Maria Margaronis on Bush’s Visit to Britain

The Bubble

[On GW Bush visit to Britain - portsideMod]

By MARIA MARGARONIS

The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031208&s=margaronis

The explosions in Istanbul during George W. Bush’s state
visit to Britain lit up the unbridgeable gulf between
the government officials sealed in their security bubble
and the mass of protesters who filled London’s streets
for the fourth time in a year—a gulf made of deep
disagreements about the roots of terrorism, ends and
means, the requirements of good faith. On the day of the
first Al Qaeda attacks on British targets, Bush and
Blair continued to insist that they are winning the "war
on terror" and that violence must be curbed with
violence. In Trafalgar Square a young woman held up her
answer on a placard: "War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery.
Ignorance Is Strength."

There’s no mistaking the message of Bush’s London
holiday. From the moment his armored helicopter touched
down under cover of darkness behind Buckingham Palace,
London became a fortress for his protection. Thousands
of police officers in Day-Glo jackets filled the city
center while snipers kept watch from rooftops under a
sky empty of planes. Roads and squares were sealed off;
some MPs were shut out of the House of Commons, where
crucial votes on National Health Service reform were
taking place. Papers here reported that the White House
had demanded diplomatic immunity for American special
agents in case they shot protesters, the installation of
bullet-proof windows in Buckingham Palace, the right to
patrol London’s airspace with US fighter jets and
helicopter gunships, and a guarantee from Scotland Yard
that protesters would be kept out of camera shot of the
President. There was no walkabout à la Bill Clinton, no
ride with the Queen in the traditional open carriage.
Instead, Bush was driven from the back of the palace to
the front in his own armored Cadillac for the official
welcoming ceremony—a made-for-TV election commercial
that no one could get close enough to watch. This was
the new empire condescending to the old while borrowing
a little of its glitter-and-paste glamour.

Far from an affirmation of friendship, the visit felt to
Londoners—even to many who did not oppose the war—like
an assertion of absolute, arrogant power. It was as if,
after months of putting the case for sticking with
America to a skeptical population, Blair had decided to
end the conversation with incontrovertible evidence of
our subservience, now a fait accompli. Bush’s
performance did nothing to reassure those who think he
has no understanding of the world beyond Washington.
Like a house guest who brings his own coffee in case
yours is the wrong brand, he spent the visit locked in
his own portable world and his own weary rhetoric. His
big speech before an invited audience of foreign policy
specialists set out his "three pillars of peace and
security" in terms tailored to appeal to a European
audience, with nods to the importance of international
institutions and the need for concessions by Israel. But
the real message was that America will stop at nothing
to impose its will on the world: "We have...a power that
cannot be resisted—and that is the appeal of freedom to
all mankind." Meanwhile, less than a mile away, Pentagon
hawk Richard Perle was deviating from the official
London-Washington line by acknowledging that the
invasion of Iraq was indeed illegal: "I think in this
case international law stood in the way of doing the
right thing."

For Blair, the Bush visit had the makings of a political
nightmare. No previous British leader has gone so deeply
against the grain of his own party’s views and risked so
much for the "special relationship"; no previous US
President has been so open, for all the rhetoric of
friendship and solidarity, about America’s determination
to follow its own interests at any cost. It turned out
to be a bad week for the Prime Minister, whose party
came closer to defeat in a House of Commons vote on NHS
reform than it ever has before. His "friend" did not
even think it necessary to throw him a scrap on two
pressing issues of domestic British concern: US steel
tariffs, which have been declared illegal by the
European Union, and the fate of the British citizens
who’ve been detained without trial for two years in
Guantánamo Bay. Blair’s closeness to Bush will only
become more of a liability as the US election
approaches. The only real hope of healing the rift
between Europe and the United States lies in a
Democratic victory in 2004; Blair has just handed Bush a
prize set of snapshots for his election campaign. As
Colin Powell told a BBC interviewer, "We wanted this
visit."

Meanwhile, more than 110,000 people came out to protest
against Bush on a Thursday afternoon (the organizers’
figure is 200,000)—a demonstration second in size only
to the February one that drew over a million. As the
movement has grown, the Stop the War marches have come
to feel like reunions: the same crisp placards in black,
white and red, the same feeling of moral necessity, the
same sense of a surprising variety of people. This one
was led by Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, who had been guest
of honor the previous day at a peace party hosted by
Mayor Ken Livingstone. Vanessa Redgrave, unfussed about
security, threaded her way through the crowd handing out
leaflets for a symposium about what the war on terrorism
is doing to human rights (www.peaceandprogress.org).
Someone had poured red ink into the Trafalgar Square
fountains so that the water looked like blood; a giant
papier-mâché statue of George Bush with a tiny Blair in
his pocket was raised and then pulled down at the foot
of Nelson’s Column. There were costumes and painted
faces and plenty of Americans; a young man in a suit
carried a placard that read "Business Against Bush";
someone had written "Bush Go Home" in pretzels. The
carnival feeling contrasted comfortingly with the
stiffness of the state visit, as if we were reclaiming
London for ourselves. There was also sorrow, not only
for the dead and damaged but for our growing sense of
disenfranchisement in Britain. Most of the slogans were
aimed at Bush, whom we did not elect and have no means
to overthrow—and to whom our elected leaders have
conceded enormous power over our lives.

[Maria Margaronis is one of The Nation’s London editors.]