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The Herald, UK
Jan 12 2008
Why am I pessimistic about this optimism?
IAN BELL
It is, I think, a wonderful world in which Tony Blair is "cautiously
optimistic". For an entire decade he was optimistically cautious. In
that time, the Lebanon got levelled, hundreds were murdered, children
died, peace in the Middle East was forgotten and brother Blair found
nothing of interest to report. Least of all to the detritus of a
once-great socialist party, or even to a simple, stupid democratic
parliament.
Then some other war-thing intervened. Out of the blue, you
understand. There was some fuss, apparently, about some stuff. Then
everyone forgot. Faces saved. Gosh.
Beirut, like Tony, was rebuilt, of course. Yet again, the world
became a happier place. Then Mr Blair somehow became "an envoy" -
yours? mine? - in the Middle East. Now, today, this morning, he is
optimistic. Cautiously.
Having spent many years on this fruitless study, off and on, my best
guess is that our previous Prime Minister has decided to give himself
a Nobel Prize. For peace, no doubt. Unlike all those before him - a
big hand for Mr Balfour, ladies and gentlemen - Mr Blair really
thinks he can fix this one.
advertisementOr at least, if the Nobel committee is watching,
convince the rest of us that a tragedy has been fixed. In particular,
he appears to believe that he can call in his many favours to
President Gee-What?
On my reading, Mr Blair this week persuaded Mr Bush to travel to the
east end of the Med, say a couple of things that Israel might later
discount without difficulty, and look presidential. I don't think -
though you never know - that a Republican "October surprise" is in
the offing. That one will happen in the Arabian Gulf. But you can
never can, really never, tell.
The fascinating thing about Mr Blair is that his personal time-line
appears not to coincide with most ideas of history. Bush,
transparently, is doing the usual late-presidential thing: finally
turning up to pretend to care about anyone Israel regards as a
threat. Huzzah.
Give them back some land, he says, and be nice. Don't mention
history, don't mention dispossession or despoliation and don't ever
mention any of the strange parallels by which their plight and your
former plight begin to seem even slightly similar.
Anyone who says otherwise is, obviously, a tourist, George will say.
"And a terrorist," Mr Cheney will add, from behind the curtain.
Unpick this stuff, though. Why does the government of the biggest,
most powerful, sovereign state on the planet never, ever, dispute the
foreign policy decisions taken in a place the size, roughly, of
Wales? It is, intuitively, odd. But it also happens to be the case
that a small fire-storm is blazing in American academic circles, just
at the moment, over the mere suggestion that there is such a thing as
an Israel lobby.
Just by typing that, I know what is liable to follow. Libels follow.
But just by typing "libels follow", I entitle myself to ask what has
been done for the Armenians, lately, or for their spiritual
descendants, the Palestinians. The problem involved in writing about
America and Israel, as it affects the Middle East, is the problem of
anti-Semitism. And that implied insult, as a historic gag, won't shut
everyone up forever.
Bush goes to the wrong end of the Med bearing platitudes. Israel will
not, once or ever, bear the idea that it might have treated a people
unjustly. The "international community", not least its Islamic
members, will not allow the revolutionary forces of Palestine out of
their box. This much we know.
Daft George is easy to grasp: he's on the farewell presidential tour,
making dull speeches and crafting dull platitudes, like all the small
world a pocket Elvis, but talentless. Still strewing damp souvenir
neck-wear around concert halls in countries he's never heard of,
however. And always missing the point. Peace in Palestine? Who gives
a Congressional vote? That one wasn't in the damned briefing notes,
Dick.
Blair is, not for the first time, another matter. To render things
down to their fundamentals: what's he doing there, why is he doing it
and for whom?
If our former Prime Minister is about to achieve justice for
Palestine, that will not count, I think, as a bad thing. If Mr Bush,
equally, is about to make an executive order on behalf of the
luckless and pillaged of the region a big, very simple and true word
is available. Here it comes. Good.
But why is Tony Blair, the Prince of Basra, reporting himself this
week as optimistic ("cautiously") that peace between the state of
Israel and its victims can be contrived "within a year"? Because
George, the almost-former President, says so?
"The Americans" is easy, as a handy conspiracist explanation. "Nobel
Prize" is even easier. Blair's ego will work for most of the usual
purposes of rough satire. It is an oddity, nevertheless, that people
in these islands have decided both to forget the man who ran their
lives for an entire decade, and to stop wondering what he did next.
He's doing it. To, or for, Palestine. Is this, suddenly, none of our
business?
The point about Palestine is a point, equal but not necessarily
opposite, about Israel. (Ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs,
please.) What was once done to the Jewish people soaks through all
the things we might say, write or think, if we do think, about the
behaviour of states. I could say the same about the Armenians. But as
a certain Mr Hitler once observed, who remembers them?
You could laugh at good old laughable Tony and his lousy,
so-very-typical cautious, boyish optimism. You could, for who has
not?, have a Doonesbury moment, or a Michael Moore chuckle, at George
the accidental idiot President. Might keep you going for an hour on a
cold January day. Might not. But then wonder: what keeps the people
of Palestine going, this weather? "Terrorists", mostly, and
democratically-elected terrorists, too.
There is a chasm in international affairs. Most of it has to do with
"terror". But if a Tony Blair can bridge that gap who, sensate, has a
right to object? If even a George Bush doing his valedictorian
routine can help Palestine, what are your jokes, or mine, worth? They
had better be good jokes.
The plight of those Semitic people is not liable to be ameliorated by
a Bush or by a Blair. On the other hand, it will not be helped just
because I damn a political chancer. That is not how things happen.
Blair, Nobel or not, has been put in place as someone's stooge. Bush
wants his legacy, in the imperial style. So how might any of this aid
Palestine?
The alternative, remember, is the gun, and the bomb, and "the
struggle". That choice is made by people who believe they have been
bombed, once too often, and lied to. I return to those questions for
which I have no answer.
Who hired Mr Blair as my "envoy"? Why did he say not a word when the
Lebanon was being levelled? And why am I supposed to pretend to care
when George Bush is pretending to care?
Each of the alternatives turns out, God help us, to be worse than the
last.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/fea tures/display.var.1960932.0.Why_am_I_pessimistic_a bout_this_optimism.php
Jan 12 2008
Why am I pessimistic about this optimism?
IAN BELL
It is, I think, a wonderful world in which Tony Blair is "cautiously
optimistic". For an entire decade he was optimistically cautious. In
that time, the Lebanon got levelled, hundreds were murdered, children
died, peace in the Middle East was forgotten and brother Blair found
nothing of interest to report. Least of all to the detritus of a
once-great socialist party, or even to a simple, stupid democratic
parliament.
Then some other war-thing intervened. Out of the blue, you
understand. There was some fuss, apparently, about some stuff. Then
everyone forgot. Faces saved. Gosh.
Beirut, like Tony, was rebuilt, of course. Yet again, the world
became a happier place. Then Mr Blair somehow became "an envoy" -
yours? mine? - in the Middle East. Now, today, this morning, he is
optimistic. Cautiously.
Having spent many years on this fruitless study, off and on, my best
guess is that our previous Prime Minister has decided to give himself
a Nobel Prize. For peace, no doubt. Unlike all those before him - a
big hand for Mr Balfour, ladies and gentlemen - Mr Blair really
thinks he can fix this one.
advertisementOr at least, if the Nobel committee is watching,
convince the rest of us that a tragedy has been fixed. In particular,
he appears to believe that he can call in his many favours to
President Gee-What?
On my reading, Mr Blair this week persuaded Mr Bush to travel to the
east end of the Med, say a couple of things that Israel might later
discount without difficulty, and look presidential. I don't think -
though you never know - that a Republican "October surprise" is in
the offing. That one will happen in the Arabian Gulf. But you can
never can, really never, tell.
The fascinating thing about Mr Blair is that his personal time-line
appears not to coincide with most ideas of history. Bush,
transparently, is doing the usual late-presidential thing: finally
turning up to pretend to care about anyone Israel regards as a
threat. Huzzah.
Give them back some land, he says, and be nice. Don't mention
history, don't mention dispossession or despoliation and don't ever
mention any of the strange parallels by which their plight and your
former plight begin to seem even slightly similar.
Anyone who says otherwise is, obviously, a tourist, George will say.
"And a terrorist," Mr Cheney will add, from behind the curtain.
Unpick this stuff, though. Why does the government of the biggest,
most powerful, sovereign state on the planet never, ever, dispute the
foreign policy decisions taken in a place the size, roughly, of
Wales? It is, intuitively, odd. But it also happens to be the case
that a small fire-storm is blazing in American academic circles, just
at the moment, over the mere suggestion that there is such a thing as
an Israel lobby.
Just by typing that, I know what is liable to follow. Libels follow.
But just by typing "libels follow", I entitle myself to ask what has
been done for the Armenians, lately, or for their spiritual
descendants, the Palestinians. The problem involved in writing about
America and Israel, as it affects the Middle East, is the problem of
anti-Semitism. And that implied insult, as a historic gag, won't shut
everyone up forever.
Bush goes to the wrong end of the Med bearing platitudes. Israel will
not, once or ever, bear the idea that it might have treated a people
unjustly. The "international community", not least its Islamic
members, will not allow the revolutionary forces of Palestine out of
their box. This much we know.
Daft George is easy to grasp: he's on the farewell presidential tour,
making dull speeches and crafting dull platitudes, like all the small
world a pocket Elvis, but talentless. Still strewing damp souvenir
neck-wear around concert halls in countries he's never heard of,
however. And always missing the point. Peace in Palestine? Who gives
a Congressional vote? That one wasn't in the damned briefing notes,
Dick.
Blair is, not for the first time, another matter. To render things
down to their fundamentals: what's he doing there, why is he doing it
and for whom?
If our former Prime Minister is about to achieve justice for
Palestine, that will not count, I think, as a bad thing. If Mr Bush,
equally, is about to make an executive order on behalf of the
luckless and pillaged of the region a big, very simple and true word
is available. Here it comes. Good.
But why is Tony Blair, the Prince of Basra, reporting himself this
week as optimistic ("cautiously") that peace between the state of
Israel and its victims can be contrived "within a year"? Because
George, the almost-former President, says so?
"The Americans" is easy, as a handy conspiracist explanation. "Nobel
Prize" is even easier. Blair's ego will work for most of the usual
purposes of rough satire. It is an oddity, nevertheless, that people
in these islands have decided both to forget the man who ran their
lives for an entire decade, and to stop wondering what he did next.
He's doing it. To, or for, Palestine. Is this, suddenly, none of our
business?
The point about Palestine is a point, equal but not necessarily
opposite, about Israel. (Ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs,
please.) What was once done to the Jewish people soaks through all
the things we might say, write or think, if we do think, about the
behaviour of states. I could say the same about the Armenians. But as
a certain Mr Hitler once observed, who remembers them?
You could laugh at good old laughable Tony and his lousy,
so-very-typical cautious, boyish optimism. You could, for who has
not?, have a Doonesbury moment, or a Michael Moore chuckle, at George
the accidental idiot President. Might keep you going for an hour on a
cold January day. Might not. But then wonder: what keeps the people
of Palestine going, this weather? "Terrorists", mostly, and
democratically-elected terrorists, too.
There is a chasm in international affairs. Most of it has to do with
"terror". But if a Tony Blair can bridge that gap who, sensate, has a
right to object? If even a George Bush doing his valedictorian
routine can help Palestine, what are your jokes, or mine, worth? They
had better be good jokes.
The plight of those Semitic people is not liable to be ameliorated by
a Bush or by a Blair. On the other hand, it will not be helped just
because I damn a political chancer. That is not how things happen.
Blair, Nobel or not, has been put in place as someone's stooge. Bush
wants his legacy, in the imperial style. So how might any of this aid
Palestine?
The alternative, remember, is the gun, and the bomb, and "the
struggle". That choice is made by people who believe they have been
bombed, once too often, and lied to. I return to those questions for
which I have no answer.
Who hired Mr Blair as my "envoy"? Why did he say not a word when the
Lebanon was being levelled? And why am I supposed to pretend to care
when George Bush is pretending to care?
Each of the alternatives turns out, God help us, to be worse than the
last.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/fea tures/display.var.1960932.0.Why_am_I_pessimistic_a bout_this_optimism.php