Posted on 09/11/2006 10:02:59 PM PDT by Pikamax
David Cameron criticised the Bush administration yesterday, attacking its "unrealistic and simplistic" world view and over-reliance on military action. In a lecture to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Tory leader said he was a "liberal conservative, rather than a neoconservative" and insisted: "We are not engaged in a clash of civilisations."
But he went on to justify the use of pre-emptive force and intervention for humanitarian purposes. Promising solid, not slavish, backing for the US, he said: "Anti-Americanism represents an intellectual and moral surrender. I and my party are instinctive friends of America, and passionate supporters of the American alliance."
His intervention went some way to aligning the Tories with the US despite public scepticism about the special relationship. According to research released by the BBC last night, most people - 55% - think the government has aligned itself too closely with US foreign policy. The Gfk NOP poll found that 11% thought the UK was not close enough and 19% thought the relationship about right. More than half of voters - 53% - said the government was losing the fight against terrorism in the UK.
Mr Cameron has a difficult balancing act as he attempts to build links with the Republicans while developing a Conservative critique of arguably the prime minister's weakest spot. Mr Bush is increasingly unpopular at home, while the fortunes of John McCain, the Republican seeking his party's candidacy, are rising. Senator McCain is to speak at the Tory conference in Bournemouth this month.
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.guardian.co.uk ...
In view of the deeply entrenched anti-Americanism (and Judeophobia) which suffuses British society from top to bottom this is no doubt true.
But a prospective national leader who insults a sitting president is probably going to receive a cold shoulder when he comes knocking on the door of the White house.
Canada's Jean Cretien found that out.
Actually, he sounds like the Tory's Bill Clinton. Looking for a third way and triangulating. Much like Clinton he appears to have no core values and will therefore twist in the wind and follow the polls. Cameron = boy wanting a man's job.
So the idiot has chosen to run to the Left of Labour on foreign and defense matters? What a chucklehead.
When Blair steps down and Brown steps in as PM, UK troops will be leaving Iraq and Labour will move Left, leaving the Tories with nothing but me-tooism. I guess Cameron can always claim that Labour was just following his advice.
It certainly looks as if Cameron will join that illustrious group of Tory leaders of Hague and Howard who will never live in 10 Downing Street.
RT
Well, I did like Cameron but not after insulting the U.S. like that -- and on 9/11 too!! Then he tries to get out of it with a backhanded compliment. Sorry, I lived in England for eight years and that was an insult! Not that Brown will be any better...he will definitely move left and tax the living heck out of the Brits. Brown loves and lives to tax.
Yes, I lived there for a couple years in the 90's and I got so tired of hearing how much more sophisticated the Brits were about foreign policy. From my experience, I'd take the American diplomatic corps over the British any day. Our guys are smarter and have a bigger picture.
The Brits still like to think of themselves as Athens to our Rome. We produce more Nobel Prizes than they do in every category and yet they still cling to this belief.
Well to them, whether they realize or not, they still believe the world is staying still at 1912.
What's wrong with Liberal Conservative? Just because it might not fit into American patterns of political discourse doesn't mean that it makes no sense in Britain- for us it goes back to people like Robert Peel. Indeed, Churchill could certainly be described as a Liberal conservative, when he wasn't a Liberal.
Nothing's wrong with it, labels are labels. Although "Liberal Conservative" comes across as a wet Conservative, sort of squishy which is what Cameron is trying to triangulate. Good luck to him. In general, I think the US benefits from having the Tories in power in the UK. Bush was fortunate to have a Labour leader such as Blair in power at the time. The next President will likely not be so fortunate.
...Or the Chamberlain model.
I didn't expect this hoary revisonist trope from you, Darkwolf! It was the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force that forced Hitler to abandon Operation Seelowe. The American entry into the war was solely due to Pearl Harbor, however much Roosevelt wanted to help out.
Err no. Though 'left' and 'right' are quite strange concepts to apply to foreign policy.
"When Blair steps down and Brown steps in as PM, UK troops will be leaving Iraq and Labour will move Left, leaving the Tories with nothing but me-tooism"
People keep making statements like these on these threads, still waiting for someone to back one up. UK troops may actually be able to leave Iraq next year, if circumstances allow. It won't be anything to do with a change of Prime Minister however. Brown is as hitched to Iraq as is Blair, without his support British troops would not have joined the Iraq invasion.
The idea that a Brown-led Labour Party will move left is a fond longing of those on the Labour left, but also rooted in little more than their optimism. Brown has been the most influential Chancellor in the postwar period, he already has a massive influence on policy.
Also, as the Tories have neither advised or agitated for British troops to pull out of Iraq (indeed quite the opposite), I'm puzzled by your comments about Cameron.
How is this revisionism? I never said that was not the reason the US entered the war, but are you now going to engage in an even greater revisionist trope--that we didnt enter the European theater at all? I've got a few hundred thousand families of dead Americans who might argue that with you.
I'm really, really sick of the iconoclasts who enjoy diminishing our role in Europe just to appeal to the snotty European sensibilities of America-haters.
Given such a cold shoulder than there is now talk of Sentaor McCain delivering a speech to this year's Tory conference.
The Republican-Conservative relationship is at its strongest point in years. At least it is on this side of the Atlantic, anyway. If you American conservatives are reduced to frankly insulting generalisations and assumptions over a few softened criticisms from someone who clearly states his dedication to the Special Relationship (in the same speech, no less), then I think it may be your end that has the problems.
It also must be remember this article is from 'The Guardian' - a left-wing, anti-American newspaper, who have selected a few parts of the speech in an attempt prove their own moronic ideas have some sort of 'consensus' behind them.
I think it's the 'coming to our rescue' part he was taking issue with... Britain had avoided defeat in 1940 without US action (indeed before Lend-Lease really got going in a big way). The US certainly enabled us to win (although I'd argue that absent that we'd have got there in the end, just with nukes, the Red army on the Rhine and a hell of a lot more people dead) but it didn't prevent us from losing.
I assume that was the distinction the poster was making.
Judeophobia so entrenched that Michael Howard, Oliver Letwin, Ed and David Milliband, Malcolm Rifkind, Oona King, Margaret Hodge, Gerald Kaufman, Lynne Featherstone etc have all been cruelly denied their chance for political success...
Which is what "coming to their rescue" means.
If the phrasing gets so many angry, maybe they should consider the deaths of so many Americans wasn't a mere trifle, a sidenote. The US was not at war with the Nazis, our civilians weren't dying, and yes indeed we DID come to the rescue of Britain--to the tune of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of American dead--with NO Americans killed on our homeland. Those men died for our own defense ultimately. But when I am accused of "revisionism" and look at the mountain of Americans who died in no small part to protect and yes SAVE England, I don't feel the need to be lectured on "revisionism" by those whose tender sensibilities are offended by my phrasing.
If the 'special relationship' is strong it is due to Tony Blair and not the other Labour or Tory politicial hacks.
My take on Cameron is that he's a Brit Bill-Clinton style panderer, wafted hither and yon by the vagaries of public opinion as dictated by the BBC.
The Guardian didn't put those words in Cameron's mouth, they just reported them.
And just where does Cameron get off insulting President Bush?
He has by his own words demonstrated that he is no statesman and is unworthy of following Margaret Thatcher as a Tory PM.
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