Original source URL: http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/67803.html Removal from office won¹t solve the problem Your Letters August 14 2006 As a gift of US Imperialism, Iraq lies trashed and thousands of its innocents are still being slaughtered every week. Lebanon follows closely behind. The entire Middle East has been deliberately turned into a giant powder-keg. Why, millions of us repeatedly ask, is the British Prime Minister standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Bush on all of this? There have been recent articles in The Herald, and letters, suggesting that Prime Minister Blair is mentally ill and should, as a matter of urgency, be removed from office. In his Saturday essay, They know not what they do, Ian Bell suggests Blair is placing all British citizens in danger, must now be considered a traitor to his country and that impeachment should be a real consideration. Bell concludes with the intriguing suggestion that the supposed Bush-Blair love affair might actually be due to Blair being blackmailed by the White House. Bizarrely, if Blair is either mentally ill or being blackmailed by a crazed Bush, and both "know not what they do", it might appear reassuring that all could be made well in the world by simply removing them from office. There is one major flaw in Ian Bell's thesis, however; Bush and Blair know exactly what they are doing at the behest of their masters, and whoever the elite Money Power select to replace them will likewise exactly know the score. From this present US-orchestrated chaos, slaughter and death in the Middle East, the US will ensure its supply of ever-dwindling world oil reserves from Iraq and Iran. Anyone doubting this should take another close look at the "Project for the New American Century" and the US aim of gaining "Full Spectrum World Dominance". For another perspective on what is really going on, I would encourage every concerned reader to pick up a copy of William Blum's Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II. Only when we begin to understand the history of US activities can we grasp the present reality. Dr Jim Macgregor, Bogside Cottages, by Alloa. Ian Bell's magnificent, perspicacious and all-encompassing Saturday essay on our Prime Minister and the "special relationship" with George W has deprived me of the need even to attempt a similar letter to The Herald. All I might add is, simply, that had Scotland been an independent nation and not a stateless nation, we would have escaped this lunacy and left Yo Blair and Dubya to their own particular brand of idiocy and devastation. Nigel Dewar Gibb, 15 Kirklee Road, Glasgow. IT WAS all supposed to be the dawn of a new era for Britain when Tony Blair swept to power with New Labour. I recall feeling optimistic that the ultra-capitalist influences of Conservative governments were to be challenged and a semblance of balance restored to our socially-polarised nation. But it didn't happen. The inherent flaw in so many British governments of recent decades has been an inability to grasp the fact that Britain is a small island nation which continues to behave as if it still ran an empire. Urgent domestic matters take second place to ill-judged, expensive foreign initiatives. In Mr Blair's case, the "special relationship" with the US has continued to foster this illusion of world influence which is out of proportion to Britain's wealth and military capabilities. We don't see other European nations attempting to "save the world for democracy". They have the political maturity not to get involved in ill-advised interventionist campaigns which rouse hornets' nests and squander young men's lives. It is desperately sad that a man of Tony Blair's intellectual abilities should "cosy up" to an American president whose level of world vision seems to have been learnt from self-serving corporate cronies and cowboy comics in a Texas newsagent. What has happened to American statesmen of the calibre of Franklin D Roosevelt? The results are there for all of us to see. A lust for power and world influence has blinded and corrupted both these flawed men - and many of their close colleagues and advisers. And the world is now much the poorer for their destabilising presence. Dave Stewart, 129 Novar Drive, Glasgow. -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Blogs: cyberjournal forum http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Achieving real democracy http://harmonization.blogspot.com/ for readers of ETM http://matrixreaders.blogspot.com/ Community Empowerment http://empowermentinitiatives.blogspot.com/ Blogger made easy http://quaylargo.com/help/ezblogger.html
