Sidney Blumenthal comments on future UK-US Relations

Sidney Blumenthal comments in the Guardian that Tony Blair is not the first British prime minister to embrace a US president's mendacity, but he could well be the last. How "loyalty to an ally, the national interest and protocol" prevented Blair from presenting the alternative story which may have been less domestically damaging for him.

As the head of government, he could not speak of his disagreements with Bush. Out of loyalty to an ally, the national interest and protocol, he couldn't acknowledge that he had urged alternative policies on Bush. Blair never mentioned how he had wrung a commitment (honoured or not) out of Bush to restart the Middle East peace process. He did not discuss how the Bush administration had systematically ignored the British representative in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock. He did not note that Downing Street was spitting blood over the depredations visited on it by the bullying John Bolton and the rest of the neoconservative cabal. He did not allude to his national security team's consternation over Condoleezza Rice's incompetence. He did not reveal the many ways he had supported Colin Powell in his struggles with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Blair's stalwart refusal to be transparent about his own good faith and positive actions contributed to his image as dishonest and furtive.

Posted by Paul in UK-USA Relations Politics at May 12, 2005 03:10 AM | 1 Comments