28 Apr 2004 Blood Libels

This April 28 editorial in the Financial Times begins:

In possibly the most stinging rebuke ever to a British government by its foreign policy establishment, 52 former ambassadors and international officials have written to Tony Blair telling him he is damaging UK (and western) interests by backing George W. Bush’s misguided policies in the Middle East.

British history is replete with examples of stinging rebukes to its governments — some of them quite painfully, even imaginatively, fatal. A stern letter by a bunch of bureaucrats, retired bureaucrats and and bureaucrat-wannabes wouldn’t even make the top ten.

The letter, the paper reports, complains that the Blair-Bush policy has “inflamed Arab opinion to the point where it sees Palestine and Iraq as two fronts in a war of resistance against the west.”

Yep. Present world tensions are all Bush’s and Blair’s fault. The fanatical Muslims were just minding their own business on 9-11, and Arab culture doesn’t teach its otherwise often uneducated youth that Jews slaughter young Christians and Moslems in order to use their blood in pastries. Not.

No, that blood libel stuff didn’t do any “inflaming” worth mentioning — Bush and Blair are responsible. If only the people of the U.S. and Britain had elected thinking liberals in their last major elections instead of hard-hearted right-wingers like Bush and Blair… no, scratch that last bit of fantasy, too.

The 52 former ambassadors and international officials clearly have spent way too much time sharing cucumber sandwiches with petty dictators and not enough time with their history books. They not only missed the chapters about anti-Semitism, they entirely overlook the Crusades.

The Financial Times piece ends with the FT urging “London to co-ordinate its position more closely with its European partners.”

Wouldn’t those be many of the same folks Saddam was bribing?

They don’t call it the Financial Times for nothing.