Letters to the Editor

• The Times (of London, Murdoch owned, Friday June 15) - Headline "Why we must break with the American crazies"

  [Read the article: Bush's European disaster]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Anyone who disagrees with the what Blumenthal had to say should read this:

  http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article1934770.ece

  This article is by Anatole Keletsky, a conservative columnist who some even accuse of being a British Neocon. The Times by the way is owned by Rupert Murdoch - so Republicans should wonder at its publishing this. To put it simply, even a very pro-US newspaper, owned by a right wing publisher, thinks that US policies are nuts and that the UK should, well, break its alliance. Does any of the perfervid Neocon halfwits out there have any idea the point their ranting, their name calling, their lies and bullshit (and I do mean people like RealName and -- was it Oxymoron) has brought the US to, that the newspaper of Record in its most important ally can have one of its most important conservative columnists call for ending the alliance with the US -- wow, heck-of-a-job job Bushy!

  Some lines:

  While Mr Brown and the British media are still fretting about who said what to whom about WMD intelligence, the talk in American policy circles is about an article, The Case for Bombing Iran, published two weeks ago in Commentary and The Wall Street Journal and cited approvingly to anyone who cares to listen by officials close to Dick Cheney. Its author, Norman Podhoretz, is an intellectual mentor to the people who took America into Iraq. His self-explanatory message is that Iran today is more dangerous than Hitler’s Germany, since it could soon have nuclear weapons – and that Israel’s very existence is menaced now as never before.

  ... Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, came out with a strikingly undiplomatic public statement, giving warning that “crazies in Washington” now seemed to be planning to repeat the Iraq disaster by attacking Iran.

  Swift operation by unknown gang

  well-informed Americans, some even inside the Bush Administration, are now looking forward instead of backward, debating not what happened five years ago, but how to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible and, even more urgently, how to prevent 'the crazies' from starting another war."

  "There is now strong evidence that President Bush didn’t even know the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims when he decided to attack Iraq – and that dissenting opinions were simply blocked by Mr Cheney before they could reach the President’s desk."

  His conclusion is especially interesting:

  The question Mr Brown must now ask himself is whether he can still allow himself to remain publicly allied to a US Administration that is so recklessly belligerent in its diplomatic conduct, so demonstrably incompetent in warfare and so irresponsibly dangerous to the peace of the world.

  As the anarchy in Iraq goes from bad to worse and Washington’s only answer is to expand the circle of its aggression, clichés about the special relationship are no longer sufficient. Mr Brown must decide whether to remain a silent but active partner in this madness, whether to retreat quietly like the Italians, Poles and Spaniards or to develop a third and genuinely courageous option. This is to positively forestall further disasters by breaking publicly with the Bush Administration and trying to develop a genuine European alternative to the suicidal American-led policies, not only in Iraq, but also in Israel, Palestine and Iran.

  Permalink Friday, June 15, 2007 01:01 AM