British Right-Wing Thatcher Acolyte Max Hastings Is Shrill!

From Newshog:

NewsHog: "He who has one enemy will meet him everywhere": Max Hastings is a veteran British journalist who writes for the rightwing Daily Mail (that's Brit rightwing - a lot saner than the US rabid version) but also contributes a provocative op-ed column for the Guardian. Hastings is a colourful character and about as Tory as the come. That's why I was pleasantly surprised by his Guardian column today. It's comprehensive roasting of Bush's rhetoric of "either for us or against us" and belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy. You have to read it all, but here's a whet for your appetite:

George Bush sometimes sounds more like the Mahdi, preaching jihad against infidels, than the leader of a western democracy. In his regular radio address to the American people on Saturday he linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All, said the president of the world's most powerful nation, share a "totalitarian ideology", and a desire to "establish a safe haven from which to attack free nations". Bush's remarks put me in mind of a proverb attributed to Ali ibn Abu Talib: "He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

In the United States a disturbingly large minority of people - polls suggest around 40% - remain willing to accept Bush's assertions that Americans and their allies, which chiefly means the British, are faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to destroy our societies.

In less credulous Britain one could nowadays fit into an old-fashioned telephone box those who believe anything Bush or Tony Blair says about foreign policy. Many of us are consumed with frustration. We know that we face a real threat from Muslim fundamentalists, and that we are unlikely to begin to defeat this until we see it for what it is: something infinitely more complex, diffuse and nuanced than the US president wishes to suppose.

And more, as he cuts to the quick of the neocon's amateurish "framing" in pursuit of power rather than actual success in the "long war":

The madness of Bush's policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis. His remarks on Saturday invite Muslims who sympathise with Hamas or reject Iraq's occupation or merely aspire to grow opium in Afghanistan to make common cause with Bin Laden.

If the United States insists upon regarding all Muslim opponents of its foreign policies as a homogeneous enemy then that is what they become. The Muslim radicals' "single narrative" portrays the entire course of history as a Christian and Jewish plot against Islam.

It is widely agreed among western governments and intelligence agencies that, in order to defeat the pernicious spread of such nonsense, a convincing counter-narrative is needed. Yet it becomes a trifle difficult to compose this when the US president promulgates his own single narrative, almost as ridiculous as that of al-Qaida.

And finally, the coup-de-grace on the whole failed neocon adventure and on the leaders who have championed it to the world - Bush and Blair:

Tony Blair - "waist deep in the big muddy", as Pete Seeger used to sing about Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam era - clings to a messianic conviction that he must continue to endorse American statements and policies to maintain his restraining influence on George Bush. This invites speculation about what the president might do if Tony was not at his elbow. Seize Mecca?The west faces a threat from violent Muslim fundamentalists that would have existed even if a Lincoln had been presiding at the White House. As a citizen, I am willing to be resolute in the face of terrorism, which must be defeated. I become much less happy about the prospect of immolation, however, when Bush and Blair translate what should be an ironclad case for civilised values into an agenda of their own which I want no part of.

It would be a wonderfully erudite and convincing argument if a peacenik liberal had written it. That the author was a champion of old-style conservatism as editor of the Daily Telegraph for so many years, and a friend and confidante of Maggie Thatcher, is just.... how can I put this... sublime.

Comments

[Lee A. Arnold]

Brad, great link.

[Cernig]

Thanks for the link, Brad.

Hastings, like most UK conservatives, has decisively ditched the neocon nonsense.

Here's Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former defence and foreign secretary and one of Thatcher's original cadre, speaking last week:

"There must be a clear recognition that the invasion of Iraq was a serious mistake that has helped the terrorists. It has also made Iran the power in the Gulf. While the government may be in denial, there is no need for the Conservative party to be. That does not mean, however, that British troops should be withdrawn from Iraq. It is essential that they remain there as long as their presence might help the Iraqis."

"Conservatives should not accept Blair’s simplistic belief that all Muslim terrorism is part of a single plot. Conservatives are rightly suspicious of a Manichaean division of the world into good and bad; terrorist and freedom-loving. The war in Chechnya, for example, is between Chechen nationalists and Russian nationalists, not between terror and freedom. The same applies to Kashmir. The Israeli–Palestinian issue is also much more than a battle against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism."

"Conservatives should reject a philosophy of pre-emptive wars (or, as Blair prefers to call it, liberal interventionism) fought by ‘coalitions of the willing’."

All the old conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be falling over themselves to get to the left of the Left on the neocon misadventures in recent weeks.

If it wasn't for the Dems trying to get to the right of the Right at the same time it would be funny...instead its becoming a farce.

Regards, Cernig

[Andrew Brown]

The other thing about Haestings is that he is very close to the Army. He has written several books of military history, and was, notriously, the first man into Port Stanley in the Falklands War.

[Esq.]

If he is the former editor of the Daily Torygraph, please keep in mind that they are Blair's opposition. Of course the Tories are poking holes in the wisdom of Blair's war follies.

[Lance Knobel]

Hastings has been clear-eyed on Iraq for some time.

It's also wrong to paint him as a "right-wing Thatcher acolyte". He is, as Newshog writes, "as Tory as they come", but it's in an old-fashioned, pre-Thatcher Tory sense.

Hastings followed his editorship of The Daily Telegraph as editor of The Evening Standard, London's rather poor daily paper, where he was generally well to the left of most of the modern (pre-Cameron? -- too early to tell) Conservative Party.

[STS]

Sublime indeed. Can we somehow transplant him into the upper echelons of the Republican party, where his viewpoint could have some impact?

[a different chris]

I keep telling people that 90+% of my objection to GWII is based on conservative precepts.

Sooner or later they'll get it.

[Fetal Farmer]

Hastings' quote: "...on Saturday [Bush] linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Hell, aWol might as well also link HIV-AIDS, heart disease, and cancer in with that hodge-podge of bogey men.

[Peter]

Hastings' views are not politicking after the fact. There were others -- Conservative as well as Labour MPs -- who predicted the current mess of Iraq before the invasion began. One of these was former Conservative Minister, Ken Clarke, who spoke against the war in the House of Commons debate on the war prior to the invasion, arguing against primarily on the grounds that it would only inflame Muslim opinion against the West, and make terrorist acts against the west more likely, not less.

With no greater ascess to the future than anyone else, Clarke's prognosis was 100% correct. Blair cannot say he was not warned of the consequences.

[Jon Fernquest]

Oxford educated, war correspondent, military historian with an impressive list of books, and knighted!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hastings

He is obviously someone who can accurately report the details of wars as well as write on their significance as they unfold.

Perhaps it is a different conception of education (as opposed to narrow professionalism) that makes him different.

[tom s.]

"Brit rightwing - a lot saner than the US rabid version"

- excuse me, we are talking about the Daily Mail here, no?