Thoughts from London

A new empire strikes back
Days before President George W. Bush was due to descend on London with a massive entourage including 250 armed special agents, snipers and sniffer dogs, he was interviewed for last Sunday's "Breakfast with Frost" programme by David Frost.
Either Frost has mellowed over the years or he had decided to bowl full tosses to a president who is not particularly known for his intelligence.

Even so Bush sounded hardly convincing. He dodged questions that he should know by now would dog him and should therefore be prepared with replies that appear a little more credible.

We are so accustomed to hear about Islamic fundamentalism because it is seen as the genesis for much of the global terrorism. But we ignore or forget the Christian fundamentalism that drives those like George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Their close friendship is more than just the cultural and linguistic heritage that binds together the transatlantic twins. It is a friendship based on a common faith -- that they have been brought into this world to spread the good word and bring freedom, democracy and civilisation to the barbarians.

If in the process they can tap into the resources of countries they wish to civilise and make sure they are available to the "free world" so much the better. In the course of the interview, President Bush tapped Frost on the knee and said that freedom is not America's gift to the world, or Britain's gift either. "It is the Almighty's gift to everybody".

Never mind that not everybody believes in the same Almighty as Bush or Blair. That is a religious issue that need not be pursued here. The problem is that Bush seems to think that he is the Almighty. Or that he has been specially chosen to distribute to everybody this God-given gift and how he does it is nobody's concern as he has been endowed with a divine right.

It is true, of course, that America is all mighty, now that it is the sole super power with 750 military bases in three-quarters of the countries on earth and 31% of all wealth.
But it is hardly fair to blame the Almighty for the horrendous acts of Bush and his neo-conservative dinosaurs that inhabit his administration and drive American foreign and economic policy to the point that it is fast achieving the status of a pariah state.
The fact is that George Bush's religious fanaticism is hitched to a more mundane desire for empire and the profits his ventures can bring, if not to him personally, certainly to his friends in the administration and the moneybags that bankroll the Republican Party.

Addressing the Guardian Hay Festival a few months back Niall Ferguson, professor of economics at New York University and a new-found darling of the American right said: "The United States is the empire that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial and US denial of this poses a real danger to the world. An empire that doesn't recognise its own power is a dangerous one." Again he said: "Since they (America) annexed the Philippines in 1898, they have acted as an imperial power."

Apart from trying to boost his flagging political fortunes by appearing with the Queen, one of the two world figures (the other is the Pope) that the America public recognises, Bush would have benefited from history if he had been told of the experience of Britain-another empire builder-in Iraq.

On entering Baghdad in 1917, the British made a proclamation. "Our armies do not come into your lands and your cities as conquerors but as liberators…." Does that not all too familiar today as every American from Bush to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld to the US commander in the field insists that they are there to rescue the Iraqi people from that terrible dictator Saddam Hussein and bring democracy and freedom to that country.

Who is the invader who has not set foot in another country not promising to save the citizenry from one despot or another? If freedom is the gift of the Almighty to the world, why have the US and UK been supporting dictators and despots in the past and Bush and Blair still do today?

How is it that Bush and Blair have decided that some should enjoy the Almighty's gift of freedom and others should not? Have they been given a mandate from heaven to rescue the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein so they may enjoy the fruits of freedom but the people of Uzbekistan are not civilised enough or important enough to enjoy political freedom or the right to dissent.

President Bush who fancies himself a messiah bringing freedom to the world seems to forget that under pressure from Washington, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray was given an ultimatum to resign or be sacked on trumped-up charges of misconduct.

Why? Because last November the ambassador accused the Uzbek leaders of failing to move the country toward democracy and of using torture in its jails including one case where two detainees had been boiled alive. He has been a constant critic of Uzbekistan's human rights record.

Who is responsible for all this? President Islam Karimov. He makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists. Political dissidents and human rights activists receive the same treatment as homosexuals. Some are sent to psychiatric hospitals like in the former Soviet Union where Karimov learnt his politics, says author George Monbiot.

Strangely it was not just Washington who brought pressure to bear on London to act against Ambassador Murray. It seems No 10 Downing Street also had a hand in pressuring the Foreign Office to go after one of Britain's most promising ambassadors.
But George W. Bush and Tony Blair see only some tyrants such as Saddam Hussein. They are blind to the ruthless violation of human rights, freedom and democracy in Uzbekistan, considered a key western asset since Karimov allowed the US to use it as a military base against the Taliban.

So if the Taliban have been virtually eliminated and freedom brought to the Afghan people as Bush claimed in the Frost interview what are US troops still doing in Uzbekistan? The answer my friend is written in the soil. That country is located in the centre of the great oil and gas fields of central Asia. It is this resource that is keeping the US in Uzbekistan and Karimov is the beneficiary of increased US aid so he can continue to torture his people and deny them a semblance of democracy.

It is not a concern for human rights that took Bush and Blair to Iraq. Once again it is oil. And they will support and help any despot or tyrant as they did the Taliban in Afghanistan, the royal family in Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Noriega in Panama as long as they are useful to the US and the west in general, and follow the dictates of the western proselytisers.

But when those tyrants fail to obey the west, why then the moral crusade begins and yesterday's good friends become tomorrow's tyrants. So the "evil states" become the prey of the evil empire.

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