Britain
must distance itself from America
Daily Times, Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_17-6-2003_pg4_8
I wrote recently that Blair has sold our country to
America without our consent. I now think it is worse; he
didn’t charge for this delivery of our future into
the hands of George Bush. He gave us away
By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown©2003
There cannot be many good citizens of this country who
aren’t today asking themselves searching questions
about our relationship with the government of the United
States post-11 September, and the two wars we have
instigated since then. Who are we now in relation to that
hyper-power? Do we have any influence or are we de facto
on our way to joining Hawaii, an outpost of the mighty
power? Does President Bush listen to Prime Minister Blair
or is he only a good foil, because Americans adore our PM
and this comes in handy during tricky times, i.e. when
both sides pass off collective fabrications as
incontrovertible evidence of WMD? Is Tony Blair
blindingly dazzled by people with greater power and
wealth than he has and is this what drives him - in spite
of what his people feel - to follow the US whatever?
I wrote recently that Blair has sold our country to
America without our consent. I now think it is worse; he
didn’t charge for this delivery of our future into
the hands of George Bush. He gave us away. Every week one
of the favoured coterie of ministers tells us it is all
done far better in the US, before announcing policies to
further the Americanisation of Britain. We must have
their damned highways - a bijou little country like ours
already much devastated by trucks and traffic.
We must have their supreme court - but do we really want
government-appointed men such as Clarence Thomas,
regarded with contempt by most African Americans and
women, to preside in our highest courts? We should,
apparently, aim to be like the NYPD, and have district
attorneys.
What next? US-style justice which leaves the poor and
disenfranchised without half-decent lawyers, merciless
boot camps and barbaric death chambers? Or a health
service which can give you wondrous help if you are
middle class but which fails millions of others who
cannot afford to have the right kind of insurance? And
schools and neighbourhoods grossly divided along race and
class lines? No, would be my firm answer to all those,
and no, that does not make me “anti-American”,
a hater of that sometimes great country. I do not heed
such junk tags which only close down criticism of
anything that the US now does.
There are many momentous American lawyers, writers,
artists, politicians, scientists and philosophers one can
only admire and envy. But the Republicans are destroying
much that is good in their own country and are trashing
the world.
.
 Now if Blair is really a
major influence on the Bush administration, why has he
not used this blessed position to temper this descent of
The Big Country into madness? What does he say or do to
teach its hubristic leader that the last thing
Iran’s reform movements need now is the poison of
approval of the loathed American Republicans? To be
anointed in this way means their small and fragile
movement will only collapse. After Iraq, nobody wants
these liberators on their side. What is this faithful
Christian leader telling his Christian brother George
about the gulag in Cuba? Did Christ want his followers to
imprison, torture, deny access to justice and murder
young men who have never had their stories heard in
public? And is he giving them any lessons on freedom of
speech, right to dissent, playing by the rules? If
courtiers in Downing Street would give us some help in
seeing just what Blair’s influence has achieved we
would be most humbly grateful.
The road-map may just be one example; if so it only goes
to show what Blair can do and chooses not to. Or maybe
what he is allowed to do. The actions of the US
government today make it essential to put a greater
distance between us. It is in our national interest not
to be seen as uncritical groupies of the hyper-power. A
recent survey among 21 nations concluded that the war in
Iraq has widened the rift between the US and Western
Europe, “inflamed” the Muslim world, and
damaged global public opinion and support for the
Atlantic alliance. For US, now read UK too. Prime
Minister Blair has never had a mandate from us, the
people, to take us into the armpit of the US. It is time
we declared our right to be an independent nation just as
Americans did centuries ago. — Independent
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