AMERICA HAS A FRIEND IN LONDON (via Bitter Sanity):

Why It Is In Britain's Interest to Be America's Principal Ally (Conrad Black, 2003 Ruttenberg Lecture, Centre for Policy Studies)

[A] very senior member of the government of the United Kingdom told me last summer that there would be no problem on the Labour back-benches or in the EU if Russia or China were leading the coalition against Iraq. . . .

I had occasion to say in the Iraq debate in the House of Lords two months ago that this notion of the relationship of the United States and the UN Security Council was an attempt to treat the United States as a great St. Bernard dog which would take the risks and do the work, while others, and not necessarily allies, would hold the leash and give the instructions. One of my noble friends leapt excitedly at the metaphor and asked if I had ever tried to restrain a St. Bernard bitch in heat. Another said the United States was not a St. Bernard but a rotweiler. . . .

The French, Russians, and Chinese are at the poker table; the Germans are on the psychoanalyst's coach. . . .

France has had the policy . . . of purporting to be America's . . . foul-weather friend, while spending almost all of its energies attempting to undermine the Americans. . . .

It is precisely because the United States has been so undemanding that some varieties of anti-Americanism have become so vigorous. The legitimate application of strength generally has a sedative effect, and that is what we are about to observe. . . .

When the students and dissidents of Eastern Europe were dismantling the Soviet empire, their public readings were of Jefferson and Lincoln, and the occupants of Tienanmen Square built a replica of the Statue of Liberty. Our satirists and intellectuals and leftist journalists may prattle as they will, but there has never been anything like the rise of America . . .

I put it to you that it is preferable to continue to be envied because of our success and attachment to principle, than to fall any further into the company of those governments for which cowardice is wisdom, ingratitude is olympian serenity, and the spitefulness of the weak is moral indignation.

The estimable conservative publisher Conrad Black, patron of the New York Sun, Jerusalem Post, and London Daily Telegraph, among others, makes a fine speech. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 10, 2003 12:02 AM