67 Waipapa Rd

Hataitai

Wellington 6003

New Zealand

 

Phone 04 386 2441

e-mail j.monro@mac.com

Homepage http://homepage.mac.com/j.monro

 

11 August 2006

 

The House of Commons,

Westminster,

London, UK.

 

 

Dear Member of Parliament.

 

I write to you from 12,000 miles away in New Zealand. I have lived in New Zealand for twenty years, but spent my first forty years in the UK. I am still interested very much in my homeland, and I still consider that I am a patriotic Brit, though I sometimes get into some trouble for this! 

 

But I am so very deeply troubled by what is happening in the UK, and in particular the UK's foreign policy in connection with the Middle East. The appalling problems in Iraq, and the more recent problems in Lebanon are a matter of the utmost concern. In particular I blame Tony Blair  for his complete and abject capitulation to an aggressive and destructive policy to the Middle East from the Bush administration, and the so-called "War on Terror" - his riding pillion for America. I am quite certain that fifty-two people would now be alive in London, and over a hundred thousand Iraqis in their own country,  had Tony Blair not so uncritically supported America in its foolish and destructive escapade in Iraq, and your Parliament not so uncritically supported Tony Blair. 

 

This policy, now being continued by America's surrogate in the Middle East, Israel, is nothing less than obtaining the complete subjugation of the Middle East to American imperial interests, and the destruction of any government, or community, that shows any independence from what America considers as its interests in the region.

 

You will know that the West's interference in the Middle East, and the UK in particular must take much blame, from its previous incursions into Iraq, meddling in Iran, uncritical support of Israel, and the economic imperative to keep the oil flowing to the West, are a direct cause of so much of the trouble in the Middle East, and the cause of so much real hatred of the West in the world's Moslem populations. This hatred does not arise out of a natural antipathy of the Moslem world to us, but as a natural consequence of the perceived impotence of the Moslem world to deal with the continued threats that it faces, the occupation of many Moslem lands by foreign troops, such as Saudi Arabia,  and in particular Israel's refusal to obey so many UN resolutions and withdraw to its pre-1967 boundaries, and Israel's continued inhumanity to the Palestinian population. There is much talk of the various Moslem nations and parties in the Middle East refusal to recognise the right of existence of Israel, what of Israel's refusal to recognise the right of existence of a Palestinian nation in its internationally accepted borders? 

 

It is Tony Blair's latest speech that causes me to write to you. His so-called "Arc of Extremism" is exactly the same sort of rhetorical claptrap as Bush's "Axis of Evil". His "Arc of Extremism" consists of countries that, for the most part, have known nothing but war, pain, death and dismemberment for generations. Blair praises the courage of the British military who are "defending our country's security", yet we know for a fact that this military intervention has made the UK's security worse. He says " we should never forget how much we owe these people", referring to the American military, yet this military are conducting the most dirty and despicable campaign in Iraq and elsewhere, have imprisoned thousands illegally and tortured many. Good people everywhere owe the present American military nothing. Tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands,  of Iraqi have died, and you know that any claim of advancing democracy in Iraq is the stuff of fairy-tales. The American army - that all-powerful, all conquering force, the creator of awesome explosions and employer of radioactive munitions - is reduced to existing in a twilight zone of its own making, a self-imposed gulag of American dreams, scattered like so many half-submerged islands, drowning in a rising tide of anarchy. 

 

"The purpose of the provocation" continues Tony. This so-called "provocation" came only as part of a never ending continuum of tit-for-tat raids, bombings, shellings, suicide attacks, murders, assassinations, missile attacks, imprisonments, tortures, kidnaps, assaults, land-grabs,  bulldozing and sanctions that have continued for generations, since the state of Israel was formed, indeed, long before this, when the British and the French held the Palestinian mandate, and back to the Ottoman Empire. This "provocation" was no more, nor any less, than any of these other "provocations" carried out by the Palestinians or the Israelis or the Hezbollah or whoever. This "provocation" was indeed a pretext only for the execution of a long-planned major assault on Lebanon, and almost certainly planned in conjunction with the American administration. (And we now have information that Mr Blair was aware of this before it happened.) And even if Tony Blair was right, that this "provocation" was designed to provoke and inflame opinion, why then did Israel respond? Or do they have a death wish? Or are they stupid? Or are they just vengeful? And if there is a backlash, who wins? We don't, the Lebanese don't, Israel doesn't, no-one does. The violence just escalates further and the hatred and bitterness run deeper still. 

 

Then Tony goes on to talk about values, justice, tolerance, freedom, respect. How we need to show that our values are stronger,  better and more just. Yes, how? By bombing Iraq? By killing half a million children by sanctions in Iraq? By allowing Israel to destroy a nation? By allowing Israel to forcefully take more Palestinian land, and build soul-destroying walls. (The Berlin Wall was a symbol of repression to us, why is not the Palestinian wall - why are we not tearing it down too?)  By threatening Syria? Or Iran? By supporting dictators such as the Shah of Persia, or Saddam? By supporting corrupt regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? The list goes on and on. France in Algeria, the British in Iraq or in Egypt, cite almost any Moslem country you care to name, the West has had its hand in stirring the pot of hatred. 

 

Tony talks about 9/11 and how this came out of the blue from a fanatical Moslem faction. This claim is completely preposterous. The attack of 9/11 was an attack on America's continued attempts to dominate the Middle East, either directly, or by its surrogate, Israel. In particular it was designed to rid Saudi Arabia of the presence of many thousands of American troops in the Moslem's most holy land, who support the corrupt regime of that country, and punish America for doing so. That is why so many of those that took part in the attack were from Saudi Arabia. So then we go and attack Afghanistan, and then Iraq!! Almost all the terrorism that the West has suffered over these years is related to this simple goal - get out of our countries, do not support the corrupt regimes that you do, do not steal our resources. It was also designed to provoke a violent overreaction from America, as that best serves to fuel the extremism that Tony Blair rants on about. So what does America do, along with the UK, but violently overreact? Just how stupid can a nation or its administration be? 

 

Tony Blair wishes to "change the values system". Why? What right have we got to impose our values on anyone, even supposing it were in our power to do so?  Our values are important to us, but don't let us forget that last century two major wars  with their tens of millions of destroyed lives and hundreds of destroyed cities, have mostly been Western wars. When it comes to destructive values and extremism, there's not much to beat Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, or when it comes to fighting wars and destroying populations in the latter half of last century, there's not much to beat the US, to whom we owe so much, apparently. And exactly how are we going to change these values. As successfully as we have in Iraq? By bombing Damascus, a beautiful and serene city, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities? By bombing the ancient civilisation of Iran? When did a bomb ever, ever, ever change anyone's values for the better? Tell me, please. Does Tony Blair remotely think that force is going to change anything for the better? Because that is what he is saying. This is a war, he keeps repeating. Robert Fisk will tell you again and again and again, if you bother to listen, that war is the "total failure of the human spirit". Is that how Tony is going "change values"? Is Tony Blair completely insane? 

 

Tony Blair's thesis is that Moslem extremism is innate to the Moslem religion. Perhaps. There is extremism in all religions. Perversions of religion have sustained some of the most fanatical and destructive dictators in the past. Hitler had his destiny with God. So has Bush. But extremism only succeeds when it grows on fertile soil. He mentions Afghanistan. Where has Tony Blair been in the last fifty years? How much destruction has Afghanistan seen over its experience with the West? Britain, Russia, America have all marched in determined to do something with Afghanistan - when has the poor benighted country ever know any peace? Indonesia. From its ruthless Dutch occupation, and the more recent Dutch shame after WW2, and successive brutal and corrupt dictatorships, all supported by those lovers of peace, justice, democracy and the rule of law, such as the UK, the US, Australia. Again, extremism rises in this breeding grounds of violence and corruption, and contempt for those that allowed it. 

 

Tony Blair then attempts to give a timeline for the present war in the Lebanon. It reads like a child's version of events - selective, distorted and simplistic. For every action of Hamas and Hezbollah, there has been as big or greater action or reaction from Israel, take your pick from the list above. The basic problem is this, Tony Blair. Israel was created from the land of the Palestinians. The Palestinians had no say in the matter. But since then, they have seen the Israeli state grow in stature to become a  mean and cruel state - it has taken land, livelihood, water, farms and towns and villages, and lives, and the Palestinian people have been squeezed ever harder and harder into an abject and impoverished state, a breeding ground for violent reaction, or terrorism, if you wish to call it by this simplistic term.  The simple fact is, until Israel withdraws to its boundaries from before the six-day war, as demanded by many UN resolutions, there is no prospect of peace, not now, not in a generation, not in a hundred years. If this is what Israel wants, and its backers, particularly America, then there will be no changing this prospect. But by then this part of the world will be so hot, so searing, so arid, that nothing will live in this area in any case. The buildings will crumble, the rivers will dry and the sands will cover the stones and the blood, the memories and the hatred. With luck, even the nuclear bombs will be irretrievably buried. Tony Blair says that peace is all that most Palestinians want. Yes, they yearn for this, as to do most Israelis. But they will not take peace at any price, they want their lands back, they want the illegal settlement of the West Bank to be reversed, and they want Israel to honour the UN resolutions that Israel has consistently refused to honour. 

 

The state of Israel has a huge military force, including an arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons, supported and financed by America. The bombs dropped on Lebanon have American labels on them, the missiles fired at Palestinians were likely made in Texas, and the fragments will have the serial numbers on them. Tony, do you think the Arabs are all so stupid that none of them can read? Do you not think, that if a missile were to come out of the blue and blow your family into a thousand bloody pieces, that you couldn't actually reassemble them, and you read the label on the thing that did this, that some small smidgen of doubt as to the benignity of the American administration might not register? And the same thing happens to your neighbour, your teacher, your cousin, the family you know on the other side of town, your parliamentary representative, your hospital, the family sitting on the beach trying to snatch a "peaceful" few minutes in their violent lives, and this happens day in, day out for fifty years, that something might not snap in your mind? That not only might you blame the people who actually pressed the button, or fired the shot or flew the plane, but the also the maker of these devices of destruction and the unapologetic backer of their use? Why can you not see this? You call it an "Arc of Extremism", I would call it an "Arc of Shame".

 

Tony Blair has the gall to talk about Northern Ireland. When Britons think of Ireland they should think of more shame, our record in Ireland over centuries was bloody and violent, and was directly and indirectly responsible for the forced emigration and death of millions. So then we all suffered the IRA and the prolonged troubles, partly financed by that great democratic institution and fighter of terror, the US. One man's terrorist has always been another's freedom fighter, hasn't it?  And yes, the UK had some success in Northern Ireland, but I don't recall the UK bombing Dublin or flattening the Irish villages along the border or invading the republic. There were many mistakes in Northern Ireland , and several atrocities, but it was patient policing, patient law keeping and patient talking, talking, talking and more talking, that eventually brought a measure of success. Why then does Tony Blair forget this with the Middle East? Are people in the Middle East rather less important than people in Ireland? That must surely be the conclusion, when we see such violence and misery there, and his  apologies and support of it. And did the terrorism of Northern Ireland arise out of a vacuum? Of course not, the Northern Ireland problem was just the latest issue in generations, centuries really, of injustice and intolerance. 

 

"Why are we not yet succeeding?" asks Tony Blair, "Because we are not being bold enough, consistent enough, thorough enough, in fighting for the values we believe in." Is going to war in Iraq not bold enough for him? Is a hundred thousand civilian deaths not thorough enough for him? Is continued relentless oppression and betrayal in this region not consistent enough for him? You cannot "fight" for the values you believe in because in "fighting", with bombs and missiles and illegal imprisonment and torture, with extraordinary renditions, with continued undermining of civil liberties and rights at home, you are betraying and destroying those very values you say you hold so dear. Do you think that nearly a billion Moslem's can't see hypocrisy of this? And do you not think that millions or ordinary, humane, simple, hard-working, and fair-minded citizens of your own country cannot see the hypocrisy of this either? 

 

People like me are berated by Tony Blair because we are saying that Moslem extremism is "our fault". If you mean by "our" the West, including the UK in the Middle East, the US, France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, the Dutch in Indonesia and the corrupt administrations there, then yes, it is, often, "our" fault. Where you find Moslem nations which haven't been so badly abused, such as Oman, then you do find a more moderate opinion. I find it incredible that Tony Blair doesn't see this. And he is being disingenuous when he claims that his opponents say that everything will go back to normal when we leave these spheres of our violent influence. Of course not, but what we do know, the longer we stay, the more extreme the violence we are reaping and the deeper the pit of hatred we are digging. Surely the UK and US experience in Iraq shows this, but there are none so blind as those that will not see. Tony Blair will now have read the report from his own ambassador in Iraq, that this country is descending into civil war. This is exactly the sort of thing that opponents of this mischievous adventure in that country were afraid would happen. Yet Blair and Bush are completely oblivious of this, to the extent that even some Republicans find their reassurances bizarre, yet Blair and Bush are determined to tread further down the same track that brought us to this deep and enveloping mire. 

 

Tony Blair's speech is a nonsensical tirade. It seems to recognise nothing of the past, and has no practical or humane vision for the future. Tony Blair appears to have bought in completely to Bush's way of looking at the world, a destructive and simplistic view, childlike really, that sees the world in black and white, good and evil. The "War against terror" is a war of delusion. You cannot fight terrorism this way, because it is itself the cause of terrorism. Israel has been waging its foreign policy this way for fifty years, when does it stop? Yet the West is now fighting terrorism the way the Israelis have, I call it the Israelisation of our foreign policy. Why are we so stupid? 

 

This most recent speech of Tony Blair's reveals in all its absurdity his increasing messianic fantasies, now hardly distinguishable from Bush's. And Tony Blair has the nerve to talk of an "Arc of Extremism" in the Middle East, yet is utterly blind to the extremism in the US, and its  born-again Christian President, with his extreme apocalyptic fundamentalist beliefs, sharing with forty million other religious fanatics in the US a belief in Armageddon and the possibility of the present troubles in the Middle East being a prelude to this. Tony Blair's misjudgement of the deeply flawed character of Bush is the cause of one of history's strangest and now most dangerous relationships. President Bush has absolutely no credentials to be a president, of anything. He is a man with a deep seated character defect and personality disorder, an ex-alcoholic and drug abuser, who got into his position purely on his relationship to his father and his contacts with a far-right wing clique in the most powerful positions in the American republican party. He possesses the low cunning and superficial bonhomie typical of the pathological personality, but he is hardly able to put one complete sentence after another without notes or an autocue. And this man is the leader of the "Free World" and has his finger on the nuclear button. Cindy Sheehan recently put on record her disdain for President Bush, when she admitted, after meeting and talking with President Chavaz of Venezuela, that he would make a much better president than Bush; for her thoughts she has had numerous threats on her life. Later she said by way of explanation that whilst she would prefer president Chavaz to Bush, she said there were literally thousands of people she knew that would be better presidents than Bush. And isn't this true? So what is the matter with Tony Blair and his blindness to the trouble he is putting himself, and his country in? There is a recognised psychiatric condition called "Folie a deux" - perhaps this describes the relationship between the two, and the increasing distancing from reality that now afflicts Tony Blair.

 

But sanity is a strange thing, and the lack of it can afflict anyone. Sometimes when I write this sort of letter, I wonder, do I have everything wrong, is it me that is insane? But relief does come, and when I read Roderick Braithwaite's article in the Financial Times the other day, it was indeed with great relief. Roderick Braithwaite is calling for Tony Blair to go, now. He writes much more succinctly than I do, and with a great deal more authority, of course. But the message is the same, as are many of the arguments he uses to arrive at his conclusion. For the sake of our country, but more than that, for the sake of some sense and humanity in the Middle East, Blair must go. And he must go now.

 

What is now happening in the world is extremely dangerous. The sight of big nations jostling for power and for the supply of the fast depleting oil resource, the rise of fundamentalism, both in the Moslem world and in the US, the increasing division of haves and have-nots in the world and in individual nations and the vast expenditure on the military in the world's one true superpower, is too replete with similarities to the situations before both of last century's two world wars, but particularly the First World War,  for us to not take this threat very  seriously indeed. Tony Blair's mischievously naive, simplistic and aggressive posturing in regard to the undoubted problems we all have, including the nearly billion of the world's Moslems, bears a frightening resemblance to the posturing of the European powers in the time leading to the First World War. We need the simplistic and destructive rhetoric of Blair and Bush as much as we needed trenches in the Somme or bombs on Dresden. We urgently need a counter to Bush's destructive mismanagement of America's foreign policy, hatched and incubated as it is by a neo-fascist clique in the White House. 

 

I am very proud to be British, I always have been, and even though I now live so far away (I married a wonderful New Zealand girl, and the country came with the girl!). It is something for which I am not apologetic, even in the more socialist circles in which I sometimes move, where patriotism is disdained. I am happy to be thought old-fashioned and reactionary for this. The is a lot to be proud of in being British, but there is also a lot to be ashamed of. I am ashamed of Tony Blair and his appalling misadventure in Iraq, premised and pursued as it was on lies. I am ashamed of the British media who so stridently supported this war and were too lazy to bother to use their skills and resources in questioning these premises. I am ashamed of the lack of examination by MPs in the House of Commons who were so naive, and were prepared to support this adventure on such an uncritical examination of the  supposed  justifications of this war. It is not anti-patriotic to question one's leadership, in fact it is one's patriotic duty to point out where one's country is going wrong, and to do something about it. We are being led to an abyss by the most incompetent and immoral leadership that America has probably ever suffered, and that leadership is being supported by our leader, Tony Blair. By supporting Bush so unequivocally, Blair has provided Bush with a political, moral and religious vindication for his appalling leadership, and the importance of this support should not be underestimated. The present chaos in Lebanon is the likely prelude to an attack on Syria and Iran by the American administration. The consequences of such an action do not bear thinking about. To repeat, Bush is a religious fundamentalist every bit as bad as any "mad mullah". Bush literally believes in Armageddon, and he may indeed be the man to bring this about. 

 

It is vitally important that the UK removes itself from this incestuous relationship with the Bush administration. The UK's long term interests throughout  the world, but particularly in the Moslem world, are being very badly damaged by this deviant alliance. The UK has, since the beginning of last century,  been one of America's staunchest allies, though there might well be debate as to the ethics of this, but what we are now seeing in America is a perversion of what America, and we, should be standing for. There is now a political, economic and moral imperative to distance ourselves from the present American administration. Tony Blair cannot, and will not, do this. This is why he has to go. And this is why it is your duty, as a British patriot, to accomplish this in Parliament now. If the Labour MPs will not do this on their own, the only honourable course is for there to be a confidence debate in the house, and that all MPs, who consider that the health of the nation and the health of the world's people is more important than the health of their wallets, should be prepared to vote that the House has no confidence in Tony Blair's administration, and that a general election should be forthcoming. I don't know why you became an MP, but I imagine that underlying all the complicated and different reasons that each MP, as an individual, would cite as the reasons for serving as a Member of Parliament, it  is your wish to serve your country and your constituents honourably that is the most important. It is time for you to act in accordance with this deep commitment. Millions of good British people, and polls suggest these are a big majority, are appalled and frightened at the direction in which their country is being taken, and a general election is the only truly democratic way that they will be able to register their profound anxiety and elect a more enlightened, humane and independent government, of which the British people can again be sufficiently proud to call themselves patriots.

 

Thank you for your attention, 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

Dr John K Monro MB.ChB.