Poor old Tony Blair is showing the strain of his distasterous and shabby policy of supporting Bush in the effort to conquer the middle east. His famous grin seems increasingly threadbare and his face has become drawn and haggard - he is a man who has aged terribly and does not bear it well.
His efforts to be remembered for something, anything, other than the mess he has created in Iraq appear ever more desperate. For several days his tetchy response to a reporter who pressd him to condemn the disgraceful way in which Saddam's execution was managed was shown and reshown on european TV news. Meanwhile his party look forward to his departure so that they can replace him with someone less unpopular. The worst kind of abandonment for a politician is when the nay-saying voices are coming from behind him on the parliamentary benches.
But behind all the one-liners and false smiles, I am beginning to detect a note of sadness in him. Perhaps this is to do with guilt, or shame maybe. Or, of course, it could be my imagination. But he has begun to look uncomfortable. I wonder whether the facade has become more difficult for him as Iraq has become an ever greater disaster. "Brains" in Washington is clearly untroubled by such things - but Blair certainly has more humanity and intelligence than Bush.
Could we be witnessing the beginning of a change in Tony Blair? If he is as moral as he likes to pretend, then he must think about what he has done from a moral perspective. It is difficult to imagine such thoughts resulting in anything other than guilt and shame.
2 comments:
He does look tired and sad and, perhaps, a shade guilty. And why not? Iraq, as some suspected when this whole thing started, has become Vietnam II. How did Bush and Blair fail to see this coming?
A very good question, Doc.
I suspect that Bo-Bo Bush rather likes being at war - he has described himself as "a war president" as though that were a good thing.
Blair, on the other hand, might be expected to take a rather more sophisticated, long-term view. Though, as I think about it, I wonder whether we have been overestimating Blair for years. Could he be a dumb as his behaviour might suggest?
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