[A-List] UK and US Imperialism: Blair's Speech to Congress

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

Fighting Words

by Karen Kwiatkowski



Tony Blair inspired Americans with his speech to Congress this week. As I
watched and listened, I'm sure I wasn't alone in wondering why we can't
trade our belligerent inarticulate cowboy for the smooth, moving words and
natural-born earnestness of Tony Blair. Labour, Shmabour - this is about
feeling good about your country, not silly political parties. Hard
questions, harder answers, partisanship, competition of ideas. who needs
those when you can just feel good? Who needs drugs or escapist movies when
the power of sweet soothing words spoken by a politician can heal your heart
and thrill your mind?

I watched Tony Blair's speech from the roof of the Chamber of Commerce
building in Washington, D.C., in the open canvas tent that serves as BBC
Washington's operations room/studio. BBC asked me to show up, and it sounded
interesting. I brought the kids in for the museums while I sat around on the
roof watching CNN and the BBC crew getting ready for the next news cycle.

Tony Blair said many things that sounded nice. But the neoconservative
themes of his speech should concern and anger patriotic Americans of all
political persuasions. Couched in a pro-America presentation, the arrogant
and illogical thinking of American neoconservativism penetrated Blair's well
written words like virus RNA in a once healthy organism. The theme was
liberty. The medium was warmth and joy. Yet the mechanism and the message
was ahistorical, arrogant and Straussian. Blair told us,

"Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder." Really? Whose "new
world"? From the perspective of the Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bush and Perle, of
course the danger must be disorder. But in a world where liberty reigns and
private property is respected, where individual choice in ideas, religion,
congregation and production is the norm, the state's diagnosis of "disorder"
actually refers to the most productive and naturally ordered form of human
existence. Edmund's Burke's English garden, a parable for a decentralized,
diverse and lovely place where individuals and families and communities
produce, create, and find joy - as they work to gently govern themselves in
ways that satisfy their higher values, culture and tradition - is never
found in statist "order." This is true whether the state is led by a
committed politician like Lenin, or by a three stooges clique featuring
Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz.

The order created by Bush and Blair in Iraq is today one where women and
children hide in their houses, where young men and businessmen have no
legitimate work except that authorized by the dictates of Mr. Bremer's
bureaucracy, where the discussion of the moment is "authorized" media in
Iraq and the proper allocation of oil revenues to the Iraqi people (either
direct welfare or some kind of crumb sharing arrangement after Halliburton
and Chevron have had their fill). It is an order enforced under fire by
American and British soldiers, volunteer forces made Spartan knaves after a
lie-based Washington bait and switch. The Third Infantry Division, misled
again and again, now under disciplinary threat to perform with a good
attitude, become our 21st century helots. The evil treatment of Iraqis by
Saddam's nepotistic rule cannot be defended. However, for many years this
evil was tolerated, politically supported, even vouchsafed, by his American
and British allies, as have been the evils of other useful allies, past and
present. Which brings us to another neoconservative pillar of Blair's
speech.

"Such a theory [classical realism] may have made sense in 19th-century
Europe. It was perforce the position in the Cold War. Today, it is an
anachronism to be discarded like traditional theories of security." While
Blair quoted freely from historical examples (the U.S. role in rebuilding
Japan and Germany, and Lincoln on liberty) his statement here was
refreshingly radical, absolutely shockingly wrong, and typically
neoconservative. Realism is based on the study of ancient civilizations and
historical fact, a spare theory to be sure, but resting on hard evidence
from the dead bones of soldiers and leaders and nations. If "such a theory"
is to be discarded, then we must throw the babies, and those yet unborn, out
with the bathwater. This mental sponginess, this point-and-click
intellectuality, is a major flaw in neoconservative thought as expressed in
Washington over the past two and a half years, and articulated by Blair this
week. For Blair to say this in a speech is not dangerous or frightening. To
have the President and much of the Congress cheering like fans at a WWF
blowout is both.

Blair told us "The ending of Saddam's regime in Iraq must be the starting
point of a new dispensation for the Middle East: Iraq, free and stable; Iran
and Syria .made to realize that the world will no longer countenance [their
'succor to the rejectionist men of violence']." Indeed, this is the
neoconservative vision long in work and now fruiting prematurely to instant
rot for the people of Iraq. Saddam's regime would have ended in time, but
then American and British interests could not have "controlled" an Iraq
"free and stable." Iran and Syria certainly have been "made to realize" that
United States military bases are long-term and right next door. That'll show
them! But most concerning here is the use of the term "dispensation." Its
primary definition is "the act of dispensing or dealing out; distribution;
often used of the distribution of good and evil by God to man, or more
generically, of the acts and modes of his administration." Good and evil,
God to man, and God's administration. God's state! No wonder we fear the
political Shia - they compete too well, bless their hearts! The choice of
this word reveals the pathology of neoconservative arrogance, exposing the
taproot of blindness and practical inhumanity they share with the most
vicious of clerics or kings.

The bookend to the "dispensation" we have so generously granted the Middle
East is another D word, Blair's grand finale of "destiny." It's usually a
word associated with heroes, individual men and women. Great novels and
great histories are stories of great people. Bush and his neoconservative
foreign policy implementers believe they are today's men of destiny. But the
claim of destiny for a whole nation or a constructed state has long been the
ultimate tool of the fascist, the super-nationalist, the propagandist worthy
of a Lenin or a Hitler or a Pol Pot. The truth of the language cannot be
evaded. What is truly meant by this rousing phrase is nothing more than the
destiny of a Straussian cadre of gifted advisors. Blair lauds, and with
subtlety crowns those few superior individuals, who through the secretive
and propaganda-based leverage of a massive state military, information and
economic machine, rise from their own individual obscurity and personal
frustration to become "great men."

BBC asked me if I felt that Americans were beginning to look more deeply
into the nature of the Bush administration and its actions, at least in
Iraq. Whether Americans were beginning to question and perhaps to doubt. I
said I thought so. A formerly silent mainstream media is beginning to assert
itself against the tides of state propaganda, on both foreign affairs as
well as domestic issues.

Real change will occur only when it happens in the hearts and guts of
Americans. When more and more Americans, like the soldiers in the Third ID
and the wives, husbands, parents and children left at home, realize that
they have been lied to not once, not twice, but endlessly and insidiously,
and as the President becomes more belligerent and accusatorial with every
new question - Edmund Burke's English garden will once again begin to thrive
in America. May Tony Blair, in his upcoming retirement, quickly forget his
most recent speech, and instead humbly bask in the reflected glow of Burke,
that most valuable and prevailing of British* contributions to our
philosophy, liberty and security.

* Note to readers: Truth be told, Edmund Burke was born in Dublin. But don't
you all let my little insinuation that the Irish-bred Burke was a Brit get
in the way of a perfectly serviceable essay! Does it really matter? I stand
by my decision to write this essay, and I believe my purposes will be shown
to be moral and just. Plus, it fits my presumptions and politics so nicely.
I am the commander in chief of my keyboard! Furthermore, a recent poll says
that at least 59% of readers don't care one way or the other, or won't
notice the difference. And we wouldn't want Tony Blair to feel bad just as I
was trying to do the humanitarian thing after blasting his speech. Anyway,
we're all on the same side, unless you happen to be against all that is good
and righteous.

**Note to the Dear Leaders of the Free World: Hey, George and Tony! Your
stuff works great! I was in a tight spot, hit a little speedbump on the
agenda, you know how it goes, but your advice was spot on! Thanks!

July 19, 2003

Karen Kwiatkowski [send her mail] is a recently retired USAF lieutenant
colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the
Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah
Valley.