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Friday, November 17, 2006
Government minister breaks cover (Or should that be “…breaks wind”?) Hitherto, the parliamentary Labour Party has been remarkably discreet in criticising the PM; he ought to have been thrown out long ago for piss-poor judgement about Iraq (see recent Joshings). Few people have gone on record if they fancy their reputations. However, according to The Scotsman, quoting Reuters: A government minister was quoted on Friday as saying the Iraq war was Prime Minister Tony Blair's "big mistake in foreign affairs", in a potential new embarrassment for the government..Here's’s the link to the whole article. Margaret Hodge, minister for industry, was first reported in The Islington Tribune, a North London local newspaper, by the paper’s editor. Currently, Ms Hodge, who used to be an Islington neighbour - and friend - of Tony Bliar’s, is lying low. Here’s a bit more of the article: The Islington Tribune quoted Hodge as saying she had doubts in 1998 about Blair's attitude to foreign affairs because he had espoused "moral imperialism".But she had accepted his arguments on the Iraq invasion because "he was our leader and I trusted him", the paper said...Interestingly, radio reports today, from someone present at the semi-private meeting, confirm the paper’s version, although sources representing Ms Hodge deny that she said anything as direct. I wonder if she’s now going to use the Bernie Grant defence (the late Bernie Grant MP said, after a riot in his Tottenham constituency, in which a policemen was hacked to death, that “certain people” thought that that day the police had had a good beating, or words to that effect). It’s pretty certain that Bernie was using reported speech. I can’t wait for Ms Hodge to say that she was only saying that “certain people” thought that Tony Bliar had made a big mistake over Iraq. There were sufficient Fabians present to make this a dangerous course; perhaps the “gaffe” was calculated, knowing that most people present would have agreed with her. While I think she is an unlikely focus for a real “sack Bliar now” campaign, it really is about time the Parliamentary Labour Party chucked him out. The Iraq imbroglio overshadows anything worthwhile he and the Party have done and the only decent thing left for him to do is to go Sunday, November 12, 2006
The acquittal of Nick Griffin Since the acquittal of Nick Griffin, there have been many comments. Several ministers called for a review of the legislation after the BNP's leader was cleared of stirring up racial hatred in remarks about Islam. Here's how the BBC covered the matter: Lord Ahmed said the government had not delivered on previous promises to the Muslim community on race hate laws.It was time for the government to start treating Muslims equally and not like "subjects of a colony", he said.No, Lord Ahmed, there’s no bandwagon and criticising Muslims isn’t particularly fashionable. Muslims are far too sensitive and they want special privileges for their silly, nasty faith and they don’t like being told what a load of rubbish they espouse. Evan Harris, MP for Oxford West is one of the few MPs with enough common sense to want to stand firm against further tightening of the legislation: Lib Dem MP Evan Harris said any further restrictions on freedom of expression risked creating "extremist martyrs" or could be impossible to enforce.So let’s look at what Griffin actually said, shall we? The Leeds Crown Court jury heard extracts from a speech Mr Griffin made in 2004 in which he described Islam as a "wicked, vicious faith" and said Muslims were turning Britain into a "multi-racial hell hole".Now, these are not quite words I’d use, although I’d come pretty close to the first. Further, the only reason that Griffin's remarks were broadcast was because there was an undercover BBC reporter with a secret camera present. Let’s look at the law, here* . In a previous blog (Bagshot under siege, February 23 2003), I said All religions (with the solitary exception of The True Faith, of course) are silly. Many are nasty. Mohammed is an irredeemably sexist, nasty, dead old fart and Islam is a male power con-trick.Fair enough, I’d have thought - it was “published”, although I think that dear old Myfanwy Trellis might not have seen, let alone reported it. But let’s look at a comment from someone more august, writing in a national newspaper. In The Observer, in the third part of a turgid, three-part article berating Mohammedanism, Martin Amis gives us: All religions are violent; and all ideologies are violent.Nothing specific about Mohammed’s lot here. I suppose that they could get lots of other religions together and try a joint prosecution. Or Islamists could try the self-accusatory: “Don’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you!” (Someone was speculating recently what the Church of England would do if one were really nasty about it. "Offer you sherry at the wrong temperature," was the best, and very striking suggestion.) Amis makes one of the best criticisms, one I’d always thought gave us something with which to upbraid and ridicule Islam: The connection between manifest failure [of Islam] and the suppression of women is unignorable. And you sometimes feel that the current crux, with its welter of insecurities and nostalgias, is little more than a pre-emptive tantrum - to ward off the evacuation of the last sanctum of power. What would happen if we spent some of the next 300 billion dollars (this is Liz Cheney's thrust) on the raising of consciousness in the Islamic world? The effect would be inherently explosive, because the dominion of the male is Koranic - the unfalsifiable word of God, as dictated to the Prophet.And here he quotes a chunk of the Koran which, even if it is “the unfalsifiable word of God”, sounds much more like an extract from a male-power manifesto: 'Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme' ([Sura]4:34).God is bollocks, more like it. And in his conclusion, Amis remarks, presciently: Can we imagine seeing men on the march in defence of their right to beat their wives? And if we do see it, then what? Would that win hearts and minds?Perhaps when he wrote that, Amis knew a bit more than we do. But where's the Islamic feminist movement? Many of them seem to be far too concerned with arguing that they should be wearing the ridiculous garb specified by the nasties. Oh, and while it grieves me greatly to concur with the Griffin jury's verdict, they got it right. * This is how the BBC’s article summarises the current position: Saturday, November 11, 2006
The importance of judgement Yesterday, I blogged about Kenneth Adelman’s entirely plausible suggestion that the Iraq imbroglio is all Tony Bliar’s fault. However, there is another, much more important aspect of Bliar’s involvement. I have been meaning to put it to you, Mrs Trellis, my beloved only reader, for more than a year. I regret not having put mouse to pad long ago but I can no longer pass up the opportunity, even though some other, more highly-motivated, observers may get/have got there first. There is, of course, a fundamental point about Blair’s involvement; he seems to be obsessed with his legacy as Prime Minister. Since he came to power in 1997, his government did some good things: establishing the Monetary Policy Committee and giving the Bank of England a measure of independence, for a start. There have been some adverse, unforeseen events, principally the Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak, costing the country dearly. Because of really shitty advice from the National Farmers’ Union, the disease ravaged cattle stocks. It’s all a matter of to whom you listen… One inevitably compares Blair’s reign with that of Margaret Thatcher. She is perhaps best-remembered for the disastrous poll tax and for the Falklands war, the latter a big positive for her, despite her near invitation (weakening the Falklands garrison) to the Argentines to invade. Blair had his little successful wars (Sierra Leone and Kosovo) but nothing on the scale and importance of The Falklands. Was he, perhaps, looking for something to rank alongside, or even surpass, The Falklands? In the annals (anals, dare I say?) of Britain’s military adventures after WWII, Suez stands out as a frightful misjudgement, on a par with Iraq. Given that we have just had the fiftieth anniversary of Suez, there has been a great deal of discussion about the similarities between Suez and Iraq. There were important consequences of Suez which, curiously enough, may have influenced Bliar, almost subliminally, in his course. Here’s a quick Suez summary: Gamel Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt and nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956. Anthony Eden, Britain’s PM, saw Nasser as an Arab Hitler (we seem to have heard the same facile comparison between Saddam Hussein and Hitler, haven’t we?) and concocted a plot to regain control of the Canal. Israel invaded Egypt and, under the pretext of making sure that the Canal was kept safe for international shipping, while the Israelis were still very far away, a joint British-French force also invaded. The two armies fought their way down the Canal and had it virtually under control when Dwight D. Eisenhower, the US president, took a hand. [Incidentally, I don’t know who the ideologue behind the Suez project was, but two of the very secret meetings to arrange the invasion took place at Chequers (the PM’s country home) and at Sevres, in France]. Eisenhower threatened Eden with a run on the pound unless British forces withdrew. Eden was forced to concede - the pound was in a fragile state at the time and he could not risk continuing. The immediate net effect was far worse than having left Nasser to get on with things, without interfering. The French and the British learnt different lessons from the intervention from the US. Both the British and French governments concluded that, under the prevailing circumstances, very little could be done in the World without US agreement. However, at the detailed level, this analysis caused France and Britain to react very differently: France decided that the US wasn’t to be trusted and adopted a more independent foreign policy; Britain, on the other hand, decided to link its foreign policy to that of the US. This, then, perhaps accounts for Britain’s idiotic involvement in Iraq. The defence of The Falklands only just survived US opposition (see Josh February 12th 2003 “Good Intelligence” and August 6th 2004 “Telling All”)* and Margaret Thatcher had her dramatic victory in a popular war. Bliar must have thought (correctly) that, if all went well, a successful democratisation of Iraq would have been popular in this country. To have achieved it in conjunction with the US would have been a big plus. However, it didn’t work like that; it was a very high risk strategy that has buggered his legacy beyond all repair. This brings us to the nub: it’s all a matter of judgement. If one is going to war, one has to do it only because there is no alternative and/or because there is a very high chance of success; that means political, as well as military, success. Good judgement is a prerequisite in a PM and Blair lacks it. His massive mistake cannot be undone; you cannot undo a war and Iraq is indubitably a worse place now than it was under Saddam Hussein, even given that he was a evil gangster/dictator. There is intermittent electrical power, there’s reduced fuel output, and unemployment is rife. This is besides the terrible internecine sectarian and random killings. The plight of women is dire now that the religious nuts have got so much influence on how people behave. Under Saddam, Iraq was a secular state; now it’s well on the way to becoming, in large part, a fundamentalist Islamic one: a new Taliban-Afghanistan, if you will. (And pissing about with Iraq has ruined Afghanistan, by taking the eye off the ball, too.) The Poll Tax was Margaret Thatcher’s big mistake but it was relatively easily undone, even though she clung to it for far too long. Blair can’t do much now. Following on from yesterday’s clear attempt by Kenneth Adelman to blame Bliar for the mess in Iraq, it has just been announced that Blair is to be involved in the Washington enquiry about what to do next in Iraq. Is this to make him the fall-guy for Bush, I wonder? Or will he be able to persuade the US to do something sensible about Iraq, besides sacking Rumsfeld. The problem is, of course, that I wouldn’t start from here… * In reading these earlier blogs, please take careful note that Josh is a trainee ironist. [Ed.] Friday, November 10, 2006
So it’s all Bliar’s fault… In the wake of the mid-term election results from the US, it is interesting to note the reaction of Kenneth Adelman, “…a lifelong hawk and neocon icon…” According to this article, in Monday 6th November’s Grauniad [Adelman], too, is scathing about administration incompetence and Mr Bush’s security advisers - “these are not serious people…"Bloody hell! He’s dead right: if they’d been serious, they’d have invaded Burma instead and restored democracy there. Burma is a naturally democratic country and the last elections there (1989/90) were trumped by the army. Now there’s a place where the general populace would have danced in the street to welcome a UN or US invasion. To understand why the "wrong" country was chosen, we only have to ask: where’s Burma’s oil and how did the country humiliate Bush Senior? Adelman is one of the simplistic PNAC idiots, too. I read an article this morning quoting him as saying that it was all Tony Blair’s fault for not pointing out the many errors being made by the Bush camp over Iraq, post-invasion. I haven’t been able to find the article but my memory isn’t playing tricks: I watched Adelman being interviewed by Jon Snow on Channel Four’s News at Seven last night and he said the same old nonsense. Adelman said that it was sometimes necessary to hit an American with a bit of “two by four” - I’m not completely sure he was being figurative (that should have been “four by two” for Airstrip One readers) - to get his attention. Can you imagine our Tony being that pushy? And with the closed minds of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney & Co opposite, would he have got anywhere? What still puzzles me is why Bliar got involved in the first place. As the whole strategy falls apart, we’re all saying “I told you so”. (See Josh ad nauseam, going back to before the invasion). As the Irishman said: “I wouldn’t start from here”. So, laying the blame for the tragedy on Bliar is unfair; we can blame him for getting Airstrip One involved and that’s a subject about which I’ve got a lot more to say. It won’t be more than a few days before I say it. |