July 08, 2005


What could be more emblematic of the Bush administration’s response to global terrorism than its response to global warming?

In an expected communiqué at the G-8 summit, the administration proposes "resolve and urgency" on a crisis it prefers to obfuscate as "climate science," although the draft "contain[s] no specific agreement on concrete steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a schedule."

Some resolve. Some urgency.

In other words, we have a serious problem of global proportions and lasting devastation, which we pledge to handle with the greatest determination -- except we haven’t a clue as to how we’re going to go about doing it, other than doing the same old ineffectual thing.

It’s true that we stand almost singularly alone in the world on this issue, but it’s only because we know better than others. We can’t explain it. Just take our word for it.

Meanwhile you can count on us to puff out our chest, issue strong words and go right on doing what we’ve been doing to absolutely no one’s benefit. That’s about the totality of our "plan." So naturally the world should stand with us.

Tony Blair did, against sound reason, better judgment and global advice to the contrary.

Yesterday he and his countrymen got their reward for standing tall with Bush. As the New York Times assessed it, "Perhaps the crudest lesson to be drawn was that, in adopting the stance he took after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Blair had finally reaped the bitter harvest of the war on terrorism - so often forecast but never quite seeming real until the explosions boomed across London."

Only George Galloway, the erstwhile Labor politician who recently berated the U.S. Senate for its Bushie wrongheadedness, said what everyone was thinking: "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically, Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."

Blair’s eager cooperation with the Bush administration on igniting the Iraq war was no raging Battle of Britain, wherein a Churchillian strongman was needed to display "resolve and urgency" in the face of a foreign aggressor. Iraq was a war of choice -- and that makes its toll in human lives and national honor a shameful one, not a resolute one.

It is that reality that Tony Blair, the Churchill wannabe, must answer for.

Luckily for the British, their system of government makes it much easier to rid themselves of a war criminal as leader than in the U.S. We’re stuck with George and his non-plan plan of the same old thing for three more years. But the Brits can opt out. And that, most assuredly, is what they should do and what they will do.

Though the world must wait for some modicum of reason to be reinstalled at 1600 Pennsylvania venue, it can be done at 10 Downing Street now. The geopolitical plague of Bush II waits to be washed clean.

Only then can we get on with actually confronting the plague of terrorism -- not with a swagger and a self-defeating, terrorist-recruiting occupation, but an honest-to-God plan. To do that that, honest leaders need apply.