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Anti-Americanism is madness, warns Blair
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair used a speech to Federal Parliament today to urge global unity in the fight against terrorism and warn against the "madness" of growing anti-Americanism worldwide.Mr Blair said war against terror was as much a battle about values as it was about arms, and that those values were the universal property of humanity. "(It is also) a struggle about values and about modernity, whether to be at ease with it or enraged at it," said Mr Blair, the fifth world leader to address Federal Parliament. And to win this struggle we have to win the battle of values as much as arms. MPs and senators crowded into the House of Representatives to hear Mr Blair say that the struggle facing the world today was not just about security. He delivered a candid assessment of his country's alliance with the US, but warned against leaving America out of the fight against terrorism. "I do not always agree with the United States. Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have," Mr Blair said. "But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in. "The danger with America is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage," Mr Blair said. "The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them." Britain, along with the US and Australia, has been one of the prime forces in the war against terrorism. Mr Blair said the key to winning the battle against extremist elements was to show it was not a fight of the West against Islam, but about the ownership of common values. We have to show that these are not Western ... American or Anglo-Saxon values, but values in the common ownership of humanity, universal values that should be the right of the global citizen, he said. This is the challenge I believe we face and ranged against us are of course the people who hate us, but beyond them are many more who don't hate us but question our motives, our good faith, our even-handedness, who could support our values but believe we support them selectively. These were people that countries such as Britain had to persuade, Mr Blair said. They have to know this struggle is about justice and tolerance as well as security and prosperity, he said. And in truth today there is no prosperity without security and no security without justice. Mr Blair said nations such as Britain and Australia had to construct a global alliance to secure their way of life in the face of a continuing terrorist threat. The roots of terrorism ran deep, he said, and exploited a sense of alienation in the Arab and Muslim world which had to be overcome. "We will not defeat this terrorism until we face up to the fact that its roots are deep, that it is not a passing spasm of anger, but a global ideology at war with us and our way of life," Mr Blair said. "Their case is that democracy is a western concept we are forcing on an unwilling culture of Islam. "The problem we have is that a part of opinion in our own countries agrees with them. "We are in danger of completely misunderstanding the importance of what is happening as we speak in Iraq and Afghanistan." Each of those nations was engaged in a "titanic struggle" to be free of oppression and servitude, and Iraqis and Afghans had seized democracy. Mr Blair acknowledged that the Iraq war had "split this nation as it did mine", but said it was not the time to walk away from the fight against terrorism. "This is a time for the courage to see it through," he said. Posted by: tipper 2006-03-27 |
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