Arab News Editorial

Fifty-two retired senior British diplomats, including three former ambassadors to the Kingdom, have taken the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing UK Prime Minister Blair for his support of President Bush’s strong arm tactics in Iraq and his illegal endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral land grab in Palestine and Israel. Downing Street is seething at this intervention by such diplomats, many with long service in the Middle East as well as considerable knowledge and expertise. What probably hurts most is the accusation that Blair has failed to rein in the confrontational Bush White House.

The British Foreign Office believes that thanks to London’s long involvement in the Middle East, it has a better understanding of the region. The extraordinary protest probably represents the general frustration among serving British diplomats that the Blair government has ignored their advice and skill with the rapier, and opted instead for the US sledgehammer. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the embarrassment is going to produce any cracks in the bond that Tony Blair has forged between himself and George W. Bush. Nevertheless, it may well spell the beginning of the end for his premiership, around which one UK commentator this week mentioned the first “smell of decay.”

Blair originally justified British involvement in the American attack on Saddam because of WMD. When this was found to be false, he moved to the benefits of regime change and the blessings of freedom and democracy that the coalition was going to bring to Iraq. Such blessings are hard to appreciate by ordinary Iraqis caught up in Fallujah and Najaf by the US iron-fist policy. As was widely predicted, the puzzled and angry Americans are giving up on the “ungrateful” people of Iraq. They seem unable to grasp that if US democracy means closing down newspapers and threatening to “kill or capture” leading opponents of their occupation, then it is hardly surprising that more and more Iraqis are deciding that they want none of it.

Blair boasts of British success occupying Basra with what his ministers hint smugly is a far more subtle and intelligent approach to the population, through even that seems to be proving illusory. The pity is that Blair has been unable to convince his friend Bush of the wisdom even of this policy. The Americans believe that the British task was always far less challenging. It is clear that all British advice has been brushed aside. Blair now has one difficult and messy option left — to threaten a public break with the electioneering Bush White House. If he did, he would be honoring the views of much the British public, his own Labour party and, it seems, the Foreign Office. But it might probably be his last act as British prime minister.