Not so obvious on the LBO list these days, where a great deal of militaristic mawkishness has been expressed in support of NATO's lunatic campaign in the Balkans.
What a perfectly matched pair of hypocritical, self-serving, warmongering frauds Clinton and Blair are. UK columnist Boris Johnson is a right-wing nut who makes Pat Buchanan look like Izzy Stone, but at least he recognizes integrity when he sees it -- and where he sees it right now is in the standard bearers of the *old* Labour Party. The following is his column in today's Telegraph:
The kind of war that the Labour Party loves
By Boris Johnson
It is May 1982. British forces are engaged in a heroic attempt to reverse the aggression of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. It is a war that evokes the bemused admiration of people across the world, who thought this country had lost the will to fight for the principle of national self-determination.
It is a war that will drain billions of pounds and bring terrible deaths to our soldiers, sailors and airmen, but which will vindicate justice, international law and UK guarantees to the people of the Falklands that they may remain British for as long as they so choose. It is also the month of the Beaconsfield by-election and a certain bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Labour candidate is being asked to give his views.
"I believe that, given the starkness of the military options, we need to compromise on certain things," says the Labour man, who is also a member of CND, with what will become his trademark suppleness. "I don't think that ultimately the wishes of the Falkland islanders must determine our position," he tells reporters, in words that will be studied with interest by General Leopoldo Galtieri and the Argentinian junta.
A few days later, while the nation prays for the safe return of the Task Force, he is at it again. "There are limitations to our military ability," says this lily-livered Leftie on May 12, apparently heedless of the damage he might inflict on the morale of troops, or the comfort his incautious words might give to the enemy. He is speaking, after all, only days after an Exocet has reduced the destroyer Sheffield to a white-hot inferno with the loss of 21 men. "There must be a proportionality between the lives lost and the cause at issue," he says.
The Daily Telegraph sums up the thruster's policy as "Victory to the Argentines", while the Guardian paraphrases him as saying: "A promise of self-determination for the Falklanders could lead to full-scale war." Who is this sceptic, this faintheart, this white-feather-wearing underminer of our national resolve? Who is it who doesn't think lives should be risked to reverse the illegal seizure of British territory and the wrecking of British livelihoods and farms?
It is, of course, the very man you saw yesterday in the Commons, nostrils flaring, pale of face, massive in his dignity and controlled passion, announcing the dispatch of more British troops to the Balkans.
He is the Rt Hon. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, our War Leader. And who were those cheering behind him? Surely not the Labour MPs, most of whom were members of CND and who believe, publicly or privately, that the Falklands war was a lunatic venture to rescue the reputation of that mad old bat, Margaret Thatcher? The more one studies the Left-wing attitude to the war for Kosovo, the more fascinating it is.
Of course there are the old believers, MPs Tony Benn and Alice Mahon, or the writers Harold Pinter and Noam Chomsky, who remain implacable in their anti-Americanism and their pacifism. They may be slightly crackers, but there is something admirable in their consistency. It is the mass of the shoulder-padded Labour benches, and everything we call New Labour, that has flipped over.
Bomb the Serbs, cry the columnists of the Guardian and the Independent, the very people who opposed the Falklands and who 30 years ago might have been found demonstrating against American bombing of Vietnam. Bomb, bomb, bomb, say Labour MPs, and, if that isn't working, send in the ground troops. Higher and higher rises the martial fervour in the breast of David Winnick MP, who yesterday urged Blair to step up the pressure on the "murderous Milosevic regime".
You and I may think that Milosevic is indeed murderous; and that, having made the mistake of unsupported air strikes and having precipitated the humanitarian catastrophe we have all seen, Nato now has no option but to drive the brute out of Kosovo and to restore the former inhabitants to their homes. You and I might think that the war aims that Blair set out yesterday were broadly right. The interesting question is, what is it about this war, as opposed to previous conflicts, that appeals to the Left and to Blair?
The germ of the answer is contained in his article in Newsweek, where he announces that this is the first "progressive" war, fought by a new generation of post-war baby-boomers, "who are prepared to be as firm as any of our predecessors, Right or Left, in seeing this thing through. See it through we will." And what is a "progressive" war about? "In this conflict we are not fighting for territory, but for values," he says. Ah! Values!
It is not about any fusty old concepts of national boundaries, he says - as well he might, since, unlike the Falklands or Vietnam, Western power is not being used to drive back aggression against a sovereign country. Kosovo was part of Serbia, and indeed, so far as one could understand the Prime Minister yesterday, the province will remain part of Serbia if and when a settlement is reached with Milosevic, whom the Government describes as "Hitler" and with whom it hourly negotiates.
Yes, the Blairite Left can engage its honest emotions in the war for Kosovo precisely because there is no hoary old 19th-century-style obsession with national sovereignty, and, better still, there is no British interest at stake. There are no embarrassing colonial white men with curious accents, begging the mother country to save them. There are no colonial farms or plantations being expropriated. As Blair said in his withering reply to Alan Clark, this is a war against "racism"; and with that word he hit the progressive gong.
A war against racism is a high cause, even if this one requires us to make some dubious assumptions about the bona fides of some of the persecuted race, in this case the KLA. It is also a "humanitarian" war, he says in Newsweek, even though Cabinet ministers themselves admit that the humanitarian task has been greatly enlarged by the air strikes intended to avert it.
There is a further reason why the Blairites are proud of this war, and that is that they see it as a chance to continue the realignment of British politics. Ministers are not only filled with awe and pride at the bravery and professionalism of British forces, whom they are privileged to command.
They are also filled with secret joy at the misery of the Tory party, quite unable to attack Tony Blair, or the Government, or the handling of the war, because that would be to subvert the national effort and prejudice morale. The Tories know that, somehow or other, Milosevic will be "defeated". Indeed, since Blair is so obsessed with the Thatcherian imperium, which he sees as programmatic for his own, we can assume the Serb leader's historical function is to be his Galtieri.
When that time comes, it will be hard to point out the deficiencies in Tony's triumph without seeming down on Britain, or belittling the achievements of our boys. That would be to commit the unpardonable error of Tony Blair in 1982.
[end of article]
Carl Remick