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Re: 52nd State
Slightly off topic, but interesting (Taken from todays Times):
Bushophobia can be bad for your conscience
by Michael Gove
The three questions you should answer if you intend to demonstrate next week
[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]Sometimes you can never be more lonely than when you are in a crowd. And that will be me next week.
In seven daysââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ time the National Stop the War Coalition will be rallying thousands of people to protest at President Bushââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s visit to London. A big turn-out is expected next Wednesday for the alternative state procession with the Critical Mass bike riders and the Big Red Peace Bus. The day after there is a mass anti-Bush demonstration in Trafalgar Square, with tens of thousands expected to show. And as someone who believes in standing up and being counted, I will be there. Even among the crowds it should be easy to spot me. I know there will be a lot of other guys in T-shirts and badges ††but perhaps not those I am planning to wear: the T-shirt with the American flag on it, above the simple legend †œThese Colors Donââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t Runââ‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â. And the little pin proclaiming †œBush-Cheney ††Four More Years!ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã‚Â It will be interesting to see what the crowd make of my presence. According to Libby Purves, they are peaceable souls who wish only to uphold the traditional Anglo-Saxon right of free assembly. So I expect there will be a chance to engage in constructive dialogue. Because I would like to ask everyone opposed to President Bushââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s visit a few questions.
I would like first to ask everyone at these rallies if they are happy attending events organised by apologists for tyranny. The Stop the War Coalition is chaired by a man called Andrew Murray, now communications officer for the rail union Aslef. Andrew, who used to work for the Soviet Novosti press agency, sits on the politburo of the Communist Party of Britain and wrote an article in the Morning Star a couple of years ago celebrating the 120th anniversary of StalinÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s birth. Working alongside him in the Coalition is another indefatigable protester with a soft spot for Uncle Joe, the former Labour MP George Galloway, who once claimed that the collapse of Soviet Communism was the saddest event of his life.
Now any of us are entitled to the odd bit of nostalgia for the fallen heroes of our youth. I personally have a soft spot for Ally McLeod, the Scotland manager who crashed and burnt in the 1978 World Cup. But controversial figure from the past though Ally is, he did not organise the murder of 30 million people. Stalin did, and people who miss him are not just nostalgics for adolescent dreams: they are grown-ups getting misty-eyed about genocide.
The guys organising next weekâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s anti-Bush rally are not really against war, they just think it is a pity that the free world won the Cold War. And anyone clambering aboard their Big Red Peace Bus is a fellow traveller with fans of totalitarianism.
Talking of which, the next question I would like to ask anyone standing next to me next Thursday is: do you miss the fact that mass murderers no longer run Iraq? Is that why you are angry? Andy, George and the rest of the crew organising this rally are admirably clear on this point. They want Western troops out of Iraq now, leaving the place free for SaddamÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s loyalists and Islamic fundamentalists to build their own new hells. They opposed the removal of SaddamÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šà ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s torture state, oppose the use of Western power to help to build the foundations of a free Iraq and want to see the West retreat in the face of terrorist action.
If George Bush were to stop his war now, as Andy, George and all their friends want, the consequences would be unthinkable. Iraq would be left, as it was tragically before in 1991, to the tender mercies of gangsters and fanatics. The hope of an alternative path for the Arab Middle East, towards modernity, freedom and prosperity, would crumble. The men who planned 9/11, and have unleashed suicide bombers on Tel Aviv and Riyadh, would be emboldened by a lack of Western resolution and encouraged to extend their campaigns. To our doorsteps.
I am sure that most of those tempted to rally next week want to do something to halt terror, indeed anything to stop the waste of innocent lives. Which prompts the third, and crucial, question. How do you think this war you say that you want to stop actually started?
The history of the past 80 years teaches us that it is when democracies are weak and slow to assert themselves that conflicts begin and innocents die. The march of the dictators in the 1930s was facilitated by the strength of the disarmament and isolationist lobbies in Britain, France and America. The mass slaughter and †œethnic cleansingâ₠¬Â of Milosevic gathered pace in the 1990s because the European Union prevaricated in the face of provocation. In that same decade the forces of terror in the Middle East were emboldened.
In Iraq the withering support for sanctions, especially among European nations, encouraged its dictator in defiance. In Palestine the willingness of idealistic Israelis to gamble security for peace only strengthened the hand of Islamic hardliners. Among the leaders of al-Qaeda the reluctance of America to meet outrages in Somalia, Yemen or Kenya with proper fortitude only encouraged escalation.
It is immensely to President Bushâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s credit that he recognises weakness is more provocative than strength to those who live outside democracyââ‚ ¬â„¢s rules. We are safer in Britain today than we were 27 months ago, thanks to him.
Of course Bush has made mistakes, on issues from global warming to steel tariffs. There may well be room to criticise much in his record. But given the people who want to occupy that space next week, it is not a place I want to go. I respect freedom too much to enjoy seeing it abused by those whose first instinct is to insult anyone who actually bothers to fight for it. And I admire what America has done for liberty, throughout its history, too much to want to join those people who are now biting the hand that freed them. Stop Bush? Not in my name.
Of course we can all pick holes in whatever bits of the above article that we want to but the general gist of it is thought provoking-Ramrod
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