political commentator * author * publisher * bookseller * radio presenter * blogger * Conservative candidate * former lobbyist * Jack Russell owner * West Ham United fanatic * Email iain AT iaindale DOT com
Friday, April 20, 2007
First Post Says Blair to Resign on May 9th
The First Post reckons Blair will go on May 9th, triggering a leadership contest which will end on June 30th.
46 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Careful Ian. He can resign the labour leadership BEFORE he resigns the premiership. My guess is that he will announce on the 2nd to take the pain away from the election results.
This timing has always been likely. Then the new PM gets a go at addressing Parliament before the long holiday gives him an opportunity to get used to the new role. It's kind of obvious really.
And it's just after power-sharing is restored in Northern Ireland, which has always's been a big part of Blair's premiership. That's what made me think the 9th originally.
the people I feel sorry for are those living either side of Blair towers in Connaught Square (aka Little Beiruit) in London. their new neighbour is a proven liar who wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the face, has consistently failed and duped the gullible electorate for the past decade, has led us into an illegal, unecessary and unsuccessful war and thus has the blood of British service men and women on his hands because he couldn't say 'No' to Bush and wouldn't recognise the latter as one of the worst Presidents of all timeand presided over one of themore disastrous governments of modern times.His legacy should be sackcloth and ashes, but will surely be He is also clearly implicated in the 'cash for honours' scam but may wriggle free with the help of m'learned friends.. His wife is a hideous, greedy free-loading harridan masquerading as a 'human rights' lawyer (although I wonder who would have her as a client now?). Woops - there goes the neighbourhood. Just the sort of person you want next door to your £3m mansion in one of London's more faded backwaters. Will his new Connaught Sq chums get a council tax rebate on the grounds of diminished amenity? Or should we introduce a 'Tony's Law' to publicise the whereabouts of failed and dishonest ex-politicians? Would you want your child to live in proximity to such a family? I think not ...
Well Gordy's going to have a great starting point as PM: not only will the SNP most likely win a majority in Scotland, but the Labour candidate for Anglesey last night on S4C ruled out any form of coalition whatsoever, which means that the next Assembly government will be a "rainbow" coalition after all. Tony must be really glad he decided to bail out now instead of doing the full term.
What about a Tory mp trying to make changes in the FOI , how to lose Tory votes in the North, good idea mr mp,you just lost mine ,we should be going forwards not backwards but I guess NuCon = NuLab .
I think that Blair will go down as the WORST PM of the modern age. So much promise , so much unfulfilled. As far as i'm concerned, the 'hand of history' will mark him with the 'finger of FU'. The history books will not be kind- and rightly so. He can't go soon enough.
Anonymous - Surely it doesn't matter what Blair has announced regarding no referendum. Despite what he and Cherie believe in their heart of hearts. he is not a constitutional dictator. Britain is not his fiefdom.
I think we're over due for a putsch. In fact, there should have been a coup d'état when our sailors and marines were captured. I am hoping there still will be.
Colin, Colin, Colin, please try to be a little more sophisticated in your thinking. George Bush and the American military did not need our help. He appreciated it, as he appreciated the Aussies' help and all the other members of the Coalition of the Willing, but America has the money, the manpower and the equipment to have gone it alone. But this notion that Blair "couldn't say no to Bush" is so infantile and simplistic. As are all the playground comments about "Bush's poodle".
Blair went in for his own glory and to elevate his own presence on the international stage. Blair is an egomaniac - or hadn't you noticed? Always pushing himself to the front.
I did enjoy the rest of your post with my breakfast tea, though. "Ooops! There goes the neighbourhood!" V good!
As there is no such thing as international law (who makes these mythical international laws, by the way? I don't even know the names of my elected representatives! What do you mean, there aren't any?)
Blair certainly leaves us with an ancient democracy in shreds and tatters and a country being physically destroyed to provide living accommodation for unwanted "immigrants", including a water shortage to accommodate several million more loo flushes a day, a million more showers, several million more cups of tea or coffee.
A resignation immediately after 3rd Mya? Yes, of course! No, not Blair, although no doubt he will.
I mean that, unless the allegedly super-popular Cameron delivers truly enormous Tory gains outside the South East (where the Tories already hold most of the seats anyway, so who cares?), then his super-popularity will be exposed as the media froth that it is, his position will thus become untenable, and he will have no honourable or credible option except to resign.
To some extent the longer it takes the more we can enjoy the prospect of the hideous greedy freeloading harridan and the weak lickspittle slinking out of Downing Street. The actuality is never as good as the anticipation.
Sir, It has been said, on many occasions, that President Bush would not wish to leave major problems from his presidency for a successor to resolve. Contrast this, if you will, with the blithe indifference shown in this regard by our current Prime Minister. The man is a disgrace.
"When did you last hear a speech that good? Tony Blair's epideictic performance at the Labour Party conference last year won admiration even from his foes, but by and large the digital age is cool to rhetoric and, as the enthronement of the blogger suggests, prizes incoherent impulse over the Ciceronian arts of the exordium and the peroration." [Today's Guardian]
Verity, do try to be a little less condescending. Please. If you read my post again you'll realise that I did not suggest that Bush in any way 'needed' the help of British forces. (And, incidentally, I think the word 'appreciate' when used in the US, along with their use of 'Sir' is the closest they ever get to irony ...). No, Blair went in feet-first, a leader who at that time was almost totally inexperienced in foreign policy and the wiles of the US administration (and who hasn't really learned much since) - and I believe he was emotionally and politically incapable of saying 'No'. Heaven knows, he had enough opportunities. True , it would have taken courage on his part, something with which he is not over-endowed.But no, the dear boy blundered on and made the biggest single mistake of his political career.
I think that there is a lot of truth in what you say - that at that stage in his premiership he was lookimng for something to advance his status on the international stage. But I also think that he found himself in too deep too soon, a result of inexperience and ignorance, which is why he had to confect the 'dogy dossier' and so on to convince his own back-bencher troops and a sceptical electorate.
The real and lasting problem is taht it has set US-UK relations back years and hardened a latent anti-American streak in this country and elsewhere in Europe.
Colin, dripping with notional superiority, clucks that the Americans don't understand irony. Can I point you to Gore Vidal? William Buckley, Jr? Thomas Sowell? There are dozens if not hundreds of practitioners of the fine art of irony in the United States.
You wrote that Blair was unable to say 'no' to Mr Bush. But Mr Bush did not ask him to join in. Blair, ever the eager puppy when the cameras are lined up in the Rose Garden, volunteered.
Yes, I agree, he was inexperienced in international affairs and he is a very ignorant man - I believe he boasts that he has never read a history book because he "hates history". Who would have guessed? A prime minister who doesn't know the history of his own country or Western civilisation.
That he didn't ask for the provenance of the dodgy dossier illuminates his inexperience and his eagerness to assume an international role, come what may. It is unthinkable that the head of a government would not have asked for the provenance of that document.
I wholly concur that his international ineptitude has hardened a rather vicious anti-American streak in Britain. Especially, it has given the left a hook on which to hang their hat.
Colin, Colin, Colin, please try to be a little more sophisticated in your thinking. George Bush and the American military did not need our help.
Hogwash.
Because Rumsfeld and Bush spent so long trying to bribe Turkey with $6 bn to let them invade Iraq from Turkey they had their heavy armour at sea when it was decided to invade the traditional route from the Gulf and through Basra.
With the Turks being difficult the US 4th Infantry Division was stuck at sea and it was British Armour that provided the critical mass for the invasion force
You really want to claim that NITED KINGDOM
TROOPS: 42,000 Including 4000 Royal Marines and two battalions of the Parachute Regiment.
TANKS: 150 Challenger tanks and self-propelled guns as well as Warrior armoured personnel carriers.
SHIPS: 16 Including the carrier HMS Ark Royal, helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, destroyers HMS Liverpool, Edinburgh, Cardiff and York, the frigates HMS Marlborough and Cumberland, a cruise missile sub and mine sweepers.
AIRCRAFT: 120 Including 75 Tornado fighter-bombers, Jaguar and Harrier jets, tankers and reconnaissance aircraft. Hercules and Globemaster aircraft will be used but are not part of the above figure.
had no impact.....well then why is the main disaster due to the fact that TOO FEW troops were sent ?
Can I point you to Gore Vidal? William Buckley, Jr? Thomas Sowell? There are dozens if not hundreds of practitioners of the fine art of irony in the United States.
That is 3 Americans of 300 million. Most Americans are bamboozled by irony, and Gore Vidal spent so long living in Europe he's hardly American
I did not say our troops and equipment had no impact and I wouldn't be so stupid as to make such a claim.
I am saying that America had the resources to go it alone. It gave Mr Bush international legitimacy to have another powerful (until the latest debacle) military nation at his side; especially as Australia is on the team as well.
What I am saying is, America could have gone it alone. I am equally certain that Mr Bush welcomed the participation of Britain and Oz.
George Bush and the American military did not need our help. He appreciated it, as he appreciated the Aussies' help
Bush went to Yale - he knows 45.000 soldiers > 2000 soldiers and that is why Britain and Australia are rarely compared by sane Americans.
I really wish the US could have done things without the British, but the fact is they have been very unsuccessful even with the British.....anybody who wasn't a coke-head would have seen you needed an Iraqi Army but Bremer was probably freebasing
I am saying that America had the resources to go it alone
NO it did not.
If Rumsfeld had done his job properly yes but the US Army is too small...it needs around 800.000 men excluding women.
The 4th Infantry Division was at sea with 40 ships and could not party - the most advanced US Infantry Division was sailing in the Med
If there had been Russian generals and the Iraqis had dug in around Basra they could have choked off the invasion force which was if you recall wearing biochem suits
It gave Mr Bush international legitimacy to have another powerful (until the latest debacle)
Which debacle ? Oh you mean squint-eyed pilots that cannot identify orange panels ?
Or do you mean the Us trrops kidnapped in their own base by terrorists wearing Us uniforms who they killed them in a remote location ?
Or do you mean shooting down a CIA Black Hawk helicopter being controlled by the very same AWACS plane that vectored an F-15 to destroy the Black Hawk ?
Do we really need to compare notes on incompetence ? I am ready to concede the US lead
The international community could have raised an adequate force but, as usual, they backed down. They now bear a heavy responsibility for their negligence which they are wilfully ignoring.
Anonymous 6:27 who talks Trot rubbish about "the international communitiy". Personally, "the international community" is not to be trusted, most of them being African thugs, S American thugs, Arab thugs and EU conmen.
Mr Bush wisely chose to limit involvement to the Anglosphere.
The "latest debacle" I was referring to was Britain allowing its sailors and marines to be kidnapped from international waters and made to play an all-singing, all-dancing PR role for President Amireallymad. And, of course, the obscenity of Margaret Beckett being the British Foreign Secretary is a debacle in a category all by itself.
Something travelling under the highly unusual name of Anonymous 8:29 pm opines: This government got the sailors back safe and sound with no deals done - surely they deserve some credit for that!
No. They deserve horrific blame for allowing it to happen. They deserve horrific and shameful blame for playing along with Iran and having ill-schooled troops that they were more like circus performers than military personnel; they deserve a slap across the chops with a wet fish, not that Margaret Beckett would know the difference, for tolerating this circumstance for one day.
Britain bending the knee to primitives like Iran and you think Blair's dolts deserve credit for not doing deals?
Have you read any history in your tiny life? There should have been a deal done.
The explanation of the deal should have been as follows: "We will not take your refining facility out and, indeed, anything else we feel like, including your capital city and all of its population, provided our people board a plane back to Britain within 30 minutes. They will be wearing the uniforms of HM Royal Navy and HM Royal Marines. As they board their plane back, your officers, such as they are, will salute the Union Jack. Otherwise, have a nice life. Short as it may be."
Verity, I know that I am going to regret this, but there are authentically conservative traditions such as High Toryism in the United Kingdom and the Old Commonwealth, paleoconservatism and Agrarianism in the United States, Gaullism and French monarchism, Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism, and so forth.
These traditions rightly reject the theory of the perfectibility of human nature by its own efforts alone and in this life alone. That rejection, so staggeringly vindicated in the twentieth (as in every previous) century, is perhaps the most important conservative insight of all. Have you attended to it?
In other words, have you, with everything thus entailed, accepted the doctrine of Original Sin, always denied outright in Judaism, and always at least downplayed to the same practical effect in the Liberal Protestantism that, through the reception of neo-orthodoxy in popular Protestantism, and through the secularisation of much Catholic thought and practice after (but not because of) the Second Vatican Council, has so heavily influenced neoconservatism?
No one who accepted that doctrine (the pioneers of the Labour Movement were among those who did), and thus the whole Augustinian patrimony of the West to which it is integral, could possibly have any part in the purely human attempts to make the world anew advocated by the likes of the American Enterprise Institute or the Project for the New American Century. In a word, neoconservatism.
But, of course, the roots of neoconservatism are not in the authentically conservative traditions, with their searing critiques of capitalism in all its decadence, libertinism, philistinism and warmongering.
Indeed, those roots are not in any mainstream political tradition anywhere on earth. Rather, they are on the lunatic fringes of lunatic fringes: in Max Shachtman's attempts to make Trotskyism Americanist, and in Leo Strauss's and Ayn Rand's fulfilment of Huey Long's prediction that America would produce her own Fascism, but would call it anti-Fascism.
Thankfully, this whole wretched movement is now becoming what it ought always to have been: a peculiarity of pub bores and pubescent boys. Which are you, Verity? I have always suspected you of being both.
Oh, and there is nothing "primitive" about Iranians. You would have have known that, if you had "read any history in your tiny life".
David Lindsay - another man who is frightened of women and hungers to put us down. I am getting tired of you and Mike abusing me because I'm a woman. Both of you are too cowardly to confront other men, even though it's only on cyberspace and they wouldn't hit you.
Am I a pub bore? Well, I've been in a pub a couple of times in my life - probably around five times in all - but don't really like them.
Lindsay writes: "In other words, have you, with everything thus entailed, accepted the doctrine of Original Sin," ...
Wha'??
...and then goes on to say, "always denied outright in Judaism, and always at least downplayed to the same practical effect in the Liberal Protestantism that, through the reception of neo-orthodoxy in popular Protestantism, and through the secularisation of much Catholic thought and practice after (but not because of) the Second Vatican Council, has so heavily influenced neoconservatism?
What is this? Evangelists' Corner?
BTW, Iranians are assuredly the most advanced of all Muslims, but they still adhere to a primitive warrior cult that needs to be reformed or destroyed.
Well, that last remark says it all. I assume that you have not read Peter Hitchens's excellent dispatch from Iran in this morning's Mail on Sunday? You really should.
And it is of course typically neocon, and that for the reasons given, to deny the classically Christian roots of authentically conservative traditions, as well as the specifically theological roots of neoconservatism itself, as I outlined them. Afraid that you might have to read a book, Verity?
Neoconservatism's roots are in Max Shachtman's Americanist Trotskyism; in Leo Strauss's and Ayn Rand's Americo-Fascism; in Judaism's denial of Original Sin, its unfulfilled Messianic hope and expectation (a key to understanding the intellectual history of the West, at least), and the relative respectability within it of belief in religion but not in God; in a form of Zionism so fanatical that American citizens who promoted it used to be banned from entering Israel (and Britain); in a stock Irish-American bar-room rant against Britain and against real or perceived Anglophilia within the WASP elite; in an initially Canadian (but now also British, Australian and New Zealand) inferiortity complex in relation both to being subjects of the Crown and to being products of the Keynes-Beveridge settlement; in the impact of the 1960s counter-culture on much Catholic thought and practice after (though not because of) Vatican II; and in the popular reception of Barthian neo-orthodoxy (with its fundamental capitulation to Biblical "criticism") within the "mainline" Protestant churches.
Notably, those roots are not in Evangelical Protestantism, to which neoconservatism is not ideologically related, just as, say, Irish Republicanism is not ideologically related to Catholicism. Rather, just as many devout Catholics have been cajoled or deceived into supporting Irish Republicanism despite its Jacobin and Marxist roots and character, so likewise many Evangelical Protestants have been cajoled or deceived into supporting neoconservatism despite its roots and character being as described above.
And I say again, nothing is less conservative than trying to remake the world anew, even by force of arms, according to some blueprint dreamt up in a university library or a literary salon. Therefore, nothing is less conservative than neoconservatism.
Sorry about the length, but Verity, over to you. Answer each and every one of these points, or shut the hell up until you know what you are talking about.
46 comments:
Careful Ian. He can resign the labour leadership BEFORE he resigns the premiership. My guess is that he will announce on the 2nd to take the pain away from the election results.
"The results will be announced... probably on June 30. Gordon Brown would then go the palace..."
Great talking about raining on my parade. Why does it have to choose my birthday, for the non-event of the year.
Aha I suggested the 9th a few days ago on my own blog...
This timing has always been likely. Then the new PM gets a go at addressing Parliament before the long holiday gives him an opportunity to get used to the new role. It's kind of obvious really.
And it's just after power-sharing is restored in Northern Ireland, which has always's been a big part of Blair's premiership. That's what made me think the 9th originally.
the people I feel sorry for are those living either side of Blair towers in Connaught Square (aka Little Beiruit) in London. their new neighbour is a proven liar who wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the face, has consistently failed and duped the gullible electorate for the past decade, has led us into an illegal, unecessary and unsuccessful war and thus has the blood of British service men and women on his hands because he couldn't say 'No' to Bush and wouldn't recognise the latter as one of the worst Presidents of all timeand presided over one of themore disastrous governments of modern times.His legacy should be sackcloth and ashes, but will surely be He is also clearly implicated in the 'cash for honours' scam but may wriggle free with the help of m'learned friends.. His wife is a hideous, greedy free-loading harridan masquerading as a 'human rights' lawyer (although I wonder who would have her as a client now?).
Woops - there goes the neighbourhood. Just the sort of person you want next door to your £3m mansion in one of London's more faded backwaters. Will his new Connaught Sq chums get a council tax rebate on the grounds of diminished amenity? Or should we introduce a 'Tony's Law' to publicise the whereabouts of failed and dishonest ex-politicians? Would you want your child to live in proximity to such a family? I think not ...
And the liar has announced NO referendum on the EU constition.
What a dispicable LIAR this man is!
We will be well rid of him! but he leaves us with what?? A load of debt & an illegal war to clear up! Must be the worst legacy in modern history.
Well Gordy's going to have a great starting point as PM: not only will the SNP most likely win a majority in Scotland, but the Labour candidate for Anglesey last night on S4C ruled out any form of coalition whatsoever, which means that the next Assembly government will be a "rainbow" coalition after all. Tony must be really glad he decided to bail out now instead of doing the full term.
not only will the SNP most likely win a majority in Scotland
Oops! I meant "become the biggest party" of course.
tony does his ten years as any thrall to decimalisation would
thanks goodness we had decimalisation otherwise he might have gone for 12 years ...mind you he coul have gone after 7
Why have you joined the 'Johnson for deputy leader' on Facebook Iain? Looking for a campaign manager role again?
What about a Tory mp trying to make changes in the FOI , how to lose Tory votes in the North, good idea mr mp,you just lost mine ,we should be going forwards not backwards but I guess NuCon = NuLab .
I think that Blair will go down as the WORST PM of the modern age. So much promise , so much unfulfilled. As far as i'm concerned, the 'hand of history' will mark him with the 'finger of FU'. The history books will not be kind- and rightly so. He can't go soon enough.
Simon, did you mean promised rather than promise?
Pedant-Yep, a typo that! I'm too fast for me own good!
I think David Lammy should run against Gordon so we can see how racist Labour really is
I think David Lammy should run against Gordon so we can see how racist Labour really is ~ Anonymous @ 1.13
This is why I hate annonymous posting.
Care to elaborate?
Careful, Iain, again.
Remember chapter 39 of the Spinmeister's Manual is entitled "leaking false information to create a surprise".
Anonymous - Surely it doesn't matter what Blair has announced regarding no referendum. Despite what he and Cherie believe in their heart of hearts. he is not a constitutional dictator. Britain is not his fiefdom.
I think we're over due for a putsch. In fact, there should have been a coup d'état when our sailors and marines were captured. I am hoping there still will be.
Colin, Colin, Colin, please try to be a little more sophisticated in your thinking. George Bush and the American military did not need our help. He appreciated it, as he appreciated the Aussies' help and all the other members of the Coalition of the Willing, but America has the money, the manpower and the equipment to have gone it alone. But this notion that Blair "couldn't say no to Bush" is so infantile and simplistic. As are all the playground comments about "Bush's poodle".
Blair went in for his own glory and to elevate his own presence on the international stage. Blair is an egomaniac - or hadn't you noticed? Always pushing himself to the front.
I did enjoy the rest of your post with my breakfast tea, though. "Ooops! There goes the neighbourhood!" V good!
As there is no such thing as international law (who makes these mythical international laws, by the way? I don't even know the names of my elected representatives! What do you mean, there aren't any?)
Blair certainly leaves us with an ancient democracy in shreds and tatters and a country being physically destroyed to provide living accommodation for unwanted "immigrants", including a water shortage to accommodate several million more loo flushes a day, a million more showers, several million more cups of tea or coffee.
The International Herald Tribune believes it will be the end of June after he has presented the new EU treaty to mark his EU legacy:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/20/europe/EU-POL-Britain-EU.php
A resignation immediately after 3rd Mya? Yes, of course! No, not Blair, although no doubt he will.
I mean that, unless the allegedly super-popular Cameron delivers truly enormous Tory gains outside the South East (where the Tories already hold most of the seats anyway, so who cares?), then his super-popularity will be exposed as the media froth that it is, his position will thus become untenable, and he will have no honourable or credible option except to resign.
To some extent the longer it takes the more we can enjoy the prospect of the hideous greedy freeloading harridan and the weak lickspittle slinking out of Downing Street. The actuality is never as good as the anticipation.
Sir,
It has been said, on many occasions, that President Bush would not wish to leave major problems from his presidency for a successor to resolve. Contrast this, if you will, with the blithe indifference shown in this regard by our current Prime Minister. The man is a disgrace.
Clearly Simon Schama reads Iain Dale -
"When did you last hear a speech that good? Tony Blair's epideictic performance at the Labour Party conference last year won admiration even from his foes, but by and large the digital age is cool to rhetoric and, as the enthronement of the blogger suggests, prizes incoherent impulse over the Ciceronian arts of the exordium and the peroration." [Today's Guardian]
Perhaps he would like to become London Mayor ?
Yates file handed to CPS...
Cash-for-honours climax, and Dale and Fawkes are down the rub-a-dub...
Co-incidence, or good media management ?
Verity, do try to be a little less condescending. Please. If you read my post again you'll realise that I did not suggest that Bush in any way 'needed' the help of British forces. (And, incidentally, I think the word 'appreciate' when used in the US, along with their use of 'Sir' is the closest they ever get to irony ...). No, Blair went in feet-first, a leader who at that time was almost totally inexperienced in foreign policy and the wiles of the US administration (and who hasn't really learned much since) - and I believe he was emotionally and politically incapable of saying 'No'. Heaven knows, he had enough opportunities. True , it would have taken courage on his part, something with which he is not over-endowed.But no, the dear boy blundered on and made the biggest single mistake of his political career.
I think that there is a lot of truth in what you say - that at that stage in his premiership he was lookimng for something to advance his status on the international stage. But I also think that he found himself in too deep too soon, a result of inexperience and ignorance, which is why he had to confect the 'dogy dossier' and so on to convince his own back-bencher troops and a sceptical electorate.
The real and lasting problem is taht it has set US-UK relations back years and hardened a latent anti-American streak in this country and elsewhere in Europe.
"Verity, do try to be a little less condescending."
This is rather like asking a bear not to shit in the woods. A lovely idea, but that's what bears do..
Do bears *actually* shit in the woods?
What is the evidence for this?
Who's to say they don't shit on the plains and grassland too?
Anyway, there aren't any bears "shitting in the woods" over here. Badgers and foxes shit in the woods in Britain, but not bears.
Stupid saying. I'm off to have a shit in the woods.
Yawn. I think everyone working in Parliament has known the date for ages.
Colin, dripping with notional superiority, clucks that the Americans don't understand irony. Can I point you to Gore Vidal? William Buckley, Jr? Thomas Sowell? There are dozens if not hundreds of practitioners of the fine art of irony in the United States.
You wrote that Blair was unable to say 'no' to Mr Bush. But Mr Bush did not ask him to join in. Blair, ever the eager puppy when the cameras are lined up in the Rose Garden, volunteered.
Yes, I agree, he was inexperienced in international affairs and he is a very ignorant man - I believe he boasts that he has never read a history book because he "hates history". Who would have guessed? A prime minister who doesn't know the history of his own country or Western civilisation.
That he didn't ask for the provenance of the dodgy dossier illuminates his inexperience and his eagerness to assume an international role, come what may. It is unthinkable that the head of a government would not have asked for the provenance of that document.
I wholly concur that his international ineptitude has hardened a rather vicious anti-American streak in Britain. Especially, it has given the left a hook on which to hang their hat.
Colin, Colin, Colin, please try to be a little more sophisticated in your thinking. George Bush and the American military did not need our help.
Hogwash.
Because Rumsfeld and Bush spent so long trying to bribe Turkey with $6 bn to let them invade Iraq from Turkey they had their heavy armour at sea when it was decided to invade the traditional route from the Gulf and through Basra.
With the Turks being difficult the US 4th Infantry Division was stuck at sea and it was British Armour that provided the critical mass for the invasion force
You really want to claim that
NITED KINGDOM
TROOPS: 42,000 Including 4000 Royal Marines and two battalions of the Parachute Regiment.
TANKS: 150 Challenger tanks and self-propelled guns as well as Warrior armoured personnel carriers.
SHIPS: 16 Including the carrier HMS Ark Royal, helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, destroyers HMS Liverpool, Edinburgh, Cardiff and York, the frigates HMS Marlborough and Cumberland, a cruise missile sub and mine sweepers.
AIRCRAFT: 120 Including 75 Tornado fighter-bombers, Jaguar and Harrier jets, tankers and reconnaissance aircraft. Hercules and Globemaster aircraft will be used but are not part of the above figure.
had no impact.....well then why is the main disaster due to the fact that TOO FEW troops were sent ?
Can I point you to Gore Vidal? William Buckley, Jr? Thomas Sowell? There are dozens if not hundreds of practitioners of the fine art of irony in the United States.
That is 3 Americans of 300 million. Most Americans are bamboozled by irony, and Gore Vidal spent so long living in Europe he's hardly American
I did not say our troops and equipment had no impact and I wouldn't be so stupid as to make such a claim.
I am saying that America had the resources to go it alone. It gave Mr Bush international legitimacy to have another powerful (until the latest debacle) military nation at his side; especially as Australia is on the team as well.
What I am saying is, America could have gone it alone. I am equally certain that Mr Bush welcomed the participation of Britain and Oz.
George Bush and the American military did not need our help. He appreciated it, as he appreciated the Aussies' help
Bush went to Yale - he knows 45.000 soldiers > 2000 soldiers and that is why Britain and Australia are rarely compared by sane Americans.
I really wish the US could have done things without the British, but the fact is they have been very unsuccessful even with the British.....anybody who wasn't a coke-head would have seen you needed an Iraqi Army but Bremer was probably freebasing
I am saying that America had the resources to go it alone
NO it did not.
If Rumsfeld had done his job properly yes but the US Army is too small...it needs around 800.000 men excluding women.
The 4th Infantry Division was at sea with 40 ships and could not party - the most advanced US Infantry Division was sailing in the Med
If there had been Russian generals and the Iraqis had dug in around Basra they could have choked off the invasion force which was if you recall wearing biochem suits
It gave Mr Bush international legitimacy to have another powerful (until the latest debacle)
Which debacle ? Oh you mean squint-eyed pilots that cannot identify orange panels ?
Or do you mean the Us trrops kidnapped in their own base by terrorists wearing Us uniforms who they killed them in a remote location ?
Or do you mean shooting down a CIA Black Hawk helicopter being controlled by the very same AWACS plane that vectored an F-15 to destroy the Black Hawk ?
Do we really need to compare notes on incompetence ? I am ready to concede the US lead
The international community could have raised an adequate force but, as usual, they backed down. They now bear a heavy responsibility for their negligence which they are wilfully ignoring.
Anonymous 6:27 who talks Trot rubbish about "the international communitiy". Personally, "the international community" is not to be trusted, most of them being African thugs, S American thugs, Arab thugs and EU conmen.
Mr Bush wisely chose to limit involvement to the Anglosphere.
The "latest debacle" I was referring to was Britain allowing its sailors and marines to be kidnapped from international waters and made to play an all-singing, all-dancing PR role for President Amireallymad. And, of course, the obscenity of Margaret Beckett being the British Foreign Secretary is a debacle in a category all by itself.
verity
This government got the sailors back safe and sound with no deals done - surely they deserve some credit for that!
Something travelling under the highly unusual name of Anonymous 8:29 pm opines: This government got the sailors back safe and sound with no deals done - surely they deserve some credit for that!
No. They deserve horrific blame for allowing it to happen. They deserve horrific and shameful blame for playing along with Iran and having ill-schooled troops that they were more like circus performers than military personnel; they deserve a slap across the chops with a wet fish, not that Margaret Beckett would know the difference, for tolerating this circumstance for one day.
Britain bending the knee to primitives like Iran and you think Blair's dolts deserve credit for not doing deals?
Have you read any history in your tiny life? There should have been a deal done.
The explanation of the deal should have been as follows: "We will not take your refining facility out and, indeed, anything else we feel like, including your capital city and all of its population, provided our people board a plane back to Britain within 30 minutes. They will be wearing the uniforms of HM Royal Navy and HM Royal Marines. As they board their plane back, your officers, such as they are, will salute the Union Jack. Otherwise, have a nice life. Short as it may be."
Verity, I know that I am going to regret this, but there are authentically conservative traditions such as High Toryism in the United Kingdom and the Old Commonwealth, paleoconservatism and Agrarianism in the United States, Gaullism and French monarchism, Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism, and so forth.
These traditions rightly reject the theory of the perfectibility of human nature by its own efforts alone and in this life alone. That rejection, so staggeringly vindicated in the twentieth (as in every previous) century, is perhaps the most important conservative insight of all. Have you attended to it?
In other words, have you, with everything thus entailed, accepted the doctrine of Original Sin, always denied outright in Judaism, and always at least downplayed to the same practical effect in the Liberal Protestantism that, through the reception of neo-orthodoxy in popular Protestantism, and through the secularisation of much Catholic thought and practice after (but not because of) the Second Vatican Council, has so heavily influenced neoconservatism?
No one who accepted that doctrine (the pioneers of the Labour Movement were among those who did), and thus the whole Augustinian patrimony of the West to which it is integral, could possibly have any part in the purely human attempts to make the world anew advocated by the likes of the American Enterprise Institute or the Project for the New American Century. In a word, neoconservatism.
But, of course, the roots of neoconservatism are not in the authentically conservative traditions, with their searing critiques of capitalism in all its decadence, libertinism, philistinism and warmongering.
Indeed, those roots are not in any mainstream political tradition anywhere on earth. Rather, they are on the lunatic fringes of lunatic fringes: in Max Shachtman's attempts to make Trotskyism Americanist, and in Leo Strauss's and Ayn Rand's fulfilment of Huey Long's prediction that America would produce her own Fascism, but would call it anti-Fascism.
Thankfully, this whole wretched movement is now becoming what it ought always to have been: a peculiarity of pub bores and pubescent boys. Which are you, Verity? I have always suspected you of being both.
Oh, and there is nothing "primitive" about Iranians. You would have have known that, if you had "read any history in your tiny life".
David Lindsay - another man who is frightened of women and hungers to put us down. I am getting tired of you and Mike abusing me because I'm a woman. Both of you are too cowardly to confront other men, even though it's only on cyberspace and they wouldn't hit you.
Am I a pub bore? Well, I've been in a pub a couple of times in my life - probably around five times in all - but don't really like them.
Lindsay writes: "In other words, have you, with everything thus entailed, accepted the doctrine of Original Sin," ...
Wha'??
...and then goes on to say, "always denied outright in Judaism, and always at least downplayed to the same practical effect in the Liberal Protestantism that, through the reception of neo-orthodoxy in popular Protestantism, and through the secularisation of much Catholic thought and practice after (but not because of) the Second Vatican Council, has so heavily influenced neoconservatism?
What is this? Evangelists' Corner?
BTW, Iranians are assuredly the most advanced of all Muslims, but they still adhere to a primitive warrior cult that needs to be reformed or destroyed.
Well, that last remark says it all. I assume that you have not read Peter Hitchens's excellent dispatch from Iran in this morning's Mail on Sunday? You really should.
And it is of course typically neocon, and that for the reasons given, to deny the classically Christian roots of authentically conservative traditions, as well as the specifically theological roots of neoconservatism itself, as I outlined them. Afraid that you might have to read a book, Verity?
Neoconservatism's roots are in Max Shachtman's Americanist Trotskyism; in Leo Strauss's and Ayn Rand's Americo-Fascism; in Judaism's denial of Original Sin, its unfulfilled Messianic hope and expectation (a key to understanding the intellectual history of the West, at least), and the relative respectability within it of belief in religion but not in God; in a form of Zionism so fanatical that American citizens who promoted it used to be banned from entering Israel (and Britain); in a stock Irish-American bar-room rant against Britain and against real or perceived Anglophilia within the WASP elite; in an initially Canadian (but now also British, Australian and New Zealand) inferiortity complex in relation both to being subjects of the Crown and to being products of the Keynes-Beveridge settlement; in the impact of the 1960s counter-culture on much Catholic thought and practice after (though not because of) Vatican II; and in the popular reception of Barthian neo-orthodoxy (with its fundamental capitulation to Biblical "criticism") within the "mainline" Protestant churches.
Notably, those roots are not in Evangelical Protestantism, to which neoconservatism is not ideologically related, just as, say, Irish Republicanism is not ideologically related to Catholicism. Rather, just as many devout Catholics have been cajoled or deceived into supporting Irish Republicanism despite its Jacobin and Marxist roots and character, so likewise many Evangelical Protestants have been cajoled or deceived into supporting neoconservatism despite its roots and character being as described above.
And I say again, nothing is less conservative than trying to remake the world anew, even by force of arms, according to some blueprint dreamt up in a university library or a literary salon. Therefore, nothing is less conservative than neoconservatism.
Sorry about the length, but Verity, over to you. Answer each and every one of these points, or shut the hell up until you know what you are talking about.
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