More of a pit bull than a poodle
Ha'aretz, August 6, 2006
By Assaf Uni
LONDON - During the three weeks of fighting in Lebanon, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has resolutely stood with the president of the United States and behind the State of Israel in its struggle with Hezbollah.
Despite the tremendous public pressure for the prime minister to call for an immediate cease-fire; despite petitions and rallies in which British residents have decried the fact that he has no desire to stop the killing in Lebanon, as they put it; and despite the decision by Jack Straw, his former foreign secretary, to break ranks and refer to Israeli policy as exaggerated - Blair has remained strong, more or less, in taking a stance that supports the war against Hezbollah as well as Israel's right to self-defense.
After the British stopped making fun of his obsequiousness to U.S. President George W. Bush at the G-8 summit, they were left with a question that really scares them: Could Blair actually believe in what he's saying?
Since the conflict broke out, Blair has consistently refrained from calling for an immediate cease-fire. He joined the United States and Israel in pointing an accusing finger at Syria and Iran, holding them responsible for the current conflict. This week Britain, with the assistance of Germany and the Czech Republic, prevented the European Union's foreign ministers from issuing a condemnation and demanding an immediate cease-fire. In addition, London is working behind the scenes to try to develop a multinational force to disarm Hezbollah. But while most media outlets describe such activities as the behavior of Bush's "poodle," Blair's conduct over the past year and his persistent stance against public pressure is more reminiscent of a pit bull.
A speech Blair gave Tuesday at a conference in Los Angeles - whose central thesis, he said, was unchanged by the latest events in Lebanon, although he had prepared it a few weeks earlier - shows that his ideological worldview overlaps with that of Bush's neoconservative administration. The war on terror, including Israel's war with Hezbollah, plays an important role in that worldview. Blair said the war on terror has become a worldwide struggle between the principles of reactionary Islam and those of moderate, mainstream Islam - a war between liberty and oppression, freedom of thought and religious tyranny, at the center of which stand the liberal values of the West.
"We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism, but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values," said Blair. There is, he added, an "arc of extremism" stretching from Chechnya to Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, and he sees the latest conflict in Lebanon as part of the war on this extremism. British newspapers compared this speech to those Blair gave after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the July 2005 attack on London.
When reactionary Islam seized its opportunity in Gaza and Lebanon, Blair said in his speech, "they knew what would happen. Their terrorism would provoke massive retaliation by Israel. Within days, the world would forget the original provocation and be shocked by the retaliation." He declared that Israel is defending democracy and freedom in the Middle East, while Hezbollah is trying to sow destruction in the region through terrorism.
In contrast to some of his European colleagues, Blair has not refrained from accusing Syria and Iran of involvement in the events transpiring in Lebanon.
"Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria are a constant source of destabilization and reaction," he said. "We need to make clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: Come in to the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us, or be confronted. Their support of terrorism, their deliberate export of instability, their desire to see wrecked the democratic prospect in Iraq, is utterly unjustifiable, dangerous and wrong. If they keep raising the stakes, they will find they have miscalculated."
But alongside the list of justifications for the war on terror, Blair also criticized the way it is being conducted. "We will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world." In order to do this, he explained, Western policy must change completely: The West must be bolder, more consistent and more thorough in fighting for its values. All in all, an "alliance of moderation" is required to defeat the arc of extremism.
This was not the speech the British were expecting.
"Like a man who sets fire to his house and then discusses the flames, Tony Blair has a habit of drawing attention to his policy failures by analyzing them," The Guardian wrote in an editorial yesterday. "He did it in Los Angeles on Tuesday night in a significant speech on the Middle East that described a region ablaze with conflict without recognizing his own role as one of the arsonists."
Other newspapers also criticized the polarized worldview depicted by the prime minister and the oversimplification with which they said he described the war on terror.
The criticism comes as the pressure is mounting on Blair to announce his support for an immediate cease-fire. A poll conducted this week showed Blair's popularity has sunk to an unprecedented low - 67 percent of the British are not satisfied with him. In addition, 69 percent of Britons want Britain to have a more independent policy, and 16 percent think Israel has overreacted in its bombing of Lebanon.
