Burying Blair; post-mortem for the prissy PM
Mike Whitney
July 30, 2005
No one was the least bit surprised when Tony Blair announced that the only antidote for the bombing attacks on the London subway was a fresh batch of regressive laws. Blair is a master at turning tragedy into political capital and the slaughter of 50 Londoners was no different. It only sharpened his appetite for carrying out the directives of his paymasters by further savaging civil liberties.
It always astonishes how quickly the demagogues in Washington and London swing into action when there’s a chance to hack-away at personal freedom. They seem to operate on the theory that people will only be safe when the country assumes the same standards of justice as, let’s say, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Isn’t this where Blair is pointing England?
And, wasn’t it convenient that Blair just happened to have a whole raft of police-state legislation ready to go just when the bombs went off? Maybe Tony is hiding a crystal ball somewhere that he hasn’t told us about. Or, maybe he’s taken to reading the entrails of dead animals to foresee the future? Or, maybe Blair knew that London might be attacked and was warned 2 days before the bombings, as was reported by the Stratfor Intelligence Agency? Would anyone doubt that the dissembling PM who dragged his country to war on false pretenses might look at terrorism as a way to boost his flagging popularity in the polls?
Of course, not.
But, then, why should British citizens sacrifice their “inalienable” rights because the petulant Blair stormed off to war on a “pack of lies”? According to a recent poll, 85% of the Brits believe that the bombings were directly connected to Blair’s illegal involvement in Iraq. This has since been confirmed by terrorist experts and Blair’s own M15 who just days ago admitted that, “Iraq is a dominant issue for a range of extremist groups and individuals in the UK and Europe.”
As John Pilger astutely noted; “Those were Blair’s bombs” on the London tube. And, it’s Blair who should be hauled from his bunker at 12 Downing Street and frog-marched to the gallows.
The fatuous Prime Minister is obfuscating once again; trying to fend off the accusations that he willingly put England on the terrorist firing-line by joining Bush’s Middle East crusade. The point is no longer even arguable; the attacks were the direct “blowback” from the orgy of slaughter in Iraq.
Never the less, the beleaguered Prime Minister won’t abandon his fractured rationale for the hostilities, so he’s adopted an even more strident tone towards terrorism.
“There is no justification for it, period," Blair opined. "And we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. Not just the methods but the ideas. …We are not having any of this nonsense about it is to do with what the British are doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or support for America, or any of the rest of it.' It is nonsense, and we have got to confront it as that. And, then we will start to beat it...”
Blair’s delusional raving is part of a broader strategy to dismiss the obvious facts about terror and blame the victims of American-British aggression. It’s a tactic that was minted in Tel Aviv and perfected over 37 years of occupation. Now it’s been exported to Washington and London with equal success. It is predicated on the assumption that terrorism emerges from an amorphous, religion-based ideology that transforms its adherents into ruthless butchers.
Its rubbish; and the theory has been convincingly discredited by the analysis of Robert Pape who has investigated nearly every suicide-bombing from 1995 on. Pape has proved conclusively that terrorism is inextricably linked to occupation, not religious ideology. Blair’s blather is just more of the same absurd speculation meant to justify the continuing slaughter in Iraq and keep his miserable career out of the political dumpster.
Predictably, Blair now has many admirers in Israel. In the hard-right “Jerusalem Post” Blair’s conversion is seen as a “wake up call” reminiscent of Bush at 9-11. As the strident David Horvitz notes, “Prime Minister Tony Blair made plain this week, terrorism is terrorism is terrorism.”
How can one hope to dispute such keen insight; such unimpeachable acuity?
No wonder Horovitz is doing celebratory cartwheels now that Bush and Blair have linked arms with Israel’s right-wing and joined the struggle to chase-down the apocryphal dragon of “Islamo-fascism”. Never mind that the whole theory is a hopeless fraud cooked up in an Israeli think-tank; never mind that it pits three of the world’s nuclear powers against one and a half billion Muslims in a desperate, racist war.
“We shouldn't even allow them the vestige of an excuse for what they do," Blair boomed. "What is happening in Iraq is that ordinary, decent Iraqis are being butchered by these people with the same terrorist ideology that is killing people in different parts of the world."
Really? How odd that the rest of the world sees it as the predictable reaction to a barbarous occupation.
But, such feigned sincerity is par for the course for the prissy Prime Minister. Blair spends most of his waking hours gadding-about in front of the camera lens trying to affect the appearance of genuine concern. He is the consummate political poseur; always ready to wrap himself in the Union-Jack, assume a Churchillian pose and rattle-off some patriotic claptrap about battling evil. It’s unbearable.
Is it any wonder that according to the Pakistan Daily Times he spends twice as much as the average British woman on “make-up and skincare products” to maintain his “famous all-year healthy glow”?
Unbelievable.
Blair has spent the better part of the last 5 years affixed to Bush like a tick on a rhino; riding piggy-back on the infamy of his Crawford-twin. Now, he’s even taken on the apocalyptic lingo of his mentor; braying about “evil ideology” and the “defense of civilization” at every opportunity. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but in Blair’s case it just reinforces the suspicion that he’s a hapless poodle devoid of personal resolve or inner fortitude.
Blair is worse than Bush; a fatuous charlatan who’s undergone so many political transformations he’s like a withered starlet awaiting her Hollywood come-back. He started out with lofty intentions and grand ideals and was quickly swallowed up by compromise, corruption and an all-consuming vanity. He’s become a tattered coat on a stick; flailing away at the ether to no affect; an empty gourd of a man; pallid and soulless; buffeted about by every political headwind.
Burying Blair is a mere formally; he died years ago.
