Iraq campaign seen from an interested country
LONDON: Tony Blair is having differences this time with George W Bush. This is not good for cartoonists who lampoon Blair by coupling him in various ways with the US President. These days, as if with a pout on his face, Blair says that the new Iraqi government should have sovereignty and the power over launching attacks on Iraqi insurgents. The US says no, only we should decide when to bomb the daylights out of Iraqi cities. The whole plot is going to unravel, at least for the cartoonists it seems. But Britain doesn't generally sweat the small stuff. Much is being made here of the news instead that a man threw condoms at Tony Blair from the public gallery of Parliament.

Britain in the meanwhile is trying to get over the general discomfort of the war. Its repercussions are however not felt here even as much as they are felt in remote places such as Sri Lanka because Britain of course has other preoccupation such as football, beer and Posh Spice etc., But, poignantly even for the most detached the war intrudes into their make-believe existence. A couple I know in Kentish town have a neighbour whose son is in the army in Fallujah, and there is a general feeling of good neighbourly sympathy about that.

But Britain's way has always been, if not to maintain a stiff upper lip, at least to maintain a studied aplomb, even though cartoonists can of course lampoon the Prime Minister to their hearts content. But any sense of anger towards Blair for thrusting the country into a needless war is not manifest, and nobody bothers to waste their breath on talking of Blair -- the way that we Sri Lankans would bad mouth politician we love to hate.

On the special TV channel reserved for Parliament there is no genteel debate however. I switched this channel on whimsically and saw two ladies locked in scathing combat over something to do with educational reforms. Watching them before turning on the volume up the television set, I thought all hell had broken loose in Iraq for two ladies to get into this kind of cannibalistic mud-wrestling...

But in spite of everything, the sense of middle class intellectual outrage over Tony Blair and George W. Bush cannot be hidden behind a make-believe screen screaming 'Cool Britannia we love Posh Spice.' This sentiment goes for the US and UK. For example, there was this experience of my being accosted by a lady in a bookshop called Millennium Books or a similar name (beg pardon from those who demand accuracy in such matters.) The lady asked me deadpan whether I was from Sri Lanka, and this was weeks before I set forth to Britain where of course a Sri Lankan can be a little more of a common or garden species among the substantial population of Asians. But this bookshop was in a place called Connecticut Street in Washington DC. The lady asked me why the Sri Lankans cannot grant a separate state to the Tamil people. Now this got my goat instantly, because not only does she guess where I am from but also she presumes to know the solution for all my country's problems.

Therefore I say to her that war does not necessarily have to lead to a separate state. But she obviously dangled onto some of the words I said leaving the entire meaning of my thoughts completely ignored. She says wars are legal, adding for instance "this country is fighting a war against Iraq.''

What was upto this point a conversation between her and me then suddenly turns into a town meeting, because an old man reading a book in the Starbucks Coffee section of the bookshop suddenly loses his cool. "The war in Iraq is not only wrong it is also stupid," he shouts and I rest my case. Free advocacy never came in so handy and at the correct time too. Until he spoke I thought the old man was part of the bookstore's furniture because he was immersed in a tome larger than his face, but if my passing comments can evoke such a reaction of pique in him, I suppose there is nothing to worry about the state of the world. There is hope my friend.

Not a single person I have met either in America or in Britain have said that they are going to vote for George W. Bush or for Tony Blair, and this being an election year of overthrowing governments -- supposedly popular governments - - the fate of governments that are unpopular such as Blair's or Bush's doesn't have to be specially spelled out and articulated.

This would mean ideally that for all these people who keep saying they are not going to vote for Bush/Blair that there would be a happy outcome when election day comes.

But the whole pith and essence of politics in these lands is that it's different from ours. A political animal would have to be specially created here, and if Marx was alive he might be scratching his head because the British almost think they have no government. The Marxist theory was that eventually there wouldn't be any government in an ideal state, so had Britain thoroughly approximated the Marxist ideal by some uncanny default?

This would even seem a fair question to answer yes to. Were it not, however for the fact that because of the war, people here are interested in government, more than they used to be -- and it is increasingly at the expense of subjects such as football and Posh Spice.

This tendency even though it is by very marginal and steady amounts, naturally will not suit the wishes of the entrepreneurial leaders of this country of production production and production. People need to be kept on the narcotic of production and for this the producer and the advertiser connive to do everything possible including keeping politics out of people's minds. But in Britain today - and perhaps in America too - they may be fighting a losing battle.

Back to Top

Back to Columns

Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.