Letters to the Editor
MereMortal
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 19
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what is completely ignored in most coverage of Blair and Brown
[Read the article: Tony Blair's toodle-oo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is that Brown finally managed to depose Blair
First he forced him a couple of years ago after a series of vicious stand up rows to announced that he 'wouldn't serve a full third term' thus placating Brown and making himself something of a lame duck
second it was Blair's absurd neocon-inspired stance on the Israeli decimation of South Lebanon in the summer of 2006 that finally did for him. He went around the world making speeches saying that he would only back a 'sustainable' cease-fire thus buying precious time for the Israelis to do their dastardly work, then he delived his infamous 'arc of extremism' about Shias Iran-Syria-Hizbollah that was a sort of axis of evil redux.
The day before he got back to Blighty movements in Brown's camp were occuring to oust Blair. There were a few secret meetings and some junior minister resignations over the Blair stance followed by heated arguments between Brown and Blair and that is when during a school visit he announced that he would be gone within a year. Brown did not want to be seen to be wielding a dagger and thus inheriting a broken party the way the Conservatives were after the ousting of Thatcher in 1990, so it was done with considerably more secrecy.
It's worked, Blair is gone now
meanwhile the Israelis dropped over a million cluster bomblets in the last 72 hours over southern lebanon many over crops and groves in order to cripple Lebanon's competing agriculture sector. Up to 8 people a week were dying or being maimed by these bomblets and UN representative Jan Egeland complained bitterly about Israel's conduct contrary to all international laws.
and as Realname points out for those too obtuse to make the connection, we start the new Brown reign with a full unmasking of 'al-qaeda' style car bombs in central London lest we forget that we will be getting more of the same, climate of fear, ID cards, cameras everywhere and a generally repressive regime. I suspect govt collusion myself, and frankly I'm sick of all these neocons and their bogus War on Terror. We live in moronic times when fascism-lite seems to have taken over both one of the homes the enlightenment and one of its products.
A reading of Tom Bower's biography of Brown reveals that Brown is a highly flawed individual who is secretive and finds it very hard to work with others or to listen to opposing arguments. He operates a ruthless us vs them inner cabinet, where anybody not in the trusted circle is hung out to dry. He's at the top of the tree now, so his life's ambition is served, but goodness knows at what cost to the rest of us.
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@realName - Bolton is proud
[Read the article: Tony Blair's toodle-oo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]it's not contentious they admit it.
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m31610&hd=&size=1&l=e
sarcasm is misplaced here ;-)
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I know this might sound perverse but hear me out...
[Read the article: Ah, yes, but he's still got 570 days to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think Dubbya winning in 2004 may have been a gift in disguise.
By then they'd done their worst after 9/11 with the patriot act invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm sorry for New Orleans of course, but in terms of most of the damage most of that was done in the 1st term. If Bush had lost and Kerry won, Kerry would have been a one term president with Republicans poised to bounce back immediately. In any case what a poisoned chalice awaited Kerry in 2004 + let's be fair, Kerry was and is and idiot.
Bush has had to eat his own dog food since 2004 with no-one (individual or political party) he can credibly blame. Adolph Guliani is trying to blame Clinton for 9/11 but this tactic apart from being utterly shameless isn't really gaining much traction except perhaps for the extreme assholes on the right who actually believe it, and they're not really managing to convince that many people.
So just to re-iterate, although it bummed me out for a whole week at the time, looking back, I'm glad he won in 2004. By 2008 he should have wreaked enough damage on his party that we can all wave bye-bye to the facist-lite coalition that they've been lovingly crafting for us of late.
More seriously I'm aware of the years of very serious harm he's done to your country, but I fear that if he'd only hung around for 4 years only, many people wouldn't have truly seen him and his movement for what they were. Some things have to run their course. Hitler wouldn't get the hint and ended up shooting himself in the head, of course chimp-boy is too much of a coward (a trait he shares with Saddam ironically, he asked one of his lieutenants to shoot him if he was caught by Iranians at the front during the Iraq-Iran war) for that, but he is metaphorically immolating himself. His whole life has been one long cry for help and now whole swathes of the country can see this clearly.