The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Crusading for Renaissance

Israel's biggest European arms supplier has joined the Bush administration and the Bush administration's little helper in watering down a European call for an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon calamity. Bush's buddies, who also included the Czech and Polish governments, found unacceptable a draft which warned the Righteous State that disregarding civilian safety "constitutes a severe breach of international humanitarian law". Instead, all parties are called upon to "do everything possible to protect populations and to refrain from actions in violation of international law", except for United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, General Assembly Resolution 194, and one or two others of similar insignificance.

Tony and his chums, it appears, are "refusing to call for a ceasefire without the other two elements of the diplomatic plan - political negotiations and the stabilisation force - also in place". However, the Secretary for the Rest of the World, Margaret Beckett, said she would be surprised and dismayed if anyone, even Israel, interpreted the EU statement as a "green light" to continue fighting. "It explicitly calls on all parties to cease the violence," she said. Then again, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking for Israel's biggest European arms supplier, said that "Cessation of hostilities is not the same as a ceasefire ... A ceasefire can perhaps be achieved later"; so perhaps the Righteous State does have a green light to continue the conquest so long as it does so in a non-hostile spirit. I'm sure this will be easy to arrange.

Meanwhile, the Vicar of Downing Street himself is about to address the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles before taking himself off on holiday. Most observers believe he will "keep in constant touch with fellow world leaders", just in case any of them are tempted to go off-message.

Tony apparently "planned the basis of this speech several weeks ago", and happily "the crisis in the Lebanon has not changed its thesis". As has been made plain to many in Iraq and elsewhere, it takes more than a massacre or two to shake Tony's self-belief. Tony will go on to inform his audience that "the purpose of the provocation that began the conflict was clear: it was to create chaos, division and bloodshed to provoke retaliation by Israel". Since, as we know from Tony's previous pronouncements on the subject, Muslims tend to operate on a false sense of grievance, it follows that Hizbullah cannot have been retaliating for anything, let alone for a provocation by the Righteous State. Thanks to that Muslim propensity for grievance, however, a few bombed villages and a paltry pile of corpses has led "to Arab and Muslim opinion being inflamed not against those who started the aggression but against those who responded to it." Cunning fiends, these terrorists.

Still, thanks to Tony and his chums "it is still possible even now to come out of this crisis with a better long-term prospect for the cause of moderation in the Middle East succeeding", as Tony's speechwriter elegantly hath it. The cause of moderation is apparently that of George W Bush, whose respect for such democratic documents as the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights is so legendary as to be virtually mythical. Tony and his chums "will continue to do all we can to halt the hostilities", though not by the clumsy and inefficient method of getting the hostile parties to cease firing at each other; and then, once the political negotiations and the international force have been arranged to the satisfaction of all concerned whose opinions are at all important, "we must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us."

You see, children, those that threaten us (they are not, I observe, those who threaten us) have embroiled the world in "an elemental struggle about the values that will shape our future". This struggle is partly a struggle between what Tony is pleased to call "reactionary Islam" and what Tony is pleased to call "moderate mainstream Islam"; it is possible that Tony finds one of these more tolerable, and less partial to wallowing in a false sense of grievance, than the other. "We will not win the battle against this global extremism," reasons Tony, "unless we win it at the level of values as much as force," and to do this we must "show we are even handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world", as when Syria and Iran are peremptorily ordered to behave themselves while Israel attacks a sovereign nation. Nevertheless, believe it or not, "we are at present far away from persuading those we need to persuade" that we are altogether living up to our noble ideals. Cynical bastards, those extremists.

The reason for our present difficulty is that "there is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and clutching with increasing definition countries far outside that region." Perhaps arc of extremism is the new axis of evil. In any case, it's a clutching arc, which sounds pretty dashed evil to me. His reverence apparently does not go into detail as to which countries are being clutched, but he notes that the triumph of our values will require "an alliance of moderation" which, considering that we need to defeat an extremist arc, sounds fairly sensible. The alliance of moderation will defeat the arc of extremism by "paint[ing] a different future", perhaps in the shape of a moderate, embracing arc to replace the extremist, clutching one. The moderate alliance will include "Muslim, Jew and Christian, Arab and Western, wealthy and developing nations ... in peace and harmony with each other" so that we can "revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to make peace between Israel and Palestine"; and then all join together and move forward as one - driven by values, uplifted by moderation, fair and even-handed in the justice of our sustainability - in the war to protect our petroleum from the heathen Chinese.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home