I respect Simon Jenkins a lot but his piece today seems a bit odd. He appears only recently to have twigged on to something that the rest of the world has known for 50 years:
Why is there no British Baker/Hamilton report? Why must Britain’s war in Iraq, now its most protracted, costly and savage war in half a century, dance attendance on events in Washington? While “stay the course” has been abandoned in America, even by George Bush, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, indicated yesterday that it remained British policy. Tony Blair is now in Washington, apparently seeking permission to make a change. This is humiliating.
References to poodles aside, the UK aligned itself with the US in the 1940s and ever since has reaped what was then sown. With perhaps one exception – Suez (and didn’t that go well?) – the United Kingdom has not done anything of significance in terms of foreign policy that has not first been sanctioned (implicitly or explicitly, publicly or privately) by the then US President. And with perhaps one exception – Vietnam (and didn’t that go well?) – the UK has only once given America the bird when called upon to join in arms.
Prime Minister Bliar’s closeness to President Bush is the norm, not the exception, because Britain has been in the States’ financial and military pocket for over half a century: Harold Macmillan didn’t get along with Jack Kennedy just because he wanted some tips from the latter about how to succeed with the laydeez.
In fairness to the Churchill-Attlee generation of politicians, such alignment was the only way Britain could hope to retain a place at the high table of world affairs and, in that respect if no other, the special relationship has served us very well. (The crumbling of the Commonwealth meant that the only other option was to embrace European federalism alongside the same Germans whose bomb craters still dotted the land: hardly an idea that would have played well on the doorsteps in the 1950 General Election, I suspect.)
For me, the biggest humiliation in the whole of Bliar’s Middle Eastern antics is not our subservience to the USA but the current generation of politicians’ inability and/or refusal to learn from our historical mistakes. Anyone with half-an-inch of brain and a passing knowledge of modern history knows that Britain has been mired in unwinnable conflicts in or around Palestine, Afghanistan and Mesopotamia for 150 years. What arrogance makes Bliar think he can succeed where superpowers have consistently failed? What folly makes him believe that modern day Iraqis and Afghans would take any more kindly to foreign invaders than their ancestors did?
The humiliation is that, for all the billions of pounds pumped into the UK’s education system since 1945, so many people have had to die to enable Mr. Bliar and his friends to learn the lesson a half-decent history textbook could have taught them in one evening.
I’m really surprised to hear you say that you respect Simon Jenkins a lot. Your site contains overwhelming evidence that your respect is hard-earned but, without putting the Minister to any trouble, could I ask why? I readily admit that I work for – and care deeply about – one of his regular targets, so I’m more familiar with the spittle-flecked loon that never lets the facts get in the way of a good rant at the expense of those not fortunate enough to have the luxury of choice in their lives. Rather than a genuine free-thinker, he has always struck me as representing the privileged views of a wedge of sanctimonious right-wing libertarian paternalists. But I may be in need of a history lesson. And, mind you, I also readily admit that, even on those days where he is doing his Jeremy Clarkson impression, I’d read his dumbly insolent column seventeen times before that of Polly Toynbee.
I respect him as a journalist. With a couple of exceptions, you don’t get to edit The Times unless you’re a halfway decent journalist. He also wrote a good book about the great newspaper proprietors of the early 20th century.
I don’t despise right-wingers for being right-wingers; I despise most right-wingers for the common lack of intellectual rigour underpinning their beliefs. Jenkins – whether or not I agree with him (and I rarely do) – at least has the advantages of having a functioning brain and a proper grasp of grammar, language and punctuation.
Clarkson he ain’t.
Jenkins is a heavyweight journalist, for sure. There is something of a tendency for heavyweights to grow tired of the same old drip-feeding to the of right wing guff years after it stopped being fashionable. Hence the likes of Max Hastings (another genuine heavyweight who seems to be far less respected than Jenkins, which shows how powerful Private Eye can be in making you ridicule just about everyone) cropping up in the Guardian arguing issues with rigour and moderation. As far as I can see it, Jenkins’ only problem seems to be that I end up disagreeing with most of his arguments, whether they be liberal or not, not that I don’t appreciate his stooping to speak to us in the first place.
There’s a word or two missing from that last comment , after “drip-feeding to the…”
It was going to be something along the lines of “Thatcherite masses”…hey, it’s 2 in the morning, ok?