The Tory neo-cons

Bruce Anderson rides to David Cameron’s support over foreign policy in today’s Independent. In the piece, he writes that two key members of the  shadow cabinet, Liam Fox and Michael Gove, are among the half-dozen or so neo-cons who still exist in British political and journalistic life. But this seems to ignore the shadow cabinet’s most senior neo-con, George Osborne. (I should say that I’m one of the very few people who’d use the term as a compliment not an insult)

In a piece in The Spectator in 2004, Osborne offered a trenchant defence of Bush and Blair’s response to 9/11 and of the neo-con vision for the Middle East. Here are two key quotes from the piece.

“Then there are those who say the ‘war on terror’ is the wrong response. I say to them: what other response could there be?”

“Since the war, the process of rebuilding Iraq has been slow and painful, as it was in Germany and Japan after the second world war. But we now have an Iraqi Prime Minister who is clearly no one’s puppet. We are on course for the first free elections in that country early next year. 
And we have a chance, just a chance, to show that there can be a prosperous, democratic, successful Islamic state in the Middle East. That would be a mortal blow to terrorists who feed on the insecurities and grudges of the people they claim to represent. It is more than worth the gamble. 

We did not choose the war on terror. It chose us. We could try to walk away from it now. We could distance ourselves from America, say the Iraq war was a mistake, bring home our troops (including my brother-in-law) and appease the terrorists in a multitude of other ways. It might buy us time, it might not. But it would not save us.”