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timlings
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 130

Posted 11/22/2003 12:37 PM (GMT -6)

Hey everyone

We've just had a state visit from mr Dubbya Bush to England this week, with much protesting all over the country about it all. Everyone's pretty unimpressed (to say the least) with the war on Iraq and other issues, and so there was huge amounts of security surrounding the whole visit [although not as much as the CIA would have like...we declined the request for diplomatic immunity for the ]armed guards!].

I was wondering, how was it all represented in the US media? Positive/negative? What do people in America thing of England?

from

Timlings

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/22/2003 1:56 PM (GMT -6)

Which state is England a part of, again? Clown

Um, I think we understand the need to keep our allies and those that help us out with the burden of GWII.

I think people are probably still miffed at having been manipulated into supporting the war for the wrong reasons and are now focused on economics, moreso than the war abroad.

dlw

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 11/23/2003 2:52 AM (GMT -6)

People who protest Bush yet do not condemn terrorism happening on the same day are morally bankrupt. Yes, the term "not impressed," rules the day. Fortuantely for your country their PM is a little more in touch with what it takes to live in a world full of terrorists. So they can go on with their "little foolish" fun while our president keeps the world safe for them. No wonder your country has shrunk so much in the last century!

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/23/2003 4:45 AM (GMT -6)

Honorman,

that was pretty much incoherent.

Timlings, here is what David Brooks and Mark Shields had to say.

The president's trip to Britain
DAVID BROOKS: The first day -- he was able to puncture through this cartoonish image of him in the European media and speak directly at least to the British people and maybe to the European media, and it was one of the best speeches of his presidency. I'd say one of the top five.

JIM LEHRER: What did he say?

DAVID BROOKS: He said a number of things, one of which is he laid out the idealistic case of democracy and then attached it to a pragmatic program. People will call it the three pillar speech because he talked about the three ways we're going to enact this effort to spread democracy throughout the world.

But the most interesting thing for us throughout the country was that he said we are going to move beyond the failed policy of allowing dictatorship and tyranny to exist around the world because we thought we needed it for stability. And the author of that failed policy is George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft. It was really a direct intellectual argument against his father's administration. And so that was very interesting to us and I thought an important and to my mind necessary reversal of US policy.

JIM LEHRER: How do you see the president's speech? First of all, do you agree with his reading of the speech?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought the speech was an important way that the president was far more articulate and persuasive than he is in most public occasions. Not to nitpick but he pronounced "nuclear" for the first time correctly in the speech. But it away from never address the question of exaggeration of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction to a construct that justified or tried to justify his policy. And I think in that sense it was larger. It's far more ambitious than anything at the outset. In many respects, if he had given the speech, that speech before the war, his case might have been stronger than relying upon the threat that was...

DAVID BROOKS: I guess I would say he did give that speech. I was in the audience at the American Enterprise Institute.

MARK SHIELDS: I heard the American Enterprise speech. I don't think that rose to this. But, that aside, I think, Jim, politically it meant a lot more for George Bush than it did for Tony Blair. I mean, Tony Blair is a lot more popular in this country than George Bush is in Great Britain, and I think in addition to that, that the president was seen as a -- in a statesman setting. The queen who incidentally got off the best line of the whole trip when she introduced the president - said, you're term limited; I'm not. Prince Charles at that point blanched. But I thought for the president it was a trip that worked. It was just reminded terribly though of the contrast 40 years ago of Jack Kennedy and Berlin with 500,000 Germans cheering him and the president really never able to travel more than a mile from Buckingham Palace under enormous security.

JIM LEHRER: What about that, David, would it be understandable just in human terms or any other terms how unsettling that would be for the president of the United States, the head of the most powerful nation of the world, to go to our number one ally and you can't go out of his house, you know. And this is after having done something that he is very proud of and came there to defend.

DAVID BROOKS: This is war. In war, except for World II, throughout American History, War of 1812, Civil War, it arouses strong emotion, and it is supposed to. There is strong opposition in this country to the war, let alone in Britain, but I think the important thing for Blair and for Bush is the Guardian poll that came out show that over the past two months opposition to the war in Britain has dropped 12 percent and support for the war has gone up. When the British are attacked, they rally around. They have that Dunkirk thing going.

But the other thing was that there are many more Britons who welcomed Bush than wished he hadn't come. And we over cover those rallies, and to me those rallies were a disaster for the anti-war camp because in showing that statue of Bush, which they then pulled down in mockery of the statue of Saddam, they reminded everybody of the one indisputably good thing that happened in this war, which is the destruction of the Saddam regime and the lifting of that tyranny. And for them not to be able to see that, not to be able to have any anger at Saddam but focus it all on Bush is just a mistake.

MARK SHIELDS: I think -- and our most important ally, and the president, whatever else is scheduled in this country, has avoided any antiwar or demonstrations against his policies, and he was confronted with them over there. And I think in that sense it was a little unsettling. He was asked about it on a regular basis. And it's not insignificant. This is our most important ally. And there is great tension and great disagreement in Great Britain about US policy and as of September 11 and the days after, there was almost adulation and uncritical support for the United States.

timlings
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 130

Posted 11/23/2003 11:07 AM (GMT -6)

Thanks for the feedback.

I still think the US view of it all doesn't quite capture the rage some people felt here.

quote:
DAVID BROOKS: He said a number of things, one of which is he laid out the idealistic case of democracy and then attached it to a pragmatic program. People will call it the three pillar speech because he talked about the three ways we're going to enact this effort to spread democracy throughout the world.

I still think that people are still to postmodern here in the UK to think that the "cause" of democracy is worth picking fights around the world for. It smacks of "we're right, you're wrong", which is very much against the spirit of the age here.

The question of "why iraq, why now?" still stands. There are loads of other possibly much worse dictatorships around the world which could do with toppling. Why not go for them?

quote:
MARK SHIELDS: I thought the speech was an important way that the president was far more articulate and persuasive than he is in most public occasions. Not to nitpick but he pronounced "nuclear" for the first time correctly in the speech.

Good point! We still thing dubbya is still a bit thick tho...

quote:
But it away from never address the question of exaggeration of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction to a construct that justified or tried to justify his policy.

Hmm! Tony Blair may have great trouble staying in power because of that issue. We've lost trust is Mr Blair here because he said "trust me in this" and he was rather wrong about the WMD.

quote:
But the other thing was that there are many more Britons who welcomed Bush than wished he hadn't come.

I don't know many... Wink

quote:
And we over cover those rallies, and to me those rallies were a disaster for the anti-war camp because in showing that statue of Bush, which they then pulled down in mockery of the statue of Saddam, they reminded everybody of the one indisputably good thing that happened in this war, which is the destruction of the Saddam regime and the lifting of that tyranny.

Maybe. But here we get the impression that a rather big can of worms has been opened, and that Iraq is in a worse state than before. Bitten off more than can chew springs to mind.

quote:
And there is great tension and great disagreement in Great Britain about US policy and as of September 11 and the days after, there was almost adulation and uncritical support for the United States.

Not necessarily here in the UK. There was quite a lot of opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan here too. Although it could all still boil down to an anti-american thing going on.

Anyway. Interesting stuff!

timlings

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/23/2003 11:37 AM (GMT -6)

Thanks for sharing Timlings.

I think we need to find a way for the world to rally around the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan to give it legitimacy and signal to the current terrorists wreaking havoc there that their actions are futile given the resolve of more than just the Bush Administration to see changes taking place.

As for why Iraq and not other countries? Conceivably, precedent could be set to encourage the reform of other brutal dictators and int'l coordination to threaten their regime change. Obviously, Iraq having oil did matter, but the oil also permitted them to buy more weapons for use against their own oppressed people and the surrounding countries. It also permitted them to support the violent palestinian groups and so cutting off that support was important for helping to progress peace in Israel/Palestine.

Moreover, if political and economic reforms did take place it would stir changes in other countries and that would reduce the terrorism/fundamentalism coming from these countries.

And, so a long-run vision was needed. I honestly believe Blair supported Bush because he shared this vision and to do that he had to play ball with the whole WMDs thing, which was a way to manipulate US citizens post-9-11 insecurities into supporting relatively immediate regime-change in Iraq.

dlw

Chris Grant
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2003
Total Posts : 151

Posted 11/26/2003 3:33 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by timlings
I still think that people are still to postmodern here in the UK to think that the "cause" of democracy is worth picking fights around the world for. It smacks of "we're right, you're wrong", which is very much against the spirit of the age here.

Just wondering: Do the people in tune with the spirit of the age think that they're right and that those with the "we're right, you're wrong" attitude are wrong?

"I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories."
(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, November 10, 1952.)

honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 11/26/2003 5:34 AM (GMT -6)

DLW: coming from you, that is the ultimate compliment! Then again, since your knowledge of the subject is limited, I would expect such a response... Eyebrow

honorman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 11/26/2003 5:39 AM (GMT -6)

"Why Iraq, why now?! Hmm, perhaps because they violated the UN mandate. T, sounds to me like your question is simply an excuse not to do anything. So many evil dictators, so little time. Let's just sitting on our as**es and not do anything. Those who wonder why we went into Iraq perhaps should read up on the issue...and then move on to other things. In case you didn't notice, we went into Iraq. We are there. Try and deal with it.

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/26/2003 7:12 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

DLW: coming from you, that is the ultimate compliment! Then again, since your knowledge of the subject is limited, I would expect such a response...

HD,

Once more there is a chronic lack of content in your posts, besides ad-homs...

Also, what about our need to play well with the other countries of the world? Given Iraq's disobedience and the sort of leader that he was as well as the long-term strategic importance of inducing political changes in the Middle East, we could have been led to supporting regime change against Iraq without the whole WMDs.

Timlings, yes economics did likely play a role in the targeting of Iraq. Such considerations affect most of the int'l manipulations of the US to some degree, but they do not in and of itself mean it isn't something worth supporting. Blair understood that and was willing to make political sacrifices for it. The bigger questions that come out of this is when are we going to reform the UN to make it a more effective int'l governance institution. I think it was set up for the cold war and is out of date. If the goal is to set up int'l checks and balances on the US and others(particularly, the US do to its economic and military influence.) then it will be necessary to give the US more ability to try to sway the UN so that it will continue to make a long-term commitment to accept its influence.

I've always admired Blair as a genuine Christian whose faith has led him to serve others in the political sphere.
dlw

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/26/2003 7:26 AM (GMT -6)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3239166.stm
Garner admits US errors in Iraq

Garner says he would have talked more with the Iraqis
The man the US initially put in charge of governing Iraq says mistakes were made after the coalition took charge.
Lieutenant General Jay Garner, who was replaced after less than a month, says the US could have communicated better with the Iraqi people.

In an interview with the BBC, he added that more US soldiers should have been sent to Iraq.

And he says more should have been done to restore electricity supplies.

General Garner, who was retired from the military when he took control in Iraq, said the US should have moved more quickly to establish a government in Iraq.

He said: "If we did it over again, we probably would have put more dismounted infantrymen in Baghdad and maybe more troops there."

Poor communication

The general also said he would have shipped in huge generators to supply electricity.

He added: "On my part I would certainly (have) done a better job on having communications with the Iraqi people."

The consequences of that is that Iraqi's now listen to Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV channel that the US accuses of colluding with insurgents to film attacks on coalition forces, he told the BBC.

On my part I would certainly (have) done a better job on having communications with the Iraqi people

General Garner

Jay Garner interview

But General Garner said these poor communication links with the Iraqis had not strengthened opposition to the coalition.

He blamed that on hardcore supporters of Saddam Hussein's Baath party and international terrorists.

General Garner was replaced as the American's senior civil administrator in Iraq by Paul Bremer after initial reconstruction efforts did not go according to plan.

The change of personnel was also the result of rivalry in Washington between the Pentagon and the state department over who should be doing what in Iraq.

timlings
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 130

Posted 11/26/2003 12:02 PM (GMT -6)

Honorman

quote:
Hmm, perhaps because they violated the UN mandate. T, sounds to me like your question is simply an excuse not to do anything. So many evil dictators, so little time. Let's just sitting on our as**es and not do anything.

But there are so many other countries that violate UN mandates. What about Israel and her appalling human rights record? Hmm? I just don't "buy" that now was purely because Iraq weren't cooperating with the UN. To me it looked like the US wanting to finish what they started in the Gulf War, and post 9-11 they thought they had a right to bomb any country they didn't like.

Sorry, I'm getting a bit angry here.

I just don't like the US approach of trying to be the Police force for the globe. I thought the UN was trying to do that? Going back to 9/11, I still think that the US should have taken a long hard look at itself and wondered what made people fly planes into sky-scrapers? The US foreign policy really doesn't always make friends with other countries.

And as for holding Al-Queida prisoners without basic legal or human rights in Camp David...

Anyway.

love

timlings

p.s. sorry if I sound anti-American...I've been to the US and have met loads of lovely people. My problem is on the larger scale.

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/26/2003 12:15 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by timlings

But there are so many other countries that violate UN mandates. What about Israel and her appalling human rights record? Hmm? I just don't "buy" that now was purely because Iraq weren't cooperating with the UN. To me it looked like the US wanting to finish what they started in the Gulf War, and post 9-11 they thought they had a right to bomb any country they didn't like.

Sorry, I'm getting a bit angry here.

There were some good reasons to dislike the previous regime of Iraq.

quote:
I just don't like the US approach of trying to be the Police force for the globe. I thought the UN was trying to do that? Going back to 9/11, I still think that the US should have taken a long hard look at itself and wondered what made people fly planes into sky-scrapers? The US foreign policy really doesn't always make friends with other countries.

The UN is ill-equipped for decision-making and policing the world. Willy-nilly that role gets played one way or the other and it is currently played by the US. The goal should be to encourage the US to work in tandum with the rest of the world and to discourage unilateral action.

Agreed, US int'l manipulations have been bad in the past, but that doesn't mean the US shouldn't seek to lead the world to act. I recommend to you the movie, "Uncle Saddam", for a glimpse at what life was like under Saddam.

quote:
And as for holding Al-Queida prisoners without basic legal or human rights in Camp David...

Anyway.

love

timlings

p.s. sorry if I sound anti-American...I've been to the US and have met loads of lovely people. My problem is on the larger scale.

Security measures taken by the US post 9-11 is a separate issue from Iraq.

dlw

Laika
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433

Posted 11/26/2003 3:42 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by timlings
Going back to 9/11, I still think that the US should have taken a long hard look at itself and wondered what made people fly planes into sky-scrapers?

Timlings, then I suggest the British go back to 7/10/1940 and take a hard look at itself and wonder what made Germans start bombing England. Was it the humiliating treaty the English made the Germans sign at Versailles in 1919? Is that how the English caused the Germans to fly bombers over England?

Al-Qaeda is pissed that "infidel" soldiers are in Saudia Arabia. That's the main gripe they had. Why are "infidel" soldiers stationed in Saudia Arabia? Because of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
How much of the world's oil are you comfortable with Saddam holding?
Islamic radicals don't hate western policies, they hate westerners PERIOD. They hate that muslim people are gaining access to western goods, ideas, values. Jordanian refugees don't want a state with Israel, they want to wipe out Israel. The British fought to defeat anti-semitism in the twentieth century, why do they support it now?

The Oslo agreement gave the Jordanian refugees 95% of what they were asking for. Their response? Suicide bombings. Watch the news, anytime there's a "breakthrough" in the "peace process", the bombings start up again. The radicals don't want a peace plan, they want the annihilation of Israel. Claire Sterling made this brilliant point in her seminal work "The Terror Network". She showed how the Basque separatists (ETA) in Spain upped their bombings the closer peace got. They didn't want a negotiated settlement, they wanted total victory. That's the method and goal of terrorists.

Even Bruce Cockburn understood that point:
"Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it's repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?"
-- The Trouble with Normal

inside you the time moves and she don't fade
the ghost in you she don't fade

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