The Time of London has always been a place of stalwart recognition of western values.
The fellow wanderers on the path from Runnymede in 1215 to Philadelphia in 1776 have recognized as this writer documents, a history and future which at base, seemed on both sides of the atlantic to be a given.
However, the grating insouciance and blase criticims which began about the time of the Pershing deployment plans, and graduated to 'amerika' the land of fascism, added to the spiritual belt sanding that islamism internal to british society has been undergoing seems to have reached a point, if Mr. Parrish is correct, that Melanie Phillips has warned over many, many times.
Of course, the circular gestalt involved in this disease, besides being historically ignorant, which I will come to in a bit, dismisses those warnings because they come from, a right wing nut of uber dimension, a hysterical clanger of imaginary bells, and we all know why shhhhhhhh, she is JEWISH - now let's enjoy the club and go back to our single malt, eh?
Mr.Parrish of Great Britain, and the Times of London, basically has said 'we' (the honorable protectors of western civ, the brits) aren't really sure we're going to choose sides with America any more because fundamentally we're not so sure any longer we're on the same side.
What evidence is there for that, that America has abandoned the good side?
For the first time, and rather late in my life, I am beginning to wonder. The negative side of the scales, for so long obdurately refusing to dip, has been piling ever higher over the years. Carbon emissions and a destructive attitude towards the campaign against global warming, protectionism, Guantanamo, sponsorship of intransigence in Israel, “rendition”, torture, support for dreadful regimes in Latin America . . . and of course most recently that monster of an issue: Iraq.......No, it’s not Iraq, but Iran that is pushing me towards a complete reassessment of the moral relativities. On Thursday, little-reported here, US forces stormed Iranian offices in the Kurdish part of Iraq and, to the fury of the Kurdish security forces, tore down the Iranian flag, and seized and took away five Iranian officials. No doubt confused and conflicting claims will now follow as to whether these premises were above board, or housed people hostile to the US presence in Iraq. We may never know. What we can be sure of is that this is not the way to behave in the most ordered and autonomous part of Iraq unless Washington has come to the settled conclusion that Iran is central to the violence and insurrection in Iraq, and — the “and” is important — that America is now ready to confront Iran directly.
Like Anatole Kaletsky on these pages, I am deeply unsettled by Washington’s perspective on the region, obediently marketed by Tony Blair as a looming stand-off between an “arc of moderation” (Saudi Arabia — don’t laugh — Pakistan and other more moderate Middle Eastern powers) and an axis of evil, dominated by Iran. Unlike Anatole, I had until recently supposed it inconceivable that this was a war the United States could really want. I thought rumours that Israel might be willing to strike, in part as proxy for the United States, fanciful.
But I am beginning to wonder. To my own internal dismay, the best argument I can find for the unlikelihood of such a turn of events is that George W. Bush cannot (surely?) imagine he could get away with it, and win. I am no longer confident that any principled objection to raising the stakes and polarising the region would be sufficient to stop the White House in its tracks. Only fear of failure might. I hope it will.
What a stupid compendium of gobbedlygook thinking!!
1 comment:
Holger,
I put you on our blogroll too. I can't read your stuff, obviously, because I don't speak your language, but hopefully it will help you.
If you ever want to translate some stuff and submit it, I will publish it, as long as its not racist or a call for violence.
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