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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Tony Blair's Waffling Support of Bush's Crusade |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
(No verified email address) |
03 Oct 2001
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THOSE SEEKING SOME hope amidst all the government and media war hysteria, might want to take a look at Tony Blair's speech to his party. |
Although declared the best thing since Churchill by some British paper, the speech is actually classic otoh botoh - on the one hand, but on the other hand - in which contradictions press against each other like shingles on a roof. The point, however, is not whether Blair meant what he said, but why he felt compelled to say it.
Clearly something important but unnoted has happened in the three weeks since the guerilla attacks, which is to say, not much. The fact that the manic bellicosity of the president has not been matched by comparable actions may well be due to a variety of factors including:
- the failure of the warlord wing of the administration to win a clear victory over more rational voices such as those of Colin Powell.
- the failure of other countries to fall fully and quickly into their assigned roles as loyal followers of America's military fantasies.
- an anti-war movement that, while only just on its legs, is already vigorous enough to give pause to those who seek a cataclysmic denouement.
- and finally, a realization in foreign capitals that the American empire may indeed be coming apart and that the ease with which a handful of guerillas brought it to a halt coincidentally creates the opportunity for a new political balance in a world in which America may not be as important as it has been.
Looked at in this light, Blair's speech becomes a fascinating combination of acquiescence and independence, agitprop and invention. He praises America and yet he draws neat distinctions between his and its policies. He supports Bush and yet he doesn't. For example: "The action we take will be proportionate; targeted; we will do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties . . . " Nobody at the White House has apparently even noticed that there might be civilian casualties. They don't think like that over there.
With the most cynical manipulation of language, Blair declares, "Here in this country and in other nations round the world, laws will be changed, not to deny basic liberties but to prevent their abuse and protect the most basic liberty of all: freedom from terror." Hitler also redefined freedom to suit his interests. Hitler denounced "the freedom to starve," in a country which had known as many as six million without jobs. Wrote William Shirer, "In taking away that last freedom, Hitler assured himself of the support of the working class." But the very desperation of Blair's aphorism suggests his own fear that many still remember what freedom really is.
Then Blair does something unusual. He announces that, "a partnership for Africa, between the developed and developing world based around the New African Initiative, is there to be done if we find the will. On our side: provide more aid, untied to trade; write off debt; help with good governance and infrastructure; training to the soldiers, with UN blessing, in conflict resolution; encouraging investment; and access to our markets so that we practice the free trade we are so fond of preaching. But it's a deal: on the African side: true democracy, no more excuses for dictatorship, abuses of human rights; no tolerance of bad governance, from the endemic corruption of some states, to the activities of Mr Mugabe's henchmen in Zimbabwe. Proper commercial, legal and financial systems. The will, with our help, to broker agreements for peace and provide troops to police them. The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier."
Suddenly, Blair drops his Giuliani impression and begins stealing from the language of progressives: "We could defeat climate change if we chose to. Kyoto is right. We will implement it and call upon all other nations to do so. But it's only a start. With imagination, we could use or find the technologies that create energy without destroying our planet; we could provide work and trade without deforestation. If humankind was able, finally, to make industrial progress without the factory conditions of the 19th century; surely we have the wit and will to develop economically without despoiling the very environment we depend upon."
And he delivers a message to Afghanistan that could never have been composed by a Bush speech writer: "The values we believe in should shine through what we do in Afghanistan. To the Afghan people we make this commitment. The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before. If the Taliban regime changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is broad-based, that unites all ethnic groups, and that offers some way out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence. And, more than ever now, with every bit as much thought and planning, we will assemble a humanitarian coalition alongside the military coalition so that inside and outside Afghanistan, the refugees, millions on the move even before September 11, are given shelter, food and help during the winter months. The world community must show as much its capacity for compassion as for force . . . The issue is not how to stop globalization. The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice. If globalization works only for the benefit of the few, then it will fail and will deserve to fail. But if we follow the principles that have served us so well at home - that power, wealth and opportunity must be in the hands of the many, not the few - if we make that our guiding light for the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international movement that we should take pride in leading."
Check those last six words. The "we" is Britain and Blair. In short, at a moment when George Bush and the Americans are offering nothing but bombs, vengeance, danger, and misery - which in the end has a pretty punk constituency everywhere - Blair has offered a far more hopeful alternative based in part on the thinking of those who were only a few weeks ago considered the scum of politics.
We need not take Blair at his word - there is, in fact, not much reason to - but his effort to co-opt some of the language and thought of those opposed to empire, globalization, and multinational madness is an important reminder of how important the organizing and protests of the past few years have been and why they must continue.
Link to text of Blair's speech:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Politics/labour2001/story/0%2C1414%2C562006%2C00.html |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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