What a week for Tony Blair. At the start of it he is dodging eggs and shoes while cancelling book signing sessions for fears of rioting in his own country and by the start of the following week he is receiving yet another yankee medal and being applauded by an American audience.Not sure what that means about the British and the Americans but i can have a stab at it.
Now we all know American Governments have always liked a spot of armed conflict and we know Tony was always up for a bit of sending the guns in so they seem a perfect match for each other.
As for the British and American citizens view of Blair, he is detested here and seemingly loved over there.
The lowest ratings of any Labour leader ever, he was bounced out of power by his own party and is unable to even make a public appearance in his own country out of fear for his own safety.
For a lot of Americans he is treated as almost a hero for exactly the same reasons that made him so damned unpopular here.
Possibly the Americans population in general are more up for a war than the Brits who seem to have moved into the pacifist, some might say appeaser, camp.
Another reason may be because the Americans are unaware of the blatant Blair lies that were offered up and dismissed in the lead up to the Iraq War. Nukes became WMD's which became WMD programs which became UN resolution breaking and ended up as he was a tyrant who at some point in the future may have nukes, WMD's & WMD programs.
Another reason could be that Blair was gullible enough to give the Bush & Clinton Governments the fig leaf of cover they needed in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, three conflicts that can be diplomatically called highly dubious at best.
Whatever the reason America keeps hanging medals around the mans neck, he is more suited to American way of thinking than British and the truth is he should probably stay over there because all he will get here is more eggs, shoes and abuse whenever he shows his sickly grinning face.
7 comments:
An excellent post, Hanz!
It shows a great deal of perceptiveness regarding the differences and similarities between Yanks and the British, especially when you said the 'American population in general are more up for a war than the Brits.'
Cheers.
Some good points, but I think you paint with a rather broad brush in places. For example, I know plenty of Americans who can't stand Blair. They probably don't despise him as much as I do, but you know what they say - it's familiarity that breeds contempt. Most people, understandably, reserve their most vitriolic feelings for the leaders who lied and dissembled to them personally i.e. their own.
Thanks David, it is a mystery to me what they see in him.
I did try and dampen it with a few possibly's, maybes and could be's cheezy to show it was just my own personal ponderings but i was only guessing really. I know almost all the Americans who came here are as against the Iraq/Afghan wars as us but they seemed in the minority looking around other US owned blogs.
hanz,
i don't care about blair any more or less than i do about thatcher or churchill or gordon. just another foreign leader that doesn't affect my daily life in any way that i can detect.
i do work with some former 3 star and 4 star generals. today one of them said blair is one of the smartest world leaders he had worked with and this guy worked with lots of foreign leaders.
as far as americans being more war mongering. i don't disagree. a factor is that europe, japan, and many arabic nations leave the the peacetime burden (financial) to the USA then step up a little when blood is required...
this is pretty iffy territory for me since i dont know much about european history, but here goes: i'd say the UK became appeasers circa 1900 and had they not been, could have stopped Hitler and crew with a lot less bloodshed and destruction by getting more engaged while germany was building its war machine. being on a island, with france for a buffer, might have been factors...
today the USA is the buffer.
q
Unfortunately, q, the U.S. is no buffer.
Under the leadership of Obomber, it is clearly the world's principal warmonger as well as No1 in rendition, torture, the killing of foreign civilians (men, women and children), and the making and selling of arms.
David G.,
- i agree on principal warmonger, though O inherited it
- i think there is more torture in China, Pakistan, North Korea, Cuba, Mexico, many African nations
- not true about USA most of the past 220 years
- i predict will not be true about USA most of the next 50 years
Q Smith
"one of them said blair is one of the smartest world leaders he had worked with"
It's not his intellect that he's despised for, Q...
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