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US has descended into madness ... Britain must distance itself from America(Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Daily Times, June 19, 2003)
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. . . . 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? . . . There are many momentous American lawyers, writers, artists, politicians, scientists and philosophies one can only admire and envy. But the Republicans are destroying much that is good in their own country and are trashing the world. . . . Worse is likely as we watch the bedlam in Iraq and Afghanistan with fewer natives now obligingly standing up for the two allies. A total of 97 Iraqis have been killed in the past two days and 40 US soldiers have lost their lives in an illegal war. We are told they have found training camps of Al Qaeda “sympathisers” in Haditha in northwest Iraq. What does “sympathiser” mean? Does it include the millions around the world who were shocked by the 11 September attacks but also felt they understood why this had happened? It may even be true that they have found a training camp, but by now, only the most gullible would believe anything the US government says, and ours too. . . . Now right wingers in the Senate have issued support for rebellions in Iran - as a precursor to a war there. Most revolting of all is the news that the Guantanamo bay concentration camp, which is holding (we think but we do not know because the US doesn’t need to live by any international rules) about 800 inmates including children, is going to have summary, private hearings followed by executions. Texas-style no doubt. . . . 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 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? . . . 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.

posted by Lorenzo 12:45 PM