Salon: (Blumenthal) How Bush Betrayed Blair

[kskiska]

The British P.M. thought he had a deal: He'd support the war and Bush would stand up to Ariel Sharon. But administration neoconservatives, led by Elliott Abrams, killed the deal.

Tony Blair, about to welcome George W. Bush to London for a state visit on Nov. 18 with pomp and circumstance, has assumed the mantle of tutor to the unlearned American president -- a pedagogical role that defines the latest phase of the hallowed special relationship.

Bush originally came to Blair determined to go to war in Iraq, but without a strategy. Blair instructed him that the casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, urged him to make the case before the United Nations, and when the effort to obtain a U.N. resolution failed, persuaded Bush to revive the Middle East peace process between Israel and Palestine that Bush had abandoned. The new "road map" for peace there was the principal concession that Blair wrested from Bush. Blair argued that renewing the negotiations was essential to the long-term credibility of the coalition goals in Iraq and the whole region. But within the councils of the Bush administration that initiative was systematically undermined. Now Blair welcomes a president who has taught him a lesson in statecraft he refuses to acknowledge.

Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst, revealed to me that the text of the road map was ready to be made public before the end of 2002: "We had made high-level commitments to key European and Arab allies. The White House lost its nerve. It took Blair to get Bush to put it out. But even then the administration wasn't really committed to it." Leverett is also a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, one of the authors of the road map, and now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "We needed to work this issue hard, but because we didn't want to make life difficult with Ariel Sharon, we undercut our credibility."

(snip)

Tony Blair gave George W. Bush a reason for the war in Iraq and prompted him to offer a commitment to peace for the Middle East, preventing Bush from appearing as a reckless and isolated leader. In return for his good faith, the teacher's seminar on the Middle East has been dropped. "Just what is it that Blair has influenced?" wonders Leverett.

Harold Macmillan, the postwar prime minister, famously remarked that after empire the British would act toward the Americans as the Greeks to the Romans. Though the Greeks were often tutors to the Romans, Macmillan neglected to mention that the Greeks were slaves.

more…
http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/11/14/blair_bush/index.html

[madrchsod]

1. every time i read

stuff like this the arguement that the "stromfront" troopers believe is harder and harder to dispute.