Blair licks Bush's arse in public. Congress applauds.

[khaosworks]

July 18, 2003
Bush at His Side, Blair Is Resolute in War's Defense
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, July 17 - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with President Bush today in defending the war to depose Saddam Hussein, saying the conflict was justified even if allied forces find no banned weapons in Iraq.

Mr. Blair, making a brief visit to Washington, also lent Mr. Bush his support on the question of whether the president had misled the American public in the weeks leading up to the war by including in the State of the Union address an allegation, attributed to British intelligence, that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium in Africa to restart its nuclear weapons program.

He said he stood by the intelligence, even though the White House now says it was not firm enough to have been included in a presidential speech.

Mr. Blair had something he wanted from Mr. Bush in return. The prime minister said he would discuss with the president the concern in Britain that British citizens captured in Afghanistan were being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay as enemy combatants.

The British government has made clear that it wants its citizens, including two who are scheduled to come to trial soon before a military tribunal, to be returned home to face trial there. Mr. Bush said he would discuss Mr. Blair's concerns.

Despite Mr. Blair's suggestion, in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress, that the war in Iraq would have been worth fighting even if no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons are found, Mr. Bush later insisted at a news conference with the British leader that they would be found. The president said that would "end all this speculation" about "whether or not the actions were based on valid information."

On a day when the White House came under increasing political pressure from Democrats to explain more fully how the passage about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium got into the State of the Union address, Mr. Blair's presence here helped the administration's effort to shift attention to the broader question of whether the world is better off with Mr. Hussein gone.

"I really don't believe that any responsible leader could ignore the evidence that we see and the threat that we face," Mr. Blair said at a news conference at the White House after his speech on Capitol Hill.

There is a joke in the book version of the most excellent British comedy "Yes Minister", which refers to the UN Charter as the "unconditional surrender of the English language." Blair's speech, riddled as it is with not only pro-American sentiments, but pro-American sentiments at the expense of every other country, should go down in history as the unconditional surrender of English sovereignty by its Prime Minister. I can see no other plausible way to read this seriously:

"There is no more dangerous theory in international politics today than that we need to balance the power of America with other competitor powers," Mr. Blair said, interrupted repeatedly by applause. "If Europe and America are together, the others will work with us. If we split, the rest will play around, play us off, and nothing but mischief will be the result of it."

And I'm not the only one to come to this conclusion, that Britain has become nothing more than a client state of its once-colony.

Basically, it was the BB Twins standing in front of Congress saying, "Even if we weren't right, we were, so there." Bush, in particular, is caught between two admissions he's made, both of which are not logically reconcilable. In one, he has admitted that the "intelligence" that prompted the statement in the State of the Union, that Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake from Niger, is wrong. In the other, he still maintains that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, despite providing no other evidence aside from the discredited yellowcake documents that Iraq was trying to do so.

Blair has taken a more pragmatic view. From his earlier assertions before Parliament that WMDs will be discovered, he has now admitted that maybe WMDs may not be discovered - but, even if they aren't, the coalition was still right to bomb the beejezuz out of Iraq. Why Iraq, in that context, was a clearer and more present danger as opposed to say, North Korea, was not asked.

"Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together?" Mr. Blair asked. "Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."

"But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership," Mr. Blair continued. "That is something history will not forgive."

An impressive burst of rhetoric, but it doesn't wash. History will record, and it is up to us to make sure it does record this, that Bush and Blair, despite having gotten rid of a dictator, have in doing so run roughshod over international law, diplomacy, reasoned discourse, due process, and what is the worst sin of all for a politician - getting caught in lying to the people who voted them into power. Over 200 American dead since the war officially began can attest to that. As a 27-year-old John Kerry once said before Congress, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Bush and Blair are arguing that the ends justify the means. The strange part is that so many people are willing to forgive Bush in particular for it where his sins are more egregious than Blair's. I can only attribute this to a particular malaise in the American psychology, in countless fictions where the maverick is rewarded for disobeying orders as long as the outcome is right. "You disobeyed a direct order, lieutenant, but you blew up that bunker and won the battle, so we'll just overlook that." The problem with this attitude, as psychologically satisfying as it is to think that we are smarter than our bosses and therefore are justified in going against the grain and breaking the bonds of conformity, is that more often than not, the maverick, the rogue, fails, precisely because he cannot see the big picture his superiors do. This is not to say that all superior authority is always correct, but simply to point out the logical fallacy in the Romantic assumption that a lone wolf is better than a bureaucracy.

The scary part, though, is that Bush has access to the biggest picture of all, and yet he plows ahead just like the maverick of fiction. Is it self-delusion? Recklessness? An over-inflated ego? Stupidity? Take your pick - but considering the results, this is not a man that should be in charge of the nuclear trigger.

History may forgive them, depending on who writes the history. I'll be happy enough as long as the voters don't.