Saturday, July 29, 2006
The Eloquent and Deferential Prime Minister
Tony Blair, True Believer ?
It is a wellknown fact that President Bush is incapable of expressing himself without a script. His weakness becomes glaring when Prime Minister Blair speaks standing next to him. But Tony Blair, who hitched himself lock, stock and barrel to the neocons' disastrous war in Iraq, is no longer in a position to redeem himself. He parrotted President Bush about the crisis in Lebanon, that Israel was right in its attacks on Lebanese civilians and destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, until public opinion at home and abroad forced him to try to persuade President Bush to agree to a prompt cease fire. Apparently, he got rolled over. The joint statement that resulted after his meeting with President Bush in Washington made it clear that Blair failed to change the Bush Administration's position if that was his objective."The resolution would also call for a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, but Bush and Blair made it clear they were not talking about the kind of immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah being promoted by other world leaders."
Blair has been calling almost from the beginning of the crisis for a multinational force to help police southern Lebanon. U.S. officials -- mindful of the political difficulties the situation is creating for Blair at home -- said the prime minister has been influential in helping to convince the president that the idea makes sense as a way of helping the Lebanese government reestablish authority. At the news conference yesterday, Blair put little daylight between himself and Bush, casting Hezbollah as the instigator of the crisis and coming to the president's defense -- with a passionate plea to look at the larger stakes -- when Bush was questioned about declining U.S. clout in the world. Blair said the growing violence in the Middle East is not a function of declining U.S. influence but a global movement of Islamic radicals determined to subvert democracy in that region and elsewhere. |
A report in the BBC mentions threat of a wider conflict:
The agony of Lebanon was, like the carnage in Iraq, part of the birth pains of the New Middle East for the neo-conservative ideologues in Washington. This was Israel's contribution to the war on terror, dealing a blow to a proxy offspring of those "axis of evil" nations, Syria and Iran. This was Israel's contribution to the war on terror, dealing a blow to a proxy offspring of those "axis of evil" nations, Syria and Iran. |
A cease fire would be welcome news but there is no sign that it is going to happen anytime soon. We are again going to see Secretary Rice on center stage in the Middle East as she utters high sounding words. Disarming of Hezbollah is easier said than done. Few believe that it can be achieved. Does not matter. It is the Lebanese people,refugees in their own land, who deserve our support and sympathy.
