US open supply of bombs to Israel a grave error
A war of words has broken out between two normally happy partners, the Americans and the British. Just as politicians in the UK are just getting over the affair with the CIA allegedly using a Scottish airbase to fly prisoners onwards to secret prisons for so called ‘extraordinary rendition’ – someone blows the whistle on something, seemingly far worse.
As we mentioned in a previous article the USA has been financing the Israeli armed forces to the tune of at least $2bn in military aid each year. Well on the latest shopping list was a set of new laser guided and GPS Satellite guided missiles and ‘bunker busters’. The only problem was the delivery time – well the US administration fixed that by waiving the usual ‘Red Tape’ and allowing the goods to ship, pronto. The next problem was getting them over there in time to allow them to be used on the Lebanese.
Flying that many arms that far requires big cargo planes – and a refuelling stopover somewhere – hmm how about that place up in Scotland that the US used for ‘extraordinary renditions’ – ‘if we don’t tell the Brits, no harm done’.
Well the proverbial has hit the pan. Basically, unlike in the USA, reporting of the Israel/Lebanon war in Europe has focussed public opinion more on the fall out of the civilian population than the ‘war on terror’ element. As such the Brits and the Europeans see the war quite differently to the US – so making life difficult politically for the leaders in Europe, and in particular the UK.
Yesterday, in a shockingly frank manner, the UK Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett voiced her displeasure that the US had ‘mislead’ the UK in using the Scottish base as landing point. Mrs Beckett said: ‘We have already let the United States know that this is an issue that appears to be seriously at fault, and we will be making a formal protest if it appears that that is what has happened.’
In reaction Whitehouse spokesman, Tony Snow said ‘Apparently, the British foreign minister thinks the paperwork was not in order,’ said spokesman Tony Snow ‘The Department of Defense does,’ he added. ‘We’ll get it straightened out.’
The British government has been highly embarrassed by the event, on the one hand it is a staunch ally of the US, and on the other hand it has to deal with the growing dissent of the public perception of the war. Unfortunately, the British populous sees this as another example of US lack of tact. Adding as it does to a YouGov poll last month that sees 81 percent of the Brits feling that President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.
In fact, the summary from the YouGov poll rather shockingly pointed that most of the UK population now see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, driven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite.
This is worrying for the UK government, which has been in power long enough for its own popularity to be on the wane. Margaret Beckett knows this and is too senior and too experienced a politician to have gone ‘off side’ with the remark. The US administration needs strong allies, though using the UK as a aircraft carrier seems to have pushed even the usually sympathetic UK politicians too far this time.
We wonder whether the US administration has thought about the reaction of the world to this event. Even ‘those strange folks’ outside the USA are going to be able to figure it out – the ‘tenuous’ link of bombs from USA to Israel and onto Lebanon has now been spelt out quite clearly. The backlash in the UK over this event may grow – only time will tell.