Mustapha Karkouti: With a friend like Bush, Blair requires no more enemies
In his speech at the City of London Mayor's annual dinner at the Mansion House last week, Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, unsuccessfully tried to belittle the planned protest campaign against the US President's State visit to the United Kingdom today, by labelling it as the product of a resurgent anti-Americanism.
This is self-deception and it is, as former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, put in a recent article, absurd. The reason more British people feel more hostile towards George Walker Bush than they did to, say, former presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr. or Ronald Reagan, is because they simply disagree with his foreign and global policies.
Furthermore, this is not the whole or the true picture as Blair wants us to believe.
Mainstream opinion in the UK, Europe and the world at large, is perfectly capable of drawing a distinction between America and its leadership. This has always been the case in the past, now and will remain to be the case in the future. And for Blair to dismiss all that as a mere "anti-Americanism" is insulting.
Astonished supporters
The prime minister astonished some of his own supporters by declaring in his Mansion House speech that, despite security setbacks in Iraq and the bending massive anti-war march and demonstrations across London, this is "exactly the right time for the president to come to London."
Labour Party grass-roots across the UK feel disappointed by their leader. Many have felt that recent events in Iraq provided the PM with the opportunity to put his house in order and mend his relation with his own party. The feeling that currently exists is the Party is gradually losing its leader.
Blair has made a historic error of judgment to allow Britain join this unpopular war that has seriously strained relations with many of its EU partners, with which it is increasingly intertwined on economic and vital investment issues.
It did not stop there. Many American politicians, including Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, relished Britain's rift over Iraq with France and Germany early in the year. They have even tried to encourage the split with their short-sighted sound-bites of old and new Europe.
Many believe Blair has taken the so-called "special relations" between the two countries a step too far. The proper role for a British prime minister from a historic point of view, as the former Conservative Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, pointed out, "is to be a candid friend of US, not uncritical admirer."
The historic British leader, Winston Churchill, clashed with then American President Roosevelt over how to deal with Russia's Joseph Stalin. Harold Wilson who would go to Washington with hat-in-hand, refused to send British troops to Vietnam. Margaret Thatcher rebuked Reagan over Grenada.
It is not a war with, nor against America. America has always been a model many nations would aspire to and admire. But it is US foreign policy, whose sole purpose is domestic, that people object to and demonstrate against. It was the veteran former Secretary, Henry Kissinger, who said once "we don't have foreign policy, we have only domestic policy."
Opposing Bush foreign policy, it has to be said, is no longer limited to British or European public, but many Americans are now increasingly voicing their objection against it and have become more hostile towards the President's domestic politics as well.
This domestic policy has changed the face of liberalism in the United States by deliberately creating a semi-permanent state of fear among the population. Americans marching beneath the banner proclaiming "Proud of My Country, Shamed by My President," will lead the demonstration which organisers expect up to 100,000 people to take to the streets of London during the visit and express their hostility to the US President.
When Bush's State visit was decided two years ago, the two leaders were looking out on a rather a different world. Later, maybe as early as last March before the war in Iraq was launched, Bush's visit was considered by the prime minister to become an occasion for celebrating the overthrow of Baghdad's tyrant, the unearthing of Saddam Hussain's weapon of mass destruction programme and the joint efforts to reconstruct a new Iraq.
All the millions who opposed the war, or who strongly object against the Bush administration's world view, including many Labour members of parliament and ministers, would have allowed Bush and Blair to enjoy their moments of glory during the state visit.
Different course
But events went wrong and have destroyed that possibility. The visit now takes a different course in interpretation and meanings. Bush does not come to UK as a vindicated war leader, but as an incumbent whose re-election for a second term is increasingly in doubt.
With this in mind, the president campaign's managers will make the most of this State visit, the first bestowed on an American president since Woodrow Wilson in 1918, with all the glares it usually offers.
Robin Cook, who speaks for a large segment of the Labour party accused the PM of "offering up Backingham Palace (where the president will be the Queen's guest for three nights) as the mother of all photo-ops for President Bush."
These photos will most certainly end up as a part of TV promotion reel to be shown on American screens during the presidential campaign next year. Ronald Reagan had successfully used his photo joining the Queen in a horse-riding outing in 1984 campaign.
Will Bush's state visit be damaging to Blair? Not necessarily as the damage has already been done since the PM decided to go almost alone with the president. Even if he considers an exit now, Blair cannot break free of the ties that bind him with Bush. Iraq's war and the afterburn made them more dependent on each other.
The writer is the former president, Foreign Press Association in London. He can be contacted at mkarkouti@gulfnews.com
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