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18 juillet 2005 — Place à une réflexion de James Wolcott (collaborateur régulier de Vanity Fair), d’abord à partir de cette simple question (sans espoir sérieux de réponse): mais qu’est-ce que Tony Blair reçoit en échange de son extraordinaire persistance à tenir le rôle du caniche dans la “poddle relationships” qu’il entretient avec GW Bush? « Where's the payoff, the reward? »
L’occasion de poser cette question, c’est le comportement scandaleux d’indifférence du président américain (et aussi des Etats-Unis) après les attentats de Londres. Pourquoi Bush s’est-il conduit de la sorte? Parce qu’il s’en fout, tout simplement. Quant à Blair, le brillant Tony Blair, le cas est certainement plus complexe; il faudrait un gourou ou un psychanalyste de la vieille école freudienne pour nous proposer quelques hypothèses intéressantes.
L’original de la réflexion de Wolcott est sur le site de l’auteur. Nous le re-publions ci-dessous.
By James Wolcott, 13 July 2005
One of the puzzling and perverse questions raised by the poodle relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush is what Blair gets out of it, and, by extension, what benefit Britain obtains by playing deputy sidekick to the Sheriff of Nazareth. Where's the payoff, the reward? Even a poodle ought to receive a doggy treat now and then. The loyalty has been entirely one-sided. Bush made it insultingly clear before the G8 summit that he wasn't going to do a major budge on global warming and African aid just because Blair was so staunch on Iraq. He said that he didn't believe in any quid pro quo and as for Iraq — “Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did.” His manner in that interview couldn't have been more matter-of-fact and dismissive, when he wasn't blinking up a storm.
Like Johnny Rotten in “No Feelings,” President Bush has got no emotions for anybody else, and can't be bothered even to go through the formal motions, having so many more important, interesting things to do, such as fall off his bicycle.
Tom Watson, blogging at The Huffington Post, noted the difference between how the Brits mourned our losses on September 11th and how the leader of the free world breezed out of the summit after their losses last week.
« On the morning of September 13th, 2001, the officer in charge of the Coldstream Guards Band and 1st Battalion Scots Guards received a call from Buckingham Palace. Banish tradition. The music accompanying that day's tourist-swathed ceremomy at the changing would be different. That day, the band played The Star-Spangled Banner. The Brits were with us.
» Four years later, still firmly at the side of the United States in general, and this administration specifically, the British felt the domestic blow of what most Americans and Britons agree is a common enemy — even if we disagree on the prosecution of the struggle against that enemy.
» Our President, George W. Bush, was actually in the United Kingdom when terror struck London. He was in Scotland, a two-hour flight from Heathrow. Understandably, he and the other leaders completed the G8 summit, unbowed by the carnage in the London transit system.
»
» And in doing so, he knowingly cast a gob of bitter spittle in the face of our constant ally, and disgraced the United States of America.
» Why didn't President Bush visit London? Why didn't he walk the streets, take a few questions from the press, show the power of his office to Londoners? Stand at the side of Tony Blair and Ken Livingstone? »
Because, to repeat myself, he just couldn't be bothered.
But it is unfair to single out Bush. The Bush/Rush/Fox News/Ann Coulter/National Review mindless blare of American exceptionalism and entitlement has helped enlist millions of Americans into the ranks of selfish bastards. ‘We are all Britons’ blogtalk is cheap, like wearing another one of those goddam colored wristbands to signal that you nominally support a cause (sympathy as kitsch). Yet again the American eagle has exposed its chicken feathers and rubber beak in the face of adversity. From across the ocean Simon Jenkins at The Huffington Post lobs a question our way.
« Can anyone on your side help? Five days after we had four bombs explode on the London Tube and with everyone saying, stay calm and stay normal, US Air Force officials ordered personnel in Britain to avoid London, whether or not in uniform and including their families. The order has since been rescinded, but the damage is done.
» London must be one of the safest cities on Earth. The only conceivable purchase the terrorists can get is by sowing fear, a fear which is statitistically irrational — Americans are more at risk on the roads round their bases than in the capital. Yet Washington handed Al-Qaeda a free publicity coup on a plate. It incidentally had every front page and every pub bar ranting about cowardly Americans, jeering at the US Marines “We are not afraid” website, which adds “We stand with our British brothers and sisters.” »
We are quite willing to stand by our British brothers and sisters, as long as we can stand a good safe distance and still do our shopping.
To me, the greatest insult to the British and their losses was delivered today, all the more insulting because it was thoughtless and unintentional.
I was watching the news of the two minutes of silence held for the victims of the London bombings, a silent vigil held not just in London
« Britain's Queen Elizabeth stood in silence at Buckingham Palace. In London's Trafalgar Square, a giant banner declared ‘One City, One World.’
» Taxis and buses pulled over, workers left their offices to stand in the street and financial markets paused to remember the dead.
» In Italy, government offices, railway stations and airports paused while television stations cut into normal broadcasting to honour the London dead.
» In Paris, President Jacques Chirac's annual Bastille day television address was put back so the French could mark the moment. Chirac stood silent on the steps of the Elysee Palace. »
Has the United States or even simply Washington, DC held a silent moment for the victims of the London bombings? Has any national gesture of solidarity been proposed?
If so, I haven't seen or heard of it. We're just going about our business while insisting that the world perpetually acknowledge our scars and trauma from September 11th as our justification to wage whatever aggressive action we deem necessary to ensure it never happens again.
For months, we've been hearing and reading that Brits no longer discriminate between average Americans and the policies of our government — that the reelection of Bush has made them hold us in something of the same contempt they hold him. Well, they have good reason, and we keep furnishing them with better reasons all the time.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
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