. And there - curiously unspoken - in the background was the knowledge that Pete and other similarly enraged US politicians couldn't say the same thing about us, could they? We're right behind them, the Yanks, and this will ensure us a sliver of love from our transatlantic cousins, if only by the process of disassociation. And this matters, being loved by the US.

And then, rather disconcertingly, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the same Pete King who has spent the past 15 years similarly eviscerating the British, or the "Bruddush", for "centuries of oppression" inflicted upon the Irish people. Pete could always be relied upon to say a few words in support of Martin Galvin's evil Noraid organisation, or to wade into some delicate and confusing conundrum of Northern Ireland politics with his size 12 cowboy boots, ready to give succour to the IRA for the sake of securing a few more votes from his Irish and faux-Irish constituents. He always did so with a mixture of brio and crass ignorance. It is the same Pete King, isn't it?

Of course it is. And many of you may well agree with him about Northern Ireland. But my point is more straightforward. We should not delude ourselves that we get anything from standing four-square beside George W Bush, or any other American president, for that matter. They think we're an irrelevance too, and useless, and antiquated and decadent. And what's more, no matter how loyal we strive to be, they would not so much as bother to cross the road to piss on us were we suddenly to catch fire. This has been the signal lesson of the past 20 years of international politics.

Beginning, of course, with the Falklands "dispute". As the then defence secretary, John Nott, made clear in his strange autobiography, the Americans were a big problem. At least half of the US administration - a section led by the perfidious Jean Kirkpatrick - was vocally supportive of the Argentinian cause and attempted to thwart our attempts to regain the islands by force. Why? Because siding with us disturbed their various, disgusting, machinations in Latin America (please don't believe the US opposition was motivated by moral disgust at the prospect of bloodshed).

Incidentally, who were our real allies then, according to Nott? The cowardly French, who provided us, sotto voce, with invaluable intelligence on the Super Etendard fighter aircraft.

A year later the US invaded (ineptly, of course) the British sovereign territory of Grenada without so much as a by-your-leave or bud, do you mind if we sort this problem out? On this occasion, according to Denis Healey, what irked our prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, most "was not so much the overthrow of the (Grenadian) dictatorship ... as the fact that he (President Reagan) deliberately and successfully deceived her on his intentions, though he had often told her she was his personal friend and closest ally. Moreover, he did so as part of a conspiracy with certain commonwealth governments in the Caribbean, which also kept Mrs Thatcher in the dark." Plus ça change, huh.

More recently, within weeks of September 11 2001, the US failed, astonishingly, to outlaw Noraid, despite having proscribed and seized the assets of every other terrorist fundraising organisation in the known universe. There is terrorism directed against the US and terrorism directed elsewhere, you see.

And a little later, as Britain incurred a good deal of wrath for sticking its head above the parapet to support, unequivocally, financially and with our own servicemen, America's War Against Terror and immediate adventure in Afghanistan, the US whacked illegal tariffs on our steel exports, desperately injuring a beleaguered British industry.

Of course, the two issues are not remotely related, as US trade representatives, blank-faced and unrepentant, frequently pointed out. And it may well be that the US was "right" in all of the above little contretemps with Britain. But my point is more simple - and I suppose, fairly crass: that in every case where Britain may have expected, or even just desired, a degree of loyalty from our "closest allies", that loyalty has not been remotely forthcoming. It was last forthcoming, in fact, in about 1942.

 

[Diminished_9th]

*wipes away the venom*

The author may have some legitimate points, but his disdain for the US burries them pretty well. I'm not saying he's not wrong, I'm just saying the level of sarcasm makes it hard for me to be objective about it. He's insulting, and no matter how open-minded I try to be, my pro-American hackles are raised and I find myself tensing up. In the end, it doesn't do much toward having a honest open debate.

I found this article to be much more even-handed, though about an entirely different aspect: Should we wage war to liberate Iraq? I like this article because two Iraqis debate the issue, and both want the same thing, they just think we need to go about it in different ways. No name calling, just a civil debate. http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article.jsp?id=2&articleId=852