Tony Blair – Why I Disagree

The stairs of the Radisson Hotel Chicago weren’t really stairs at all, but escalators pointing downwards toward a sea of suits and ties mingling in multi-tiered, richly carpeted lobbies that always lead downwards toward another boring Wednesday.  Into the depths I went until I hit what seemed to be the final floor, and last security checkpoint.  At the base of the stairs was a desk for the local Public Radio station, and at the desk was a pair of girls who weren’t quite sure why they were there.  Looking around at the suits in the basement lobby, I realized nobody seemed to know why they were there.

At some point after that and the cash bar I found my way into a banquet hall lined with chairs – about 45 per row by another 45 or so – awaiting our speaker, Tony Blair.  As final microphone and camera checks were made[1. reminiscent of the Tom Hanks/Wayne's World roadie skit] my accomplice and I joked about what questions we would ask Blair if we got the chance.  ”Where’s your crown?,” “Can I get a picture?,” and various schemes involving fake Irish accents were discussed.

In the end, reason won out and we took our seats as Mayor Daley began his lackluster introduction for one of the biggest foreign dignitaries to come to Chicago[2.  at least he was respectful and gracious, which is about all you can ask for sometimes with Chicago's mayor].

So Tony Blair took the stage, and here’s where things get sketchy because at some point in this story I’ll fall asleep for about 20 good minutes and miss virtually nothing in the speech; Blair was that predictable.  He did not apologize for Iraq, he did not apologize for the global war on terror, and, in fact, he made the argument that we should stop “feeling sorry for ourselves” and move forward.  In essence, he was calling for a complete amnesia of the past eight years.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands that have been displaced because of a lack of American foresight and planning.  This is my challenge.

As the speech continued onward, I began feeling less sorry for myself; not because Mr. Blair asked me to, but because I’d suddenly realized that at some point in my life I’d made a right decision which lead down the road to empathy and sympathy, and Blair chose a road that allowed him to defend his tarnished history and work.  Define: jingoism.  Define: strawman arguments.  Define: stubborn.

When the time finally came for audience questions, I was wide awake and more interested – the speech is never where you get the truth, and subsequent questions aren’t very different.  Sometimes you get a rare glimpse of the human being inside of a question.  As the meeting wore on, Blair dodged and parried questions about the impact of poverty in the Middle East and the intervention of the West in Asian conflicts.  Instead, he fell back on platitudes like “we must fight evil wherever it is,” and, “if we lose to evil anywhere, we lose to it everywhere.”  Another gem: we do not work with corrupt and bad governments unless they are workigng with us in good faith.

How charlatans like this are able to label themselves as moderates while supporting dangerous wars and aggression overseas is beyond me

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 12:25 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.