Britain's special relationship 'just a myth'
HR - Comment: Many managing the US junta's colonies have not understood this yet. In Iraq alone at least 655.000 people are dead. The by the US war machine spread evil is global. May the US junta and it's collaborators rot in Hell forever.
Britain's special relationship 'just a myth'
Toby Harnden in Washington - Telegraph - UK
A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.
Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was "shrewd, astute" to have distanced himself from America.
In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, the veteran official said America "ignored" Britain, and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the US.
He asserted that the "special relationship", a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.
"It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we've noticed."
The result of the Iraq war would be that any future British premier would be much less cosy with Washington than Mr Blair had been, and the Prime Minister's much vaunted view that Britain was "a transatlantic bridge" was now redundant.
Mr Myers said Donald Rumsfeld's comment before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that America could go it alone without Britain had been a clarifying moment.
"That was the giveaway. I felt a little ashamed and a certain sadness that we had treated him [Mr Blair] like that. And yet, here it was, there was nothing -- no payback, no sense of a reciprocity of the relationship."
During the Vietnam War, Harold Wilson had been "a great deal more clever than Tony Blair". Mr Wilson "managed to fool us on Vietnam" and "succeeded by sounding good but doing nothing".
Mr Blair had done the opposite. "Blair got it the other way round and joined in this Iraq adventure."
Mr Myers conceded that the Prime Minister had faced a difficult decision in 2003. "The way that Iraq developed, it would have been extremely difficult for Tony Blair to have done a Harold Wilson."
LET'S PARK THEM
The Bush administration took little account of what Britain said, Mr Myers said. "We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, 'There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let's park them'. It is a sad business and I don't think it does them justice."
Mr Blair, he said, was more articulate than Mr Bush, but the Prime Minister's ignorance of the British experience in Mesopotamia had led him to make a catastrophic error in backing the Iraq invasion. "Unfortunately, Tony Blair's background was as an actor and not an historian. If only he'd read a book on the 1920s he might have hesitated."
Iraq became a nation state in 1920 after being carved out by the French and British from the remains of the Ottoman empire. It turned out to be a bloody affair that Churchill referred to as the "Mesopotamian entanglement".
In the Middle East, America had "not only failed to do what we wanted in Iraq but we have greatly strained our relationships with others".
CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING HE GOT
Iraq was the single issue that now dominated transatlantic affairs, but Mr Blair had been unable to get anything in return from Mr Bush. "I can't think of anything he got on the asset side of the ledger."
Mr Myers, a senior analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Analysis and Research, was speaking in a lecture in Washington at the School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University.
The public lecture was entitled: "How special is the United States-United Kingdom relationship after Iraq?"
Mr Myers said Mr Blair's reputation was in tatters over Iraq. "One of the most brilliant prime ministerships of modern times was brought a cropper by the Iraq war."
Mr Cameron had been cunning to say in September that Britain must be "not slavish in how we approach the special relationship".
A State Department spokesman said: "The views expressed by Mr Myers in no way represent the views of the United States government."
[andend] - Story Url.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=COPYRIGHT&grid=P9>
# Your View: What has Blair got from the relationship?
# Toby Harnden's blog: An American View of Tony Blair
# In quotes: Kendall Myers on US-UK relations
# Who is Kendall Myers?
MORE & RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/v9pjs
* The Dutch author this far has lived and worked abroad - never in an English speaking country - during more than four decades for international media, as an independent foreign correspondent. Of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab world and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more and armed resistance. Not only among Muslims, as the 'Junta Judasses' claim, but in all 190 countries surrounding the U.S. - War criminals, beware! - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y7wr67
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
-0-
Britain's special relationship 'just a myth'
Toby Harnden in Washington - Telegraph - UK
A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.
Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was "shrewd, astute" to have distanced himself from America.
In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, the veteran official said America "ignored" Britain, and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the US.
He asserted that the "special relationship", a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.
"It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we've noticed."
The result of the Iraq war would be that any future British premier would be much less cosy with Washington than Mr Blair had been, and the Prime Minister's much vaunted view that Britain was "a transatlantic bridge" was now redundant.
Mr Myers said Donald Rumsfeld's comment before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that America could go it alone without Britain had been a clarifying moment.
"That was the giveaway. I felt a little ashamed and a certain sadness that we had treated him [Mr Blair] like that. And yet, here it was, there was nothing -- no payback, no sense of a reciprocity of the relationship."
During the Vietnam War, Harold Wilson had been "a great deal more clever than Tony Blair". Mr Wilson "managed to fool us on Vietnam" and "succeeded by sounding good but doing nothing".
Mr Blair had done the opposite. "Blair got it the other way round and joined in this Iraq adventure."
Mr Myers conceded that the Prime Minister had faced a difficult decision in 2003. "The way that Iraq developed, it would have been extremely difficult for Tony Blair to have done a Harold Wilson."
LET'S PARK THEM
The Bush administration took little account of what Britain said, Mr Myers said. "We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, 'There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let's park them'. It is a sad business and I don't think it does them justice."
Mr Blair, he said, was more articulate than Mr Bush, but the Prime Minister's ignorance of the British experience in Mesopotamia had led him to make a catastrophic error in backing the Iraq invasion. "Unfortunately, Tony Blair's background was as an actor and not an historian. If only he'd read a book on the 1920s he might have hesitated."
Iraq became a nation state in 1920 after being carved out by the French and British from the remains of the Ottoman empire. It turned out to be a bloody affair that Churchill referred to as the "Mesopotamian entanglement".
In the Middle East, America had "not only failed to do what we wanted in Iraq but we have greatly strained our relationships with others".
CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING HE GOT
Iraq was the single issue that now dominated transatlantic affairs, but Mr Blair had been unable to get anything in return from Mr Bush. "I can't think of anything he got on the asset side of the ledger."
Mr Myers, a senior analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Analysis and Research, was speaking in a lecture in Washington at the School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University.
The public lecture was entitled: "How special is the United States-United Kingdom relationship after Iraq?"
Mr Myers said Mr Blair's reputation was in tatters over Iraq. "One of the most brilliant prime ministerships of modern times was brought a cropper by the Iraq war."
Mr Cameron had been cunning to say in September that Britain must be "not slavish in how we approach the special relationship".
A State Department spokesman said: "The views expressed by Mr Myers in no way represent the views of the United States government."
[andend] - Story Url.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=COPYRIGHT&grid=P9>
# Your View: What has Blair got from the relationship?
# Toby Harnden's blog: An American View of Tony Blair
# In quotes: Kendall Myers on US-UK relations
# Who is Kendall Myers?
MORE & RELATED LINKS - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/v9pjs
* The Dutch author this far has lived and worked abroad - never in an English speaking country - during more than four decades for international media, as an independent foreign correspondent. Of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab world and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more and armed resistance. Not only among Muslims, as the 'Junta Judasses' claim, but in all 190 countries surrounding the U.S. - War criminals, beware! - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/y7wr67
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
-0-
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