Posted on 08/06/2002 1:04:20 PM PDT by Tomalak
SOMEONE CALLED GEORGE Monbiot was peculiarly allowed to write a column for the Guardian today. The result was some of the most idiotic ranting even they have dared print:
"[America's] preparedness to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN security council is a defiance of international law far graver than Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors....
[I]f the US were not preparing to attack Iraq, it would be preparing to attack another nation. The US will go to war with that country because it needs a country with which to go to war....
[Tony Blair's] challenge is to recognise and act upon the conclusion of any objective analysis of global power: namely that the greatest threat to world peace is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush. The nation that in the past has been our firmest friend is becoming instead our foremost enemy."
There we get a true whiff of what the Second Gulf War's opponents are about: mindless, morally blind, anti-Americanism. They hate America because it is one of the few countries left in the world that can still tell the difference between right and wrong, and is willing to fight for freedom. I am proud that Britain joins her in doing what she can to help in that quest. But America can do no right in these people's eyes. When President Bush acts in his own country's interests, it is a sign of "isolationism", a charge no other country's leader faces when putting his own people first. But when Bush acts on the world stage, he suddenly becomes "interventionist", "unilateralist" and "the greatest threat to world peace". Now Bush can either be interested in dominating the world, or in isolating America from it, but not both.The BBCdian liberal elite will really have to choose which it is soon.
The extent to which the left's warped world-view is based upon nothing more than numbers, calculations and sociological theories is evident in their response to the terrorist murders organised by Osama Bin Laden and Yasser Arafat. Instead of asking who the democratic, legally-bound leader is, they accuse America and Israel of bring the attacks on themselves, and absolve the terrorists of their crimes on grounds of poverty and hopelessness. The left's inability to distinguish between a democratically elected leader who fights to destroy those who bomb children to achieve their twisted political goals, and a half-baked tyrant who uses chemical weapons in testing on his own people, who marches into neighbouring countries, and who is building terribly destructive weapons to fight us, demonstrates why Britain will never again have a true socialist government. Bin Laden proved that good and evil really do exist, and the British people will no longer support those who deny it.
So what is Monbiot's alternative to co-operating with America? He openly states that he thinks President Bush is a worse man than Saddam Hussein, that terrorists and tyrants should be left alone and democratic statesmen opposed. So what should Britain do? In so many words, become France:
"We can resist the US neither by military nor economic means, but we can resist it diplomatically. The only safe and sensible response to American power is a policy of non-cooperation. Britain and the rest of Europe should impede, at the diplomatic level, all US attempts to act unilaterally."
Boris Johnson was right last April to describe us as the second most important country in the world. We earn that influence through having a huge economy, the fourth largest of them all, and through the most professionally trained armed forces in the world. But we also gain it from being the closest ally to the world's only super-power. It would be treason to throw that rattle out of the pram in a tantrum born not of logic or conviction, but born only of resentment that America continues to disprove every major socialist theory with her success. France has never changed minds in America, nor has she exercised any influence when she spouts her silly ideas. For all France's sniping, she has no army to back up her words, and no moral authority to support her protestations.
The left is ultimately about turning Britain into another backward, inward-looking, high-taxation, European state. What they want is a people too morally deficient to care enough about any cause to support a war in its favour, and a country too weak to wage war in the first place, even if they ever did decide it was right. This gloomy, pathetic vision stretches even as far as the likes of Kenneth Clarke, though it is much more weakened and vague by the time it reaches them. But it is not a vision shared by the British people, and so long as our political leaders continue to support America when she is right, they will win mass support for their foreign policy.
Not if we go in to win. The puppies'll follow in order to not be left out.
Having read the original Monbiot column in today's Guardian, I found myself yet again enraged and nonplussed by the screed of this writer. Yet what should give one pause is that Monbiot's opinions are shared by the up and coming leaders of New Labour. One day, a Labour government will come to power that makes a final break with America. That day will be a day of clarity.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
On NOW at RadioFR!
Tonight The Shrew will host William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation on Radio Free Republic! Tune in to hear one of the foremost military writers discuss the article he has co-written with Paul Weyrich!
Does it really matter?
Sure made a difference to the crew of the Missouri last time.
I would prefer Saudi Arabia as the second military target in this war.Iraq can be #3, or #10 IMHO.
Fortuneatly for us all, I do not get to make those decisions.I have never been known for my diplomatic skills. I believe the interests and security of the USA should prevail over European interests in this war.
I am, after all, a citizen of the USA and obviously biased.
I will remember which country opposes my country's decisions.History, Republican, elephant mascot, memory skills...
Absolutely. The Guardian whingeing notwithstanding.
Regards, Ivan
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