Somewhere in the mesmerizing performance by Robert McNamara, the former US defense secretary, in the film The Fog of War, he says: "the US has no friends, only allies."
It's a phrase that should be chiselled into the British Cabinet table, because each new prime minister believes that the special relationship, a phrase that is unrecognized in the US, entails special favors, access and status.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Any such illusion must have disintegrated for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US President George W. Bush, operating in the club of their victimhood, made an announcement about the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Naturally the Palestinians were not consulted; it is merely their land.
More surprising in a way was that Blair had remained outside the loop since April 11, when Sharon's people met two members of the US National Security Council and a senior US diplomat in a Washington hotel to thrash out a deal before Sharon arrived 48 hours later.
Blair gave no hint of bitterness in Friday's Rose Garden press conference, but considering the risks he has taken to support the US since Sept. 11, it was astonishingly ungracious of Bush to keep him out of these negotiations. The "Road Map" and the promise of multilateral action in Palestine and the West Bank were, after all, the only real concession that Blair won in exchange for British help in Iraq.
Yet before he had even touched down in the US, the deal was done. Bush's obligation to his "friend" had been chucked away like a motto in a Christmas cracker.
I am one of those who believe that Blair should be relieved of his duties because of the failure to find the supposed weapons of mass destruction. Even so, I would not wish the humiliation he has suf-fered on him or any British prime minister.
He has been one of the US' staunchest allies, biting his lip at the serial crassness of US commanders and arguing the US case tirelessly. Yet despite the enthusiastic tone at the White House, the reality is that he was cast aside as soon as Bush didn't need him.
US foreign policy consists entirely of self-interest, never more so than in an election year when a first-term president is pursuing an extra few percent of Jewish votes in Florida and Ohio. For this, the president attempts to put the world's most serious problem into storage, leaving the destiny of people hanging in the air and the world open-mouthed at the nakedness of his motives.
The prime minister has argued that the Sharon plan is, in effect, stage one of the "Road Map" and that it may contain an opportunity for progress. The signs are not hopeful, for the simple reason that it dismisses Security Council resolution 242 demanding an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. Drafted by the British, 242 is the central pillar of the Palestinian case, and to have it dismissed by the US and Israel will add to the Palestinians' sense of injustice.
In a recent newspaper article about Iraq, the prime minister wrote that a "significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with Schadenfreude at the difficulty we find." There's a reason for this that he may have appreciated better at the end of last week than he did at the beginning: A vast proportion of intelligent Western opinion is sick of the world's most delicate problems being subsumed to the ambitions of a few US politicians.
We hurried to war last year so that it wouldn't overlap with Bush's election campaign. We are about to hand over to a sovereign authority in Iraq, the nature of which is still unclear, so that he can distance himself from events there well before Nov. 4. Now Bush dispatches the Palestinian problem to the distant rim of the agenda with this shoddy fix in a hotel room.
Blair was wrong to suggest that some wish for failure. The world is too perilous for that; they just pray that the US and British governments understand the reasons for the failures so far.
Opponents of the war may have given up worrying about the weapons of mass destruction, mostly because Blair and Bush no longer feel the need to answer for their mistake. But this doesn't allay their fears about the disastrous mishandling of the peace. The mistakes are ongoing and cumulative, chiefly because the US is perceived as having a distinct bias against Arabs and Islam. Britain, though more balanced in its stance, is dragged along in the slipstream, and no one in Iraq is in the mood to make distinctions.
A useful lesson that McNamara has lived long enough to learn, and which he expresses with a certain gritty sadness in The Fog of War, is the need to empathize with your foe.
The US and Britain have failed to do that at practically every turn. Western troops are not regarded as bearers of the gift of democracy but an invading force that has ripped pride and sovereignty from the Iraqi people. This is not to say that Iraqis don't appreciate the beginnings of a free press and increased civil liberties, but other religious and cultural emotions have come into play. We must recognize them in order to isolate the real troublemakers.
The most worrying trend has been the way so many stories have merged into a single current: Palestine, Iraq, the warnings to US citizens in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's tape and the Sept. 11 hearings have all come together to create a sense of general intractability. The clash of civilizations predicted by US neoconservative thinkers seems to be happening before our eyes.
There are solutions to many of these problems, chiefly an increased role for the UN, now being wooed by Blair and Bush. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan should use this to his advantage, for the only way to establish peace in Iraq, or Palestine, is with the international community's reinvigorated will.
The UN is the only organization that can get Britain and the US out of the mess they are in. Rather than being polite and diplomatic, the secretary general should ram that message home, reminding them how the US swept aside the reservations of the international community last year.
The UN has suffered greatly from Bush's arrogance. He must now concede that US military might is not everything. Iraq was a mistake of a very large order and that should be entered into the public record so that the US public may consider it on Nov. 4.
All is not lost. The solutions are there and we can reach for them if only we have the will to push back the US influence and rein in the prime minister's ludicrous attempt to strut on the world stage.
There were smiles of conviction and staunchness in the Rose Gar-den last week, indicating to some that the special relationship was not dead. But the only foreign leader who has any claim to be the US' friend had just left town with the deeds to the West Bank in his back pocket.
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