An ally let down
James Forsyth 2:33pm
The total lack of interest surrounding Gordon Brown’s visit to the United States is a testament to how shamefully detached from the Iraq project Britain now is. Back in the hey-day of the Bush and Blair relationship, the arrival of the British Prime Minister the week after Congress had held hearings on Iraq and the President had outlined his strategy for the next few months would have been a major event. But now it is little more than a footnote—Brown makes page A12 of The Washington Post while The New York Times does not deem his landing worthy of even one column inch.
In the highest reaches of the Brown government, there exists a simplistic mindset that thinks of Afghanistan as the good war and Iraq the bad one. Never mind that the strategic consequences of failure in Iraq would be worse than those of failing in Afghanistan or that this Labour government has a moral responsibility to see through what it started.
What the recent events in Basra have demonstrated beyond doubt is that the situation that Britain left behind was unsustainable, something that the government and the military were repeatedly warned about before British troops withdrew to the airport. America has not been an easy country to be allied with in recent years, the diplomacy of the Bush administration has left much to be desired. But the truth is that Britain’s behaviour towards the new Iraqi has been worse on a much more fundamental and serious level.
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salieri
April 16th, 2008 3:54pm Report this commentA brilliant photograph which says it all. Facing in opposite directions, Dubya listening cheerfully to someone else while Dour Leader is lost in his aura of self-absorbed gloom. At least he wasn't sitting on the President's lap, with the ventriloquist's hand up his back...
But a serious question: does McBean have BO?
David Lindsay
April 16th, 2008 4:23pm Report this comment"how shamefully detached from the Iraq project Britain now is"
Not nearly detached enough. Total detachment, and be quick about it.
I see we're getting the usual Tory line here: "things were so much better under dear old Tony Blair". If you don't believe that they were, then you might as well stay at home next time. And you probably will.
America entered the Second World War for her own reasons, and on her own strictly businesslike terms with us. Nothing wrong with that. But it gives the lie to the popular fantasy of a "special relationship", a term which no American has ever used.
We went to Korea, but so did a lot of other people. The Americans opposed us in Suez (when they were right, but that is not the present point), and they didn't go to Malaya. We stayed out of Vietnam. They were practically on the other side in the Falklands War, when our nearest thing to an ally was France. And the Gulf War was much like Korea.
There is simply no factual basis whatever for the warmongering lie that we have an unbreakable military alliance with the United States.
john problem
April 16th, 2008 5:04pm Report this commentYeah, we all really flipped reading Brown's stuff in the Journal. Is that exciting or is it? Is this the kind of stuff he feeds the folks back home? Well, Wall Street will straighten him out!
Publius
April 16th, 2008 6:11pm Report this commentA testament or a testimony?
Frank Pulley
April 16th, 2008 6:28pm Report this commentWonderful picture! Congrats to whoever acquired it or spotted it - tragic message though it depicts - the end of The Special Relationship.
"Incapabilty Brown" as someone dubbed him yesterday in the commentary in the Mail-on-line following Melanie's column this week. He, of course, is trying to persuade us that if we stay with him then everything in the garden will be rosey. Heh!
Has he no sense of irony? Pontificating (more irony, given the overshadowing US visit) about stolen elections and democracy in Africa, having lost his Aristotle and failed to even have one here, thus preventing us from exercising a little democracy of our own. What a J Arthur he is!
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