Tony Award
Johnson, Paul
"Tony Award" BY PAUL JOHNSON J n all the turmoil that has followed the September 11 events, President Bush's closest and most reliable ally has been Tony Blair. This is not surprising. The special...
...The Chinese need U.S...
...This Blair is basically conservative, traditionalist, Thatcherite, a patriot who believes in the skill and certitude of the English-speaking nations, in the old Anglo-Saxon Common Law as the basis for international law...
...Bush's plan to topple Saddam and to create a new Middle East cleansed of terrorism and leaning to the West...
...France is a second-class power whose economy is stagnant and whose armed forces are a shambles, unfit to participate in the high-technology assault on Saddam's forces...
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...But then there is the other Blair, the Blair who travels the world, making himself known and liked, who gets on well not only with President Bush but President Putin,who has clear ideas about the kind of world he wants and who should run it...
...He knows from personal experience that this image of the U.S...
...There remains the problem of France, more difficult to buy off because her motive is vanity...
...president, assiduously promoted in France and Germany, is utterly false...
...occupation of Iraq produces an abrupt fall in the oil price, the West will not let Russia suffer, oil exports being her biggest single economic asset...
...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 since his landslide electoral victory earlier this year...
...It is arguable that they are entitled to do this, in international law, under existing UN resolutions passed in the 1990s, and that the operation will be easier if unhampered by further UN and Security Council directives framed by those who have no intention of exposing their armed forces to danger...
...He does not know what failure or real unpopularity means...
...Meet the characters who tell the story of this strange land: the prince, echo would let his son be beheaded, knowing it unjust, because it is the Will of ,111ah...
...This is why the U.S...
...At home we see Labour Party leader Blair, politician Blair, a far from admirable or successful figure...
...where all aetivits stops five times a day as Muslims heed the call to pray er—hruadcast horn 1oudspcakers...
...But Blair's personal role is vital...
...We have been putting up with this sort of thing for 800 years," as one of them put it...
...But perhaps there are two Blairs...
...Blair, on these issues, has never given the impression that he knows where he is going, or even where he wants to go...
...The special relationship between the United States and Britain is stronger than ever...
...fourseasonspub.net_ NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 27...
...If it fails or prolongs itself with heavy casualties and high expense, then Blair will be in serious trouble—not least with his own cabinet colleagues and the Labour Party—for the first time in his charmed political life...
...He finds Bush not only an easy man to deal with," but "a friend whom it is a pleasure to know...
...I believe that to be true, and it was candid and brave of him to admit it...
...After some hesitation, he said: "Not doing the right thing for fear it would make meunpopular...
...In particular, he does not enjoy being abused, even by an overexcitable French-man...
...Join the handful of non-Muslim outsiders, permitted to roam freely there in pursuit of private business...
...and British forces are working in union to build up the capability to remove Saddam Hussein and why their delegations present a united front in New York to get UN authority to proceed...
...This horse-trading has been going on for weeks and success seems likely...
...Blair is not alone...
...a novel by Neil DeRosa The Kingdom of Arabia occupies most of the laud mass known to i t s inhabitants as Al Jazira, The 1 sl and," also known as the Arabian Peninsula...
...Unlike many people in Europe, he does not find Bush an ignorant, undereducated, gung-ho Texan, rash and hotheaded and unfit to be in charge of so much military and political power...
...The British economy has performed well during his term of office...
...Israel was placed b\ Allah in the tiny Northwestern= tip of that land, perhaps a thorn in the sideof the Arabs—or as a test of their obedience...
...He and Bush hit it off...
...There was an ugly scene in October, when Tony Blair objected strongly to the French insistence that the EU's Common Agricultural Policy—a corrupt and wasteful subsidy system for inefficient farmers, which everyone except the French want to scrap—be retained for the rest of the decade...
...Blair particularly resented a behind-the-scenes deal that Chirac had arranged with Helmut Kohl, without telling any of the other members—precisely the kind of behavior the EU is sup-posed to abolish...
...Since becoming leader of the Labour Party, he has always held a strong advantage in the polls over the Conservatives, usually in double-digits...
...This provoked much tittering in the Foreign Office as "very French behavior" and typical of the flouting and flaunting to be expected of Gallic personalities...
...He has been posturing and acting the prima donna at EU meetings, throwing tantrums when opposed...
...He promptly canceled the Franco-British summit planned at Le Touquet later this year...
...According to Downing Street, Jacques Chirac has "been on a high" Paul Johnson is the author most recently of Napoleon, published by Viking Press...
...If the campaign succeeds quickly and fairly painlessly, Blair's judgment will be vindicated, and the many people who doubt it in Britain will have to "lay low...
...In his determination to back Bush in going ahead with or with-out specific UN sanctions, Tony Blair is strengthened by his view that opposition to the American president is not principled but opportunistic...
...and inane more...
...TONY AWARD BY PAUL JOHNSON J n all the turmoil that has followed the September 11 events, President Bush's closest and most reliable ally has been Tony Blair...
...Feeling excluded by her weakness, France has thus taken the diplomatic stage, and her diplomats are currently boasting that they "have the initiative in New York" and are "deter-mining the UN context...
...He has had an astonishingly trouble-free political career, making his way to the top at an early age and experiencing no serious setback...
...the scholar who loved his homeland, yet vowed to destroy it...
...The Russians want reassurances—and if necessary, compensation—that if a U.S...
...By contrast, British defense links with Continental Europe, outside the NATO structure, are virtually nonexistent...
...This second Blair—the real and essential Blair in my opinion—has banked a lot of his political capital in Mr...
...He has won two landslide election victories, and most political observers here (though not me) would bet money on a third...
...He also pointsout that Bush is always willing to listen patiently to British advice, and often takes it...
...Once, when we were discussing faults, I said that my worst one was impatience and asked him to name his...
...help over a range of economic issues and agreement on how to handle North Korea's nuclear capability...
...He is a cheerful soul who likes everyone to be happy...
...Indeed, it can be said that British armed forces and intelligence resources are now so closely intermeshed with their American equivalents that they plan and act as one organization...
...The Bush he knows, he confides to friends, is calm and rational, thoughtful and long-sighted, always well briefed and increasingly knowledgeable, who has grown in office steadily and especially in the last year...
...He is most at home in the Anglo-American atmosphere of the White House and Downing Street, surrounded by special advisers, generals, and diplomats, all of whom speak the same language and share the same view of the world...
...Already angered by France's mischief making over Iraq at the UN, Blair made a strongly worded complaint about France's devious behavior...
...a place wherein spite ofenormous ealth, life goes on urn hanged, as it has for thousands of years...
...It is a place of religious police and unfor -ising law...
...This caused Chirac to lose his temper...
...If this is not forthcoming, or unduly delayed, then the United Kingdom will back America in carrying out the operation anyway...
...the heautiful American woman, who will stop at nothing to avenge her brother's death...
...Until then, order at a discount from]sirScasiPublisher=PO.Boml IarusvilleFL1"s1, 1)2r,7-9SOO, www...
...w The real and essential Tony Blair is basically conservative, traditionalist, Thatcherite...
...As American presidents from Truman and Eisenhower to Reagan and even Clinton have discovered, when times look dark in the White House, the only one of America's allies that can be depended upon absolutely for support and sympathy is Britain...
...the salesman, who was in It only for the money, but got much more than he bargained for...
...He said to Blair: "You have been very rude to me...
...Blair does not like scenes...
...Unemployment and inflation are low, and property prices high, an important asset in a country where nearly 70 percent of families own or are buying their homes...
...If he has a weakness, it is that he loves to be liked...
...But on the four major domestic issues—crime, education, public health, and transport—the government's record is poor to disastrous, whether from confusion or cowardice or simply bad luck, it is hard to say...
...But now, He has given them the means to remove that thorn Discover the secrets of this forbidding, and sometimes enchanting land...
...He is backed by his foreign secretary, the Foreign Office, the defense chiefs, the entire British armed forces, and, not least, by Britain's intelligence networks...
...I have never been spoken to in this way before...
Vol. 35 • November 2002 • No. 6
