ANDREW SULLIVAN: Blair’s courage makes the anti-Americans look small

I can remember the last time I was anti-American. It was 18 years ago, wincing at the vulgarity of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. I threw in the towel when Lionel Richie was a key feature of the opening ceremonies. Or was it the choreographed Elvis impersonators? I can’t remember now.

The sheer crassness, commercialism and unabashed American nationalism turned this young Brit off. It was the combination of exuberance and sheer power that led me to affect disdain. But disdain for what? America? The very idea, I came to realise, is preposterous.

America is many things. It is rural Alabama and urban San Francisco. It is Michael Moore and Jerry Falwell. It’s MTV and the right to bear arms. It’s a country that still won’t accept a one-dollar coin but embraced the internet with the enthusiasm of a teenage crush. It’s Rambo and the Sopranos. It’s Little Vietnam in the exurbs of Virginia and mega-churches in suburban Houston.

Anyone who despises this despises not America but humanity. And humanity in one of the most daring multicultural, multiracial experiments in history.

Of course, most anti-Americanism doesn’t deal with this complex reality. It deals with American hyper-power and its impact on the broader world. In this sense it’s a new form of anti-Americanism. It’s anti-Americanism without the counterbalance of fearing the Soviet Union. And it’s anti-Americanism without the positive element of 20th century faith in socialism or Marxism.

This makes it in some ways a purer anti-Americanism, one that simply hates American power rather than one that posits any credible alternative. And it is made far worse by the growth of that power. The post-cold-war 1990s, after all, saw economic stagnation and rapid disarmament in much of Europe, combined with a boom and military investment in America.

What was once dominance has become hegemony. Anti-Americanism isn’t tempered by fear of a rival superpower; it isn’t fortified by a vital economic or political alternative. And when American power is deployed, this animosity mutates into hatred.

Do I exaggerate? Just look at the anti-war demonstrations in America and Europe. “Bomb Texas. I Like Iraq” was a recent slogan. “Bush is the Real Terrorist” announces another. The imputation of evil motives to this White House among intelligent people is routine. It is a given that the United States is not sincere in its attempt to rid the world of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. It has to be a cloak for an oil-grab; or a Zionist conspiracy; or a corporate coup. Bush’s cabinet, according to John le Carré, is a “junta” — no different in legitimacy from the junta raping Burma or the military dictator in Pyongyang.

This is not to say that there are no good reasons to criticise American foreign policy. Abandoning Kyoto was forgivable, given what the treaty would have done to the US economy. But proposing no credible alternative wasn’t. Ditto the Bush administration’s now collapsed policy towards North Korea, an incoherent mix of bluster and appeasement.

But the anti-Americanism I’m speaking of is not of this kind. It’s not designed to persuade the United States to alter its policies. It’s designed to demonise the United States, to portray it as almost morally equivalent to the Islamist terrorism it is trying to hold back.

In fact, this anti-Americanism, which embraces the far left and elements of the far right, rarely proposes anything positive. And as it recites its mantras of contempt, and summons every American failing of the past 50 years without ever crediting America’s successes, it marinates in its own resentment. It teeters on the edge of anti-semitism.

In its hatred of the United States it is close to finding excuses for the barbarity of Saddam Hussein, the cruelty of the Taliban or the malevolence of Al-Qaeda. There is something truly sickening in the sight of people who call themselves liberals finding more fault in America than in the brutal, misogynist and anti-semitic dictatorships now pitted against the West.

The facts don’t seem to matter. America is portrayed as an imperial force dedicated to what a Harvard professor recently described as “the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians”. Yet it was an American president, Bill Clinton, who brokered a deal that offered the Palestinians sovereignty over 98% of the West Bank and Gaza.

America is described as waging a war against Muslims. Yet in almost every recent American intervention — in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan — it was for the sake of the security of Muslims that American soldiers risked their lives.

America is described as relentlessly pro-Israel. But America gives almost as much foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan. America is described as imperialist. But in recently liberated Afghanistan the Americans have done all they can to set up an indigenous government and are pouring millions of dollars into reconstruction.

America is described as unilateralist. Yet, after the worst terrorist attack in modern history, it patiently assembled a coalition to rid the world of Al-Qaeda’s Afghan bases, and has waited 11 years while Saddam has violated almost every term of the 1991 truce.

Even now, America has gone painstakingly down a UN route to achieve its goals. These are the facts. But to the new cult of anti-Americanism, facts don’t matter.

I’m happy to wager that history will find Tony Blair’s resistance to this cant one of his great achievements as prime minister. Blair is a liberal realist. He knows America isn’t perfect, but that its power is a positive force in the world.

Without America, Europe would still be under the shadow of Al-Qaeda lurking undeterred in its Afghan lair. Without America, Saddam might be sitting pretty in Saudi Arabia today with an arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Without America, there would be no united Europe and no new democracies in eastern Europe ready to join.

If that’s the consequence of an American empire then Europe is its chief beneficiary. And Blair gets something else, too. It is simply not in Britain’s interest to give in to the crass delusions of anti-Americanism. The notion that Blair is somehow George Bush’s “poodle” is ludicrous.

By his instinctive support for America in the wake of September 11, by his steadfast support during the Afghan war and in the Iraq crisis, Blair has wielded more influence in Washington than any other world leader. Because of this, he now has more leverage over American power than any British prime minister in recent times, eclipsing even Thatcher’s sway over Reagan.

And that means an enormous increase in Britain’s relative global power. If you don’t believe this, contrast the results of Blair’s diplomacy with Gerhard Schröder’s. It’s the difference between being at the centre of world governance and utterly marginalised.

Blair has managed to vault Britain back to the status of a genuine world power. When he huddles with George Bush at Camp David later this month he will be the most powerful British prime minister since Churchill at Yalta. This wasn’t the reason for Blair’s foreign policy. Blair clearly backs the US on Al-Qaeda and Iraq because he sees the grave danger to Britain that only America, with Britain’s help, can prevent.

But unprecedented British leverage is a side-product. The man who came to power promising to make Britain a central power-broker in Europe has done something rather different. By resisting the empty rhetoric of the hate-America left, Blair has made Britain a power-broker on a far grander level. We have the beginnings of an Anglo-American entente — what some in Washington are calling an Anglosphere — that could wield enormous influence for the good.

Blair’s ability to see through the flim-flam to the real America, and to see Britain’s opportunity, has the makings of a historic diplomatic achievement. If only his party and country could see that.

Technology marches on but we are 400,000 grunts and scads of airlift and seaborne capability short of a full deck. And despite what Rummy says for public consumption, we are not currently capable of fighting two conventional wars.

Conventional being the key there.

I see Bush's treatment of North Korea as the natural result of someone who has inherited a screamin' mess. It's going to be a while before anyone can figure out what to do, I suspect. Imagine becoming the step-parent of a schizophrenic pyromaniac adolescent. That's what Clinton left us with and that's what Bush is magically supposed to fix.

O ye of the mighty mental synapse, are you now going to tell me that Tony Blair is driving this effort, after it is clear that he and his sick left-wing coterie were unwilling and most unproductive passengers on the bus of anti-terrorism for lo these many years? We are talking here about the same SOB who started talking tough and put his boys in harm's way to bomb the civilians of Belgrade to help the al-qaida-nauts of Albania?

Well, OK. Although I am wracked by waves of nausea whenever I hear the words "Tony Blair," Ivan (and your own intelligent self) have convinced me to give the ferret-two-faced bastard and Clinton Butt-Boy his begrudged due.

So I'll grant you guys this: At least Tough Tony and his party are no longer actively inhibiting those few left within the British Defense and Intelligence establishments, which they had almost succeeded in emasculating, in getting about their tasks. They also serve who are smart enough to get out of the way.

We must consider the untintended consequence of this noble effort the fact that we will have to look at Tony Blair as PM until the Second Coming. By which time, thanks to the efforts of Tough Tony and his Party, The Sceptered Isle will look, smell, and function something like the island of Trinidad, without the benefit of a tropical beach.

But in recently liberated Afghanistan the Americans have done all they can to set up an indigenous government and are pouring millions of dollars into reconstruction.

Make that hundreds of millions, $800M+ I believe since 911, and $173M+ plus even in the year before 911. In the following thread see additional links starting in message #9:

Humanitarian Work Progressing in Afghanistan

Here is something that is worth kicking around. I don't think Sullivan's characterization is unfair. In the matter of Korea, what we have seen is "an incoherent mix of bluster and appeasment."

I see a bit more coherence than that, and even a flash of "stratergery" as the Bushies shift responsibility to the U.N., back off slightly, and put the North Koreans in the position of blustering to, and threatening war on, the "world" rather than just the U.S.

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