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UK Mirror: Obama's dogs of war set to snap at Brown
This time George Bush is the victim, not the perpetrator.Barack Obama's presidential victory was awesome. And the shock in the White House was palpable. Americans repudiated the folly, brutality and incompetence of the Dubya years. This is a moment of history to relish. The stakes were as high as the Berlin Wall, and the election outcome may come to rank alongside that iconic fall. But when the church bells stop ringing, let's have a reality check. General Euphoria is not a reliable Commander in Chief. It is too easy to get lost in admiration, joy and a sense of triumph over a barbarous regime's end. We will all have to come down to earth with a bump, and disillusion may come more swiftly than people might wish. The portents of disenchantment a real ready visible. While Gordon Brown jostles with French president Nicolas Sarkozy to be first to shake Obama's hand, powerful men in the shadows are naming their price for a special relationship with the black man in the White House. The price is high, it is military and it is non-negotiable. Only hours before voters went to the polls, Obama's aides briefed British reporters. The new president will play hardball. There will be no honeymoon in transatlantic relations. Europe will be expected to end the anti-Americanism of the Bush years and "pull its weight". Britain gets to ride point for Nato in the Afghan war. President Obama will demand that Brown commits an extra 3,000 British troops to fight the Taliban next year, when our forces are pulled out of Iraq. This is on top of the 8,000-plus already in theatre, in a war that has lasted longer than the first World War and which does not offer a "decisive military victory", according to Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, our most senior commander in Afghanistan. Britain's massively increased military commitment is seen as a key element in a US "surge" of troops, similar to the operation credited with bringing peace of sorts to Iraq. But Colonel Tim Collins, the respected Iraq war veteran, says there is "no capacity or appetite to take part in that surge" among our top brass. No? So what shall we tell the President? He will not easily take 'No' for an answer. And that's when we will see whether the Obama-Brown relationship is something new, progressive and mutually beneficial - or simply a re-run of Bush-Blair. Back in the poodle parlour! In their jihad against al-Qaeda, American forces are gradually extending the war into Pakistan. There are more than a million Asian Britons with family ties there. If the price of pleasing Obama is riots in Bradford and Blackburn, it is too high. Posted by: ryuge 2008-11-07 |
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