LEADERSHIP MAKES A DIFFERENCE:

How Blair Defused The Anti-War Movement (Nader Hasan, Wall Street Journal Europe, 3/26/2003)

[A]s fighting in Iraq intensifies, all of Britain seems to be falling in behind the prime minister....

The "Stop the War Coalition" and other anti-war groups in Britain were always more enthusiastic about opposing U.S. imperialism and less concerned with the welfare of the Iraqi people. At the demonstrations and on the talk-show circuit, U.S. hegemony took center stage and denunciations of Washington always received the most rousing applause. The climax of the Feb. 15 demonstration was a speech delivered by U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, who gave an impassioned critique of a U.S. government trying to "divert attentions from problems at home to a war no one wants."...

We preferred to demonize U.S. President George W. Bush rather than appeal for sympathy for the children of Baghdad and Basra.

Mr. Blair understood that the British opposition to the war was more about sticking it to the Yanks and less about the perils of war. Over the past month, he has repeatedly attempted to downplay the American-ness of this war, declaring that he was "truly committed" to disarming Iraq and that "if the Americans were not doing this, I would be pressing for them to be doing so." Mr. Blair knew that by staking his credibility and career on the rightness of this war, he was turning the war into a British domestic issue. No longer was the war only a U.S. war; it was also Mr. Blair's war. By imbuing the war with a distinctly British flavor, the prime minister deflated an anti-war movement that was ostensibly built around the mantra of anti-Americanism.

Mr. Blair did not stop there. In light of the opposition's inability to articulate the plight of the Iraqi people, he cunningly turned the tables and seized the humanitarian argument for the pro-war camp. Borrowing from Mr. Bush's rhetoric, he told us (with solemn conviction) that this war was about "liberating" the people of Iraq. Sure, a few hundred civilians would die from wayward bombs, but in the end, Iraq would be free from a barbarous dictator. Mr. Blair had no qualms about claiming to care about a people whose misery he had neglected during his tenure as prime minister....

If the anti-war movement had wanted to remain relevant, it should have re-examined its stance and shown that lifting sanctions, not making war, was the way to liberate Iraq. It didn't and it is too late now, as war has begun. The movement showed it could make noise, but Mr. Blair's quieter, reasoned delivery won the argument.

Mr. Hasan, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, is a former member of the Stop the War Coalition.

Mr. Hasan is one of the good left: a decent person who genuinely want to save lives and make the world better, but who disagrees with us regarding methods. It is well that he sees the faults in anti-American hatred and efforts to demonize opponents, and that he prefers reasoned argument to sloganeering. Now, if he can only learn that the Iraqi people are better off liberated by war than unliberated under sanctions, he'll be well on his way to conservatism. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 26, 2003 10:01 AM