Has Tony Blair been hypnotised by the CIA? Is he being blackmailed by the
Bush administration? Or does he simply want to help out an
intellectually-challenged friend who's clearly struggling to cope with
high office?

OK, maybe the above suggestions are a little extreme. But there must be
some good reason why Blair continues to back President Bush over the
proposed attack on Iraq, despite all rational argument and in the face of
mounting opposition from all over the world. What could that reason
possibly be?

At his press conference in Sedgefield on Tuesday, Blair insisted: 'I
would never support anything I thought was wrong out of blind loyalty to
the US'. But just about everything else he had to say suggested that, on
Iraq at least, the blind loyalty was certainly there.

'International terrorism committed its worst atrocity on the streets of
America, but it was an attack on the whole of the civilised world,' said
Blair. 'America should not have to face these problems alone... If
Britain and Europe want to be taken seriously as people facing up to
these issues, then our place is facing them with America.'

Why? Do nations gain more respect by slavishly playing follow-the-leader,
or by displaying some capacity for independent thought? And whose respect
is it that Britain and Europe needs so badly that we must be willing to
fight a war so that they will take us seriously?

True, some right-wing American commentators have been sneering at
European leaders' insistence that decisions on going to war should come
from the United Nations Security Council, not from one faction of the
United States government. But Europe should be proud to have earned the
enmity of that minority of Americans who believe that their government
has some kind of God-given right to choose the governments of the rest of
the world's nations.

As Nelson Mandela put it at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg: 'No country
should be allowed to take the law into their own hands'. Mr Mandela added
that this particularly applied to the United States, '...because they are
the only superpower in the world today, and they must be exemplary in
everything they do.'

At the same Summit, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan pointed
out that the United Nations didn't need the US to interpret its
resolutions. Mr Annan observed: 'Everyone is talking of the
implementation of Security Council resolutions. The council is the
ultimate authority on its own resolutions, and there should be an
interpretation of its resolutions. I hope they will have a word to say
about this before anything is done.'

Blair apparently agrees with that hope, up to a point. 'The most
important thing is that whatever we do, we do with the broadest possible
basis of support. That is what we did in Afghanistan and Kosovo. We had
the international community with us...', he said in Sedgefield.

However, despite repeated promptings from journalists, Blair alarmingly
declined to commit himself to the principle that no attack on Iraq should
take place without fresh discussion by the UN Security Council.

He declared: 'The UN has to be the route to deal with the problem, not a
way of avoiding the problem. We cannot have a situation where people turn
a blind eye.' This sounds alarmingly like an endorsement of those
American 'hawks' who argue that Iraq must be attacked whatever the UN
says; that the UN is useful and relevant only as long as it does what
it's told to do by the world’s only superpower.

It would appear that, if Bush demands it, Blair is willing to disregard
public opinion in Britain, where one of the most recent opinion polls
reported that 71 per cent of voters oppose British backing for an
American strike on Iraq without UN backing. He's willing to take a stance
that no other European leader will countenance, by unequivocally backing
America in an adventure that would certainly lead to the deaths of
thousands of innocent people and would probably lead to years of
conflict, making the situation in the Middle East even worse.

Blair is always at his most unattractive when he knows he's losing an
argument. At the Sedgefield press conference, his impatience and
exasperation at the amount of opposition to his stance on Iraq was plain
to see. He spluttered: 'One of the things I have found bizarre is the
sight of decent, liberal-minded people lining up and saying we should do
nothing about the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

But opposing the idea of backing the Bush administration whatever it
might choose to do is not the same thing as endorsing Hussein, nor is it
the same as saying that nothing should be done about his government's
breaches of UN resolutions. Plenty is already being done to punish Iraq's
misdeeds. Economic sanctions have already taken a terrible toll on the
Iraqi population, and those sanctions' effectiveness is shown by the
Iraqi government's offers to allow UN weapons inspectors back into their
country in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions.

It's not the idea of taking any action that appals many of us. It's the
idea of an all-out war, with America alone rather than the international
community calling the shots. And for me and millions of others in
Britain, the idea of our government lending some veneer of respectability
to such an enterprise is outrageous.

Blair is now bringing forward the publication of his famous dossier of
evidence against Iraq, which he claims will win over all of us who are as
yet sceptical about the case for war. I await it with keen interest, and
wouldn't wish to prejudge it; but to reverse the tide of public opinion
in Britain, it'll certainly have to be far more convincing than any
argument he's put forward so far.

Recently, leading members of the Bush administration have been invoking
the name of Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill, reminding us how
Churchill tried to warn the world about the dangers of appeasing Hitler
before the Second World War.

But it was Churchill who, on a visit to Washington in 1954, famously
remarked: 'To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.'

On another occasion, Churchill had this warning for politicians eager to
rush to war:

'Let us learn our lessons. Never believe any war will be smooth and easy,
or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides
and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever
must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of
policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events...
incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile
neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations...'

I'd sleep better at night if I could believe that Bush was statesman
enough to learn the lessons of history to which Churchill referred, and
to draw back from the brink of war. Unfortunately, I think he's probably
about to make some awful miscalculations instead.

It was an event that was meant to produce agreements; but the abiding
images of the World Summit in Johannesburg will surely be of conflict.
Colin Powell often seems to be one of the most reasonable and
conciliatory figures in the Bush administration, but even his powers of
diplomacy failed when it came to defending the administrations woeful
record on environmental issues, and he was heckled and humiliated. Robert
Mugabe raged against Tony Blair, while demonstrators outside the building
raged against Robert Mugabe.

And after all the shouting, how much was achieved? The answer to that
depends very much on who you ask. Britain's lead negotiator Margaret
Beckett was euphoric, declaring the summit 'a victory for everyone', and
gushing: 'The overall result of the summit is truly remarkable. We had to
give it our best shot to get the best deal we could, and we did. I am in
no doubt that our descendants will look back on this summit and say we
set out on a new path.'

Compare that glowing report with these words from Andrew Hewett of the
charity Oxfam, not generally an organisation noted for extreme political
militancy: 'After nine days of bluster, the world gets some gains on a
few issues and on sanitation for the poor. But overall the deal is
feeble. It is a triumph for greed and self-interest, a tragedy for poor
people and the environment.'

Charles Secrett, director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth
went further, furiously denouncing the world leaders who, he said:
'...publicly preached the message of sustainable development but
instructed their negotiators to do trade deals above all else. This is
the worst political sell-out in decades.'

Some good has come out of the summit. If the target of halving the number
of people without basic sanitation (currently about 1.2 billion) by 2015
is met, then countless lives will be saved that might otherwise have been
lost to water-borne diseases. People in some of the planet's poorer
coastal areas will be saying 'thanks for all the fish' if marine
pollution and illegal fishing are tackled and fish stocks replenished, as
another agreement promises. It's good, too, to see Russia and China
declaring their support for the Kyoto agreement on global warming.
Hopefully Russia - the third biggest polluter on earth - will now make
serious efforts to clean up its act.

But it was deeply depressing to see attempts to set targets for
increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as wind power
thwarted by the Opec countries, the USA and Japan. It was argued by some
delegates that implementing such forms of energy production is expensive:
but the cost of failing to implement them can be measured in irreparable
damage to the environment from which the world's poorest people will
suffer most.

There were some young speakers at the summit, meant to remind the adult
delegates of their responsibilities towards the next generation. One of
them, 11-year-old Canadian Justin Friesen, said: 'Too many adults are too
interested in money and wealth to take notice of serious problems that
affect our future'.

It's a tragedy that those nations with a vested interest in the oil
industry then went on to prove him right.

Finally, just when you might have thought that branding and marketing
could not possibly go any further, a company called Acclaim UK have
introduced a new concept, which they call 'identity marketing'. The
company is launching a new video game called 'Turok: Evolution'. To
promote it, they've paid five people to change their names to Turok, via
the UK legal process known as deed poll.

The human commercials formerly known as Ross Davison, Paul Codling,
Matthew Grist, Andrew Boughflower and Lheila Oberman have sold their
identities pretty cheaply, if you ask me. They're getting just £500 each,
plus a Microsoft Xbox and Turok games. In return, they're contractually
obliged to keep their new names for a year. But the deal was a popular
one. Acclaim UK says that more than 10,000 people applied to become
Turoks when they made the offer through their website.

Acclaim's UK Communications Manager Shaun White has enthused: 'The five
Turoks will no doubt speak to and meet tens of thousands of people
between them over the next year and will be walking, talking adverts for
the Turok video game. We think this type of advertising is sure to take
off, and will prove to be a big hit for both Acclaim UK and 'Turok:
Evolution'.'

I have a horrible feeling that he may be right. When you consider the
number of people who are more than happy to wear clothes with huge logos
that turn them into walking billboards for their favourite brands,
perhaps 'identity marketing' is the logical next step. But I can't help
feeling that the five Turoks may come to regret their decision,
especially if the game is a big hit. Imagine being stopped by the police
and having to tell them that your name is Sonic the Hedgehog or Lara
Croft, and I think you'll see what I mean.

I wouldn't fancy it, anyway. You'll never catch me adopting a silly
one-word pseudonym.

Ormy's 'Notes' and Other
Scribblings

The definitive collection

Ormondroyd

05.09.02 Front Page

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