3 comments about The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency.

1. 
   James Naughtie, the Today presenter, has written a useful account of Blair's links with the USA, particularly with Bush and his colleagues. Naughtie recalls that when he asked Pentagon insider Richard Perle what came next after Afghanistan, Perle replied, "The really important thing is that there is a next."
   
   So, in January 2002, Bush set the timetable for invading Iraq and told Blair. Blair then promised to join Bush's war, secretly changing government policy from peace to war, without telling anybody.
   
   Naughtie writes that the `bloodstream' of the US-British special relationship is the intelligence linkage. Indeed, the USA's intelligence services are the world's biggest and most expensive. Yet all the US intelligence claims about Iraq's WMD - the uranium oxide bought from Niger, the mobile chemical laboratories - have been proven false. US intelligence was so bad that the CIA's head resigned, and his deputy left too.
   
   The Labour government had all these intelligence resources behind them. Yet their notorious government dossier on WMD was largely pilfered from a ten-year-old PhD thesis! So what, exactly, did Britain gain from this so-special relationship and its precious `bloodstream'?
   
   As a result of the illegal invasion of Iraq, there is now an illegal occupation of Iraq. Naughtie quotes a senior Foreign Office man who described the US's occupation policy as `a catastrophe from beginning to end'.
   
   When Naughtie asked Blair if he agreed with the White House lawyer who said that the Geneva Conventions were `quaint', Blair replied, "Of course not. Neither do the Americans." Typically, Blair was denying the evidence just put in front of him.
   
   Labour's war (for the Labour Party could have stopped it, but didn't even try) has weakened all that it holds dear. The link with the USA is in danger, the EU split, NATO divided, the Labour Party eviscerated, and Parliament, the Foreign Office and the intelligence services all discredited. But worse, Labour's war has made Israel increase its killings, thrown the Middle East into chaos, worsened the risks of terrorism to Britain and elsewhere, and added the danger of endless wars in a `clash of civilisations'.



2. The political behavior of British Prime Minister Tony Blair is something of an enigma - why does he support the American president, so despised in the UK, at great harm to his popularity? Why did he back Bush into the war in Iraq, ostensibly in quest of weapons of mass destructions, even though the UN inspectors urged for more time?
   
   As Blair followed George W. Bush, his popularity in the UK plummeted, his party is in something close to an open revolt, and his standing in Europe has deteriorated. And for all his trouble, it appears that Blair got precious little in return from the American administration. As French President Jacques Chirac recently put it "I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favors systematically."
   
   British journalist James Naughtie, author of another acclaimed book about Tony Blair (the Rivals, about the relationship between Blair and Gordon Brown), tries to answer these questions precisely. His answer is that Blair is a true believer; he believes that the 9/11 has been a wake up call for the world. "I could see this Islamic Extremism... bring about a very dangerous conjunction of terrorism and states that are utterly unstable and repressive" (quoted on p. 203). These views of Blair's antedated 9/11. They were the impetus for his promotion of the Kosovo war. Already in the late 1990s, Blair saw a new international order rising, one based on the struggle against evil. The terrorist threat required a whole new political philosophy:
   
   "Before September 11th the world's view of the justification of military action had been changing. The only clear case in international relations for armed intervention had been self-defence, response to aggression. But the notion of intervening on humanitarian grounds had been gaining currency" But after 9/11, "What had seemed inchoate came together." The need for security required preemptive action. Countries which suppressed freedom, harbored terrorists or had weapons of mass destruction had to be dealt with. In effect, Blair agreed with Condoleezza Rice's claim that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud".
   
   So is the Labour PM really in accord with Bush, Cheyney and Rumsfeld? In Naughtie's thorough discussion, it is not so simple. There is a great difference between Bush and Blair. Naughtie quotes Blair as saying "I never quite understand what people mean by that neocon thing" (p.71)
   
   That may be the key to explain the great divide between Blair and the Bush administration. Blair may not be aware of the gap, or of its enormity. The Prime Minster believes in the importance of democracy. For him, the military action against Iraq or El Qaeda is only a part of a greater attempt to create international security and peace. "You cannot deal with terrorism security as simply a security issue. You also have to deal with the more compassionate side of the issue... the poverty, the lack of interfaith understanding. All these things need to be part of the agenda." Although Bush and his administration may pay lip service to these ideals, for them internationalism and real international cooperation are anathema. They cannot possibly support them.
   
   In my view, Blair's partnership with Bush committed him to the Bush administration's incompetent, corrupt and extremist policies. Naughtie seems to think that Blair's support was essential or at least important, to Bush (see for example p. 203). But I disagree - in the Bush administration, the moderates, as Paul O'Neal observed, act as cover only. Bush would use Blair for all he is worth - but he would concede nothing in return.
   
   I have much sympathy for the ideology Blair advocates, but Bush is no partner for promoting it. Blair's collaboration with the Bush administration not only diminishes his popularity - it also discredits his cause.



3. This book represents a great achievement in explaining what drove the seemingly strange pairing of a UK Labour prime minister and a US Republican President on a venture that hardly any other major political leader in the world supported, being the war on terror post 9/11 which ultimately led to the invasion of Iraq and its ongoing occupation at great cost to the occupiers and the Iraqi people.
   
   The writer is a UK political correspondent with great experience of the Labour Party (he has written the best account to date on the Blair relationship with Gordon Brown, whose unwillingness to remain Number Two features to the end of this book) and the US and while he covers the US aspects very well his real story is on the road that led Blair to a policy that few in his party really supported and has since cost him dear in public perceptions of his leadership.
   
   After a rather unfocussed start (where the story seems to be continually jumping around in time) it settles down into an incisive chronological analysis of how Blair having reached his agreement with Brown to be leader then became prime minister without any prior government office experience and with an unassailable parliamentary majority started to develop links with Clinton which then had to be replaced with Bush after his slim victory over Gore.
   
   That both have developed such a strong personal bond despite very different backgrounds and world views is skilfully explained in the context of Bush badly needing Blair to have international credibility for his very US neo-conservative driven strategy and Blair having taken a very personal decision with little input from his Cabinet in seeking a great international issue to grasp. The book gives a very good feel for the inner workings of Blair's "presidential" style of government especially in Cabinet that led to this being so easily done and which Naughtie demonstrates led to Bush underestimating how far Blair had gone out on a limb and was then exposed to UK parliamentary revolt against that decision.
   
   Naughtie includes lots of personal off record comments that flesh out how the end result was Bush and his Executive conceding little to their end gameplan (the book should kill any remaining views of the UK ever being likely to benefit from the much touted "special relationship" unless US and UK interests are aligned on an issue) and Blair having made a personal commitment based on his early views of Islamic revolutionaries then being moulded post 9/11 into a intransigent loner who trusted his instincts and not the counsel of his colleagues and advisers plus other political leaders. The book is worth buying just for the chapter on the failings of the various Intelligence Services and how in the UK their role was to try and provide evidence and justification for a decision which Blair had already made and in which they failed him plus fooled themselves into not providing the clarity that may have stalled (if not stopped) him.
   
   A very unique book with one of the best book covers I have seen in years!

No comments about Saddam Hussein - The Butcher of Baghdad (Biography).

No comments about Churchill.

4 comments about Washington's Partisan War, 1775-1783.

1. The book not only points up Washington's genius at extending the tenets of the formal warfare of the 18th century, something for which he is rarely credited, but records the civil war between Tory and Patriot (Whig) within that war. It clearly demonstates the strengths and limitations of depending upon the citizen soldier, a lesson relevant today. Since the book deals primarily with the war around the New York metropolitan area, it will be especially interesting to anyone living in the area. I think enough of the book to buy a new copy and give it to our local library. John Higgins



2. I think this book was very enlightening about the role of the militia and how Washington creatively used them along with regular military during the Revolutionary War. Being a New Jersey native, I was appreciative of the author's feel for the area. I gained a new appreciation for Washington as a military strategist. Definitely worth reading!



3. Washington's Partisan War is an unreadable, poorly focused study of the militia in the northern states during the Revolution. The author violates a cardinal rule of writing-he does not know quite what to leave OUT. Instead Washington's Partisan War tells of almost every militia muster, movement, skirmish, disbanding, etc. until one is totally lost in a (poorly written) forest of minute details. Context is significantly lacking here, and Kwansy fails to adequately tie in all of his facts to make useful conclusions. While Washington's Partisan War may be useful to some studying specific aspects of the middle states duringthe conflict, this book should be avoided by the general reader for the reasons above, as well as its terrible prose.



4. This book suffers from dry prose, lack of focus and the inability of the author to leave anything out! It is just a poor read, sad to say.....

No comments about Major General Thomas Maley Harris.

No comments about The Boys Life of Abraham Lincoln.

1 comments about John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life in Pictures.

1. John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life In Pictures is an impressive photographic gallery and the collaborative effort of Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac in celebration of JFK. Very little text is present; almost all of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life in Pictures is dedicated to allowing the black-and-white and color photographs speak for themselves, with only a brief introduction leading into the compilation and a quick byline for each image to clarify the photograph's setting and the people it depicts. A visual treasury, moving to page through and recommended for any truly interested in seeing President Kennedy's life revealed, from early years to his untimely death.

4 comments about Jimmy Carter American Moralist.

1. The strength of this book lies in the depth of it's treatment of Jimmy Carter's formative years. It falls short on details of his governing years. Many conclusions are transparently flimsy but, for someone coming in with little knownledge of Carter's life like myself, it was an informative read.



2. Although Morris writes and interesting biography, the strength of the book is when he's telling Carter's story and the environment in which Carter acts. I found the psychoanalysis less compelling. I would have preferred if the author drew his conculsions in the text and relegated his descriptions of the school of sociological thought that a particular Carter behavior might have fit to the endnotes. Sociology too often interferes with a good story that Morris generally tells well, especially Carter's childhood. I wish the book had a more detailed account of Carter's Presidency. What's there is good, but more is needed. I thought the author offered many interesting political insights, but found his comparison of the economic record of Carter and his neighboring Presidents very poor. The economic analysis relies too heavily on comparing 4-year averages of certain indicators rather than describing what the trends were, what the causes were, and how well Carter acted to address the trends.



3. Jimmy Who? That was the question many American asked themselves during the 1976 presidential campaign. Who was this obscure southern governor positioning himself into the highest office in the land? Twenty-five years later, many Americans find themselves asking this exact same question despite a presidential term and a prominent life in volunteer work. While a full understanding of Jimmy Carter is impossible, Mr. Morris provides a fine introduction to his life. The author puts a strong emphasis on the role morality played both in Carter's private life and public image. The book is especially strong in exploring Carter's childhood and early political career - a topic that is neglected in every other Carter book. Less emphasis is placed on Carter's presidential term. Major incidents that shaped the late 1970s receive only a few pages each. What are we to make of Jimmy Carter's presidency? Even though the Southern Baptist may have been the most ethical and decent man to occupy the White House this century, the record is wanting, at best, miserable at worst. This is because Carter lacked any core vision of where he wanted to take his country. He never explained to voters or to himself the direction he wanted to take us. Further, in cases where Carter was more assertive, like energy policy, he was inexperienced in how Washington politics worked. He stumbled badly in his Congressional relations and he never constructed a loyal constituency out of the American public. There were some positives, such as the Egypt-Israel peace accords and legislation deregulating the airline and trucking industries. The Iran Hostage affair was a perplexing situation that would have frustrated any leader. But on economics and Cold War relations, the most important issues of Carter's term, his administration was especially inept. Even though Carter had private misgivings about Keynesianism, he couldn't bring himself to repudiate the tenets of social liberalism. Government spending surged under Carter's term. Inflation proved resistant to his wage and price contols. Under Carter's foreign policy team, detente continued to be a one-way street working to Moscow's advantage. It took a man with a far different perspective of the world, Ronald Regan, to reverse Carter's shortcomings. It is unfair to label Jimmy Carter a failure. Only the harshest critic can label a man who rose to the highest office in the land - and served with honesty and integrity- as a "failure." But Carter's presidency was constrained by a lack of vision, competence, and a failed ideology. The responsibility for this situation lies solely with this farmer's son from Plains.



4. "Jimmy Carter - American moralist" is an excellently researched and well written biography of the 39th American president. It provides us with a fine introduction to the ex-president's private and public life. The book is very detailed in exploring Carter's childhood and early political career. Although I found that part interesting to read, I wish it had been as detailed on the account of his presidency. As a born-again Christian there is no doubt that morality played (and still plays) a major role both in Carter's private as well as public life. Unfortunately, strong moral and ethics is not enough to make a good leader and president (I think Bill Clinton is the best example on that...)

   President Carter endured the lowest poll ratings ever to be recorded. And after leaving office he spent years as America's favorite guy to pick on. He dedicated himself to volunteer work, especially working with the organization "Habitat for Humanity". More than a decade would pass before he again, in the mid-90'ies, would enjoy life in the public limelight. In 1994 Atlanta Georgia, he got his (long overdue) tribute in bronze, his public ratings was again soaring, and he received invitations to join peace negotiating teams etc.

   "Jimmy Carter - American moralist" (together with Powell's "My American Journey") was my introduction to reading about American politics and history. In this book, the author strikes a perfect balance between political jargon, facts and figures. And the result is a biography easy to read, even for lay readers like me. I learned a lot from reading this book, and it inspired me to continue to explore the field further.

   An interesting biography!

No comments about Thomas Jefferson: Architect: The Interactive Portfolio.

No comments about Balfour (British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century) (Life&Times).