Thoughts from London

All the world’s a stage : The Bard, Bush and Blair

Comics, like the animals aboard Noah's ark, seem to come in pairs. This is not to discount the larger groups such as the Marx Brothers or those that come singly. But think of the famous twosomes- Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Morecambe and Wise, Manappuwa and Josie Baba.

And now we have that unforgettable pair. In case you wonder who, it's Bush and Blair.
If politics had not claimed Bushy Washy and Teflon Tony, surely vaudeville would have taken them to its bosom. Had they been like other comedians and reserved their antics for the stage and screen, it would not have mattered much except that the prices of rotten tomatoes and other perishables would have trebled wherever they appeared in public, singly or in tandem.

Unfortunately for the people of our era, Bush and Blair have sought to sell their ware in a much larger market place. All the world's a stage, wrote the Bard and the two Bs thought that this was meant for them and their singular task of civilising the barbarians and saving the world for us.

Heaven alone knows it is a noble endeavour. There are truly many barbarians around that need civilising such as those Down Under who, still smarting under their rapscallion and asinine ancestry, reach their intellectual zenith only by throwing racist slurs as fast as they hurl the cricket ball.

But like the descendents of the asylum seekers aboard the May Flower who now inhabit Bush country, those who live at Howard's end of the world have been around for only a little over 200 years. And what can you do in 200 years, I mean in terms of inculcating human values into those whose modern apotheosis is MacDonalds and Crocodile Dundee?

But what of the United Kingdom? Even though that description of Old Blighty is a dangerous misnomer for the UK has not been so divided for many a decade, one might have expected that after centuries of empire it would have at least imbibed some of the civilised values of the much more civilised peoples it conquered by force of arms and duplicity.

Had they done so without trying to proselytise the natives and steal their resources and wealth to fill the British Museum and such others, the world might have been a better place.

When the then leaders of this country wished that the sun would never set on the British empire it was because they feared that no colonial people would trust the British in the dark. Today they do not trust them even under a 100- watt light.

In fact the British public does not trust its own leaders to tell them the truth or present verifiable facts to justify government actions, an affliction that politicians around the world suffer.Today over 80 per cent of the British public polled are opposed to the war that Blair is preparing to launch against Saddam Hussein and Iraq in conjunction with his transatlantic partner- in- comedy George W. Bush.

Even the majority of the American people do not want a war with Iraq as opinion polls show. Defying public opinion George W and Teflon Tony are determined to declare war against Iraq because, according to them and their hoorah boys, (a) Baghdad has weapons of mass destruction which they have previously used against neighbours as well as Iraqi people (b) they intend to use them again (c) therefore they are a threat to their neighbours and the western world (d) so Saddam Hussein must be replaced (e) with a democratic government thus becoming a part of the civilised world.

If the matter was not so serious, they should have been laughed off the political stage for their hilarious duplicity. But sections of the American and British media and indeed some of the leading opposition politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, fail to ask the relevant questions that would expose them for what they are.

They let the two leaders set the agenda by not examining the history of Anglo-American relations with Saddam Hussein and the Baath party on the one hand, and Anglo-American behaviour in other parts of the world where their publicly avowed concern for democracy and civilised norms have been solely absent and rejected.

As the clock ticks inexorably towards the January 27 deadline by which the UN weapons inspectors must report to the United Nations (more accurately the United States), White House war- mongers and their British acolytes are preparing for war.

If Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction-and probably still do-the voices that ask whether it was not US, Britain, Germany and other western democracies that helped Saddam Hussein to achieve that level of sophistication are silenced by the shouts of patriotism.

The accusations against Saddam Hussein begin with his use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds and the Iranians and his aggression against Iran and later Kuwait.

What,- like politicians everywhere,- those advocating military action fail to say is that each of these actions had the blessings or the involvement of the US and Britain though today they appear before humanity as the embodiment of moral rectitude, political correctness and the sole sentinels of democracy and good governance.

One of the grave charges against Saddam is that he invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990 leading to the Gulf War and the resultant killings and destruction.

What is rarely mentioned is that one week before the invasion- July 25- the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie told Saddam that she had "instructions from the President" that the United States would have "no opinion on your border conflicts with Kuwait".

She repeated it several times adding that "Secretary of State James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasise this instruction from the president", said respected journalist Christopher Hitchens in Harpers Magazine in January 1991.

Syndicated American columnist James McCartney, one of the few journalists to study this leaked manuscript, wrote that it was clear the United States had given Saddam Hussein "a green light for invasion".

Moreover, two days before the invasion Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly told a Congressional hearing that the US was not committed to defend Kuwait. Four days before the invasion the CIA had predicted the invasion would happen when it did.

There is much more evidence that can be produced to show that the US and Britain created Saddam's war machine and looked the other way when he used it because then it served Anglo-American objectives in the Gulf.

Now he has lost his usefulness and must be replaced by a western puppet. This is the way of politics and politicians. Only the gullible will have faith in such utterances as wanting a return to democracy and civilised values.

What does Bush know of civilised values?

Back to Columns