Blogging is Bollocks - part 1

It is our job continually to retest old assumptions and to seek new ideas. But we must not try to find one unalterable answer that will solve all our problems for none can exist. Margaret Thatcher

I'm trying to get into perspective why i think blogging is a load of old bollocks and why its best left. First up: The Right in the US and UK.... & Tony Blair.

Not your average homo-lefticus - credit where its due, morons!

From what ive read so far, the Right in the UK and US are happy to see the back of a man who stood firm after 9/11, took this country to war to fight terrorism, acted as a sort of Lawyer to the often hopeless George W Bush and who stood firm on Israel - all at a time many on the Left would have sold their souls to the devil on any of these issues. The right wing blogosphere spends a great deal of time issuing criticism to the Left on its reaction to 9/11, the War on Terror, Israel, anti-semitism, anti-americanism and the failure to grasp what it feels (uniquely you could be forgiven for thinking), is a basic fight for our shared values.

Interesting then that in their sending off of Tony Blair ive not see one sincere mention of the mans single and often lonely ability to cut through all of those apparently massively important issues in his own party and make a decent number of points.

Mr Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister between 1996 and 1999, speaking about Tony Blair last year during the Hitzbollah-Israeli conflict:

He said he believed Mr Blair had correctly judged this situation: "that this is not a local conflict between two tribes". He said Hezbollah regarded Israel as "the first step on the way to an Islamic empire"

"It is a mad wisdom and it should not be dismissed because it's mad, just as Hitler - he started off as an attack on the Jews and this is the same thing," he said.

"Tony Blair understands this. Some of the chattering classes do not. They learnt nothing from history. They really think it is a problem with Israel.

"Mr Blair is doing a great deal. He's standing up for his beliefs - he is nobody's puppet.

"He genuinely understands what is the correct picture. He is getting attacked from every side.

That makes him more of a leader, not less so.

"Leadership is tested in doing the unpopular things - not going with the flow."

Please show me a Western leader who has, on the international stage, been as outspoken on these apparently massive issues as Tony Blair or one who has dedicated as much energy since 9/11? At a time when we could have been under some nutjob commie, here we have a leader that makes clear his position on Israel. On democracy. On supporting our values. On reaffirming the problem of islamism. On daring to suggest that pernicious forces are at work globally formenting anti western opinion and who sees it as a wholly international problem. Anyone would think these issues are the kind to be easily unpicked. How can you implement anything at home and abroad when it takes the energy it does to sell the idea in the first place? And if the manner in which he went about it at home wasnt up to scratch where were the big demos, the outrage..in fact come to think of it where is there any challenge from Opposition or opposition? I get the feeling its easier to point the finger and bemoan the fate of democracy than play a part in defining it.

Blair party speech 2006:

"This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy. It's an attack on our way of life. It's global. It has an ideology"

"Yes it's hard sometimes to be America's strongest ally. Yes, Europe can be a political headache for a proud sovereign nation like Britain. But believe me there are no half-hearted allies of America today and no semi-detached partners in Europe. And the truth is that nothing we strive for, from the world trade talks to global warming, to terrorism and Palestine can be solved without America, or without Europe"

Blair on Israeli conflict 2006:

"The purpose of the provocation that began the conflict in Lebanon was clear. It was to create chaos and to provoke retaliation by Israel that would lead to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed, not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it."
The point is this. This is war, but of a completely unconventional kind....9/11 in the US, 7/7 in the UK, 11/3 in Madrid, the countless terrorist attacks in countries as disparate as Indonesia or Algeria, what is now happening in Afghanistan and in Indonesia, the continuing conflict in Lebanon and Palestine, it is all part of the same thing. What are the values that govern the future of the world? Are they those of tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity or those of reaction, division and hatred? My point is that this war can't be won in a conventional way. It can only be won by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just, more fair than the alternative. Doing this, however, requires us to change dramatically the focus of our policy..." ...."And most contemporaneously, and in some ways most perniciously, a very large and, I fear, growing part of our opinion looks at Israel, and thinks we pay too great a price for supporting it and sympathises with Muslim opinion that condemns it. Absent from so much of the coverage, is any understanding of the Israeli predicament..."

Blair - Council of Foreign Relations written piece in the US 2006

"....many in Western countries listen to the propaganda of the extremists and accept it. (And to give credit where it is due, the extremists play our own media with a shrewdness that would be the envy of many a political party.)"

"If we recognized this struggle for what it truly is, we would at least be on the first steps of the path to winning it. But a vast part of Western opinion is not remotely near this point yet.This ideology has to be taken on -- and taken on everywhere. Islamist terrorism will not be defeated until we confront not just the methods of the extremists but also their ideas. I do not mean just telling them that terrorist activity is wrong. I mean telling them that their attitude toward the United States is absurd, that their concept of governance is prefeudal, that their positions on women and other faiths are reactionary. We must reject not just their barbaric acts but also their false sense of grievance against the West, their attempt to persuade us that it isothers and not they themselves who are responsible for their violence"