TB et son “splendide isolement”

Les Britanniques ne cessent de mesurer l’isolement où les met la politique de complet alignement sur les USA qu’ils suivent depuis six ans. La capture des quinze marins et Marines britanniques est un exercice convaincant à cet égard.

Nombre de commentateurs britanniques continuent à souligner l’isolement britannique, essentiellement vis-à-vis de l’Europe, — l’alliance US étant dans ce cas de la plus stricte inutilité sinon pour alimenter les bruits d’une attaque très prochaine contre l’Iran. S’y ajoute le sentiment d’une autorité perdue, disons d’une “autorité morale”, à cause des mauvaises fréquentations.

• Max Hastings développe l’argument selon lequel l’incident fait dans tous les cas le jeu des extrémistes à Téhéran, contre lesquels les Britanniques sont désarmés, — d’autant plus qu’ils continuent à mesurer à quoi se réduit la solidarité européenne et continentale à cet égard. (Dans l’International Herald Tribune du 30 mars.)

»The United States and Britain have suffered a disastrous erosion of moral authority in consequence of the Iraq war.

»The Blair government has been dismayed to perceive the indifference, or worse, with which its European partners have treated the seizure of its naval personnel. Britain has been obliged to water down the draft resolution that it is circulating at the UN Security Council, because some members rejected its original tough wording.

»What should be regarded as an unanswerable case of armed aggression by a rogue state is instead being viewed by many nations as the sort of embarrassment the British should expect, given the dubious legitimacy of their presence on the Shatt al Arab.

»The Iranians know all this, of course, and it fortifies their intransigence. The game they play with considerable skill is to project themselves at once as assertive Islamic crusaders, and also as victims of imperialism.»

• Mattheuw Norman, dans The Independent du 31 mars, juge dans le même sens que l’affaire expose la “perte d’autorité” du Royaume-Uni («We've lost the authority to lecture Iran»). Cette idée est évidemment développée selon une logique où l’on retrouve, comme toujours, l’amitié empoisonnée des USA.

«…Having said that, the reaction to the televising of Faye Turney on Wednesday does seem slightly hysterical. It goes without saying that the seizure of the 15 sailors and marines, whether or not they had strayed into Iranian waters (and it seems certain that they didn't), is inexcusable on every level. So is the transparent coercion of a frightened young woman to say things she clearly didn't wish to say.

»And yet although Leading Seaman Turney seemed stressed, naturally enough, she also looked healthy. There were no overt signs of any physical violence, and her hands were not cuffed. She was wearing civilian clothes, and was allowed to smoke. So on hearing Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, saying that it is “totally unacceptable to parade our people in this way”, the image that flashes to mind is that of other people being paraded for a global television audience, their legs and hands chained together, their bodies immersed in lurid orange boiler suits.

»The British Government wasn't directly responsible for Guantanamo Bay, but it colluded in the illegal seizure of suspects taken there and mistreated to an unimaginably worse degree than appears the case with LS Turney. It assisted the Americans in their pioneering extension of the concept of outsourcing to take in torture, allowing CIA jets to refuel at British airports while transporting suspects to countries with a similarly unCyrus-like approach to human rights as modern Iran.

»And it never raised a squeak about such criminal acts as the kidnap of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, an EU citizen who was walking down a Milanese street in February 2003 when CIA operatives snatched him, bundled him into the back of a white van, and flew him to Cairo for interrogation.

»None of this is to suggest, of course, that one nation's collusion in the illegal seizure of foreign nationals in any way justifies the use of the same indefensible tactics by another, or diminishes the seriousness of the offence. But British complicity in these American crimes raises questions about the source of the moral authority fuelling the current outrage about LS Turney's television appearance. If it did contravene the Geneva Convention, inmates of Camp X-Ray were expressly excluded from its protection, although they were supposedly captured in war (the abstract one against terrurrh), and no Cabinet minister publicly objected to that. It also highlights yet again the extent to which the catastrophic blunder in Iraq is undermining attempts to deal effectively with Iran.

»Precisely why the Iranians captured the officers remains opaque, even now, a week after the event, largely because of the confused command structure at the top of their government and the factional nature of the military. What is crystal clear, however, is that Iran would never have dared so blatant an act of brinkmanship were it not convinced, quite correctly, that the Iraqi misadventure has rendered Britain too nervous and demoralised, not to mention militarily overstretched, to respond with serious force.»

Mis en ligne le 31 mars 2007 à 17H01