Date: August 1, 2006 7:32:12 AM PDT
Subject: [SPY NEWS] 'Only Blair will benefit from sucking up to Bush'
in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=398584
'Only Blair will benefit from sucking up to Bush'
By MAX HASTINGS, Daily Mail
10:53am 1st August 2006
Until yesterday, for all the stench emerging from Tony Blair's
government, I did not think of the Prime Minister as financially
corrupt.
Listening to his speech in praise of the United States, however, and
his assault on European critics of American policy as "foolish, short-
sighted and ultimately very dangerous", one heard tills ringing in
the man's ears.
He will soon quit office. In his own country, he has become an object
of scorn, whose word cannot be trusted about whether it is Monday or
Tuesday, far less about peace or war.
He is responsible for inflicting on Britain its most grievous foreign
policy disaster since Suez. Among his own people, who would hire him
to mow the grass?
In the United States, however, and especially among the rich
Republicans whom he loves, Blair is a hero.
Two years from now, it is safe to bet that he will be drawing a huge
income from the U. S. corporations, which have waxed rich and fat
under Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Just as Washington administrations look after the businesses that
bankroll them, so those companies look after their own. Tony Blair
has made himself one of their own.
Folly
It is a wretched spectacle to see a British Prime Minister abase
himself before the United States, at a moment when scarcely a day
goes by without the Bush administration committing some new folly.
It becomes even nastier when Blair accuses his own people of anti-
Americanism.
He is not a fool, and knows the truth. An overwhelming majority of us
like and admire the United States. It is the most successful society
on earth. We owe it a huge amount economically, technologically,
culturally.
However, we are sick to death of being asked to share the
consequences of its mismanagement by one of the most arrogant and
incompetent administrations in American history.
Why should the British not be disgusted when Blair associates himself
with Bush in support of Israeli excesses in Lebanon?
Why should we not be angered by what has gone wrong in Iraq and
Afghanistan, where every warning has been ignored as the neo-
conservatives have stirred their idiots' brew?
This is not anti-Americanism — many Americans feel the same way. It
is a rational response to what we see around us.
Back in 1990, most of us backed the Thatcher government's decision to
join the Americans in expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
In 2001, after 9/ 11, an overwhelming majority of the British people
echoed Blair's impassioned declaration of support for the U.S., and
also backed his decision to join the assault on Al Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
Only afterwards did we come to understand that President Bush, with
increasing clumsiness and recklessness, was pursuing an ideological
agenda of his own which had nothing to do with crushing international
terrorism.
Our fears grew as Bush's and Blair's lies about Iraq were exposed,
and then as the occupation degenerated into chaos.
Today, there is more hostility in this country towards American
policy, less confidence in American judgment, than at any time for
many years. If anyone has a grievance about what has happened, it is
the British people, who have been deceived by their leaders, and
dragged in America's wake ever deeper into a confrontation with
radical Islam.
Israel's assault on Lebanon will do nothing for the real interests of
the Israeli people, and even less for ours. Although he claims to
speak for Britain in supporting Bush, who believes the Israeli
actions are helping his "war on terror", Blair advances ever further
into isolation from his own government, his party and the nation.
He is a compulsive gambler, constantly raising the stakes with a
company credit card drawn in the name of UK plc, for which all of us
will be left to meet the bad debts.
The West faces a historical challenge from Muslim extremists, which
there was probably no avoiding. We must face it with resolution, and
bear the pain when we have to.
Yet we shall have cause for personal recrimination against the Prime
Minister if there is some ghastly atrocity in Britain during the
months ahead, in alleged reprisal for our endorsement of Israel's
doings in Lebanon.
Blair's decision to stick with George Bush all the way is entirely
personal, and most of us want nothing to do with it. It is not anti-
American, merely decently British, to recoil from the notion that
U.S. bombs for Israel are being freighted through our airports.
Of course, no sensible person suggests we should quarrel with the
United States and forswear our respect for the world's greatest
democracy.
In every generation, however, we are reminded that American
governments pursue their own policies for their own reasons.
However slavishly a British prime minister attaches himself to an
American president's backside, he will never wield influence to match
the perils, as Harold Wilson recognised when he kept us out of
Vietnam.
The only proper way to manage our end of the Atlantic alliance is to
join with the Americans in global interventions when our interests
demand it — and refuse to join when they do not.
Britain and the U.S. are constantly negotiating about a wide range of
bilateral issues — trade, aircraft landing rights, technology
transfer, criminal extradition and suchlike.
Interests
Since 2001, it is impossible to name one disputed area in which
Britain has been given a break because of Blair's loyalty to Bush. To
say this reflects not British self-pity, but the hard-nosed reality
of Anglo-American relations.
I have read a string of recent American books about Iraq. In each,
the British involvement since 2003 rates about three pages out of
400. Americans perceive us as bit players. Yet Tony Blair has laid
the entire security of this country on the line to support U.S.
policy.
The message is that there is no pay-off for sucking up to Washington.
We should recog-nise this by approaching our relations in as
pragmatic a spirit as the U.S. does.
The only person in this country who stands to profit from committing
us bag and baggage to the Bush administration is Tony Blair. In the
years ahead, he will become a very rich man, and most of his pay
cheques will be drawn on American banks.
This will be an appropriately ugly ending of an ugly story. Gordon
Brown and David Cameron should learn its lessons.
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