by M. Kane Jeeves
It must have looked great on paper. In a move to thank Condi
Rice for inviting him on a tour of her Alabama
hometown last year, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw invited Ms. Rice to
spend a few days on his home turf, the working class Blackburn
district, which he represents in Parliament. The tour would include a stop in Liverpool.
Rice, a self-proclaimed Beatles enthusiast, agreed. What could go wrong? As it turned out, everything.
Both Straw and Rice forgot one teeny-tiny fact; the majority
of clear-thinking global citizens loathe BushCo. and the invasion of Iraq.
Ooops.
Now, I’m old enough to remember when Americans were admired,
not disdained. When people looked up to, not down upon, Presidents. Straw? Rice? Even short term memory
seems to elude them.
Putting it mildly, ol’ Condi
attracted protesters and anti-Bush sentiment like an ol’
hound does fleas.
The first stop? The
town of Blackburn, for a visit to a local mosque, a local school, a football game,
an aerospace plant and a meeting with local Muslim leaders. Oh, yeah.
The Blackburn district has England’s
third highest Muslim population.
A “Stop Condi” website was set up to organize the locals.
Not a good start.
Hounded by protesters at the aerospace plant, Rice declared:
“I’ve seen it in every city I’ve visited in the United
States. People have strong views.” (Note:
Which are ignored or stifled back here.)
“People have the right to protest, that’s what democracy is
all about. I would say to those who wish to protest, by all means.” (Note:
except in America.)
Things got better.
First off, the mosque pulled out of the deal, fearing
protests during prayers.
Then, the visit to the football stadium, home of the
Blackburn Rovers, went awry, with the team rescheduling its game. So, instead
of receiving a ceremonial jersey from American Rover goalie Brad Friedel surrounded by a throng of entranced fans…she
received it in an empty stadium, a few local kids kicking a ball around.
So as not to be a total loss, she held a Q&A session
with representatives from England’s
Chatham House, a think tank. That’s when Condi, as well as in a later press
conference, pulled out a fistful of talking points and hurled them around as
though they were ideas.
Among the gems:
“No-one should ever doubt the United
States’ commitment to justice and the rule
of law,” Dr. Rice said without bursting into peals of hysterical laughter.
“We do not tolerate, either at home or abroad, engagement in
acts of torture. (Note: well, maybe one or two acts. But no
more than two. Okay, if you count using snarling dogs. Three. Three tops. Oh, yeah. The waterboarding. Ya got me. Four. Forced masturbation doesn’t count. That can be fun!)
We also have no desire to be the world’s jailer. We want the terrorists that
have been captured to stand trial for their crimes. (Note:
Via illegal military tribunals.) But we also recognize that we are
fighting a cunning enemy and our citizens will judge us harshly if we release a
captured terrorist before we are certain that he does not possess information
that could prevent a further attack or, even worse, commit terrorism again.”
As for the protesters, Dr. Rice echoed George Bush’s
standard response to such heckling. “People have a right to protest,” she said.
“And I am delighted that in more and more of the world these rights to speak
your mind are being extended to other people for whom that right has not been
there.”
Condi, you’re in friggin’ England,
not Lower Slobbovia. Of
course, they have the right to protest, just like the Iraqis do. The ones who aren’t assassinated, that is.
In response to a question about whether the administration
has learned from its ‘’mistakes over the past three years,” she said officials
would be ‘’brain-dead” if they did not recognize when they had erred. (Note: Hmmmm. Somebody tell Bush: “We
have a PR Code Red, here.”)
‘’I know we’ve made tactical errors, thousands of them I’m sure,”
Rice continued. (Note: Nowww, you tell us.) ‘’But
when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right
strategic decisions.” (Answer: No.)
And: “I’m quite certain that there are going to be
dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration, and I will
probably even oversee some of them when I go back to Stanford.” (Note: I’m
seeing a lot of flying “F’s” in her class.)
After Rice finished her “let’s spread democracy” speech,
former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, a
Conservative Party stalwart who served under Margaret Thatcher and who sat on
the panel weighed in.
‘’It is quite possible to believe that” democracy is essential,
Hurd said, but also to ‘’believe that essentially the
path must grow from the roots of its own society and that the killing of
thousands of people, many of them innocent, is unacceptable whether committed
by a domestic tyrant or for a good cause upon being invaded.”
Oy! And he was one of Thatcher’s
guys - and we all remember Maggie as being waaaay
liberal.
A visit to Peckgate
High School was equally zesty.
200 protesters, mostly second and third generation Muslims,
chanted “Condi go home” outside the 1,200-pupil school, as they waited for Rice
to arrive. Many of the students were kept home for the day by protesting
parents. Other students cut classes to join the protest.
Rabiya Adam, a mother of five who
had kept her children at home during the visit, said Dr. Rice “is not welcome”
in their home town. “She was behind all the killings in Iraq.
When I found out she was coming here to speak to our children, I didn’t want
her to preach what she did in Iraq,”
Mrs. Adam said.
“The Muslim population is very angry. She’s not welcome in Blackburn,”
said Suliman, one of the demonstrators outside of the
school.
“How many lives per gallon?” asked one of the placards held
aloft, in reference to the U.S.
invasion of oil-rich Iraq
which many Britons opposed. The chants included: “Hey,
Condi, hey, how many kids did you kill today?” and the classic “Who let the
bombs out?”
Oh, yeah, everyone loves America.
Okay, free-speech loving Condi heads for the school with her
motorcade, two helicopters hovering above. You’d think she’d want to have a
meaningful dialogue with the protesters, right? Think again.
Security personnel instead guided the US
Secretary of State and the Foreign Secretary to a back entrance and escorted
them in without being seen by the protesters. “If she can talk the talk then
she should have walked the walk,” said 16-year-old student Asma
Patel outside the school, disappointed that Rice used the old back door trick.
Inside the school, she told dazed students: “People have a
right to protest… I’m not just going to visit places where people agree with
me.”
Wow. Once you leave D.C.? Are you going to racking up
frequent flier miles, girl.
After the visit, some of the protesters were blocked by the
police when they tried to follow the official motorcade to Rice’s next
destination. Talk about ye’r freedom bein’ on the march!
The town hall meeting with local Muslim leaders was equally
productive, with a couple of hundred protesters blowing whistles, chanting and
getting very pissed off, outside. The din, which could be heard inside, forced
the Muslim mayor to go outside to calm the crowd. Bad move. He was then “booed”
back inside.
And, so it goes.
Abu Musa, a 27-year-old computer
technician and worshipper at the local mosque, said the Muslim leaders holding
talks with Rice inside the civic building did not represent majority opinion.
“Fallujah is the city of mosques
and was decimated by U.S.
soldiers, we could not then allow Rice to visit mosques here, her presence
would have been a desecration,” Musa said. “Young
Muslims protesting are more politically aware than the older generation — who
never want to rock the boat.”
The demonstrators shouted “Shame on you.” A huge orange
banner read: “War on terror, war on Islam.”
“To a certain extent, the protesters make my point, that
democracy is the only system where people’s voices can be heard and heard
peacefully,” Rice said after her meeting. I guess screaming and yelling are
considered peaceful, these days.
But, on to Liverpool! Home of the Beatles. Home of Sir Paul
McCartney’s old high school, which he has transformed into a performing arts
academy. Surely, Sir Paul would be there to great her highness. Uh, no. But there were protesters there.
The Magical Misery Tour was going great guns.
22-year old student Jon Netton
wore a spiffy black t-shirt with a message reading “No Torture, No Compromise.”
The shirt bore a drawing of blood pouring from an open
prison cell door, a reference to the debate in Europe
over U.S.
policies in pursuit and detention of terrorism suspects at Gitmo
and elsewhere.
“We’ve had our lives completely turned upside down by this
woman,” Netton declared, noting that he and other
students were forced out of their classroom that morning so bomb-sniffing dogs
could case the place ahead of Rice’s 20-minute pit-stop.
The protesters carried red balloons, signifying the
bloodshed in Iraq.
Hey, it’s art.
Finally, a respite. A classical concert at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Concert Hall. As 1,500 red-balloon carrying
protesters chanted outside, singer Jennifer John decided to switch her slated
song. She sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” and, then, burst out with an impromptu
rendition of “Give Peace A Chance.”
Later, Ms. John explained: “There was no way I would be
prepared to sing at this event purely for entertainment value. I felt it would
have been immoral for me to not make a stand. After conversations with Simon Glinn (Executive Director of the Philharmonic), we agreed
that the song I could and should sing was ‘Imagine.’
“The opportunity to stand opposite the most powerful black
woman in history, and sing ‘Imagine’ is not something that I could refuse.”
But the impromptu rendition of “Give Peace a Chance,” which
echoed the earlier singing of more than 1,500 protesters who had gathered at
the foot of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral for a rally against Condi’s visit was
a bonus. A freebie! Reportedly, Jack Straw’s face was as red as one of the
peace-activist’s balloons.
Before fleeing England,
Rice was interviewed by the BBC and valiantly tried to get out of her
“thousands of tactical mistakes” gaffe. She said she hadn’t meant that
“literally.”
Then, she and Straw were off to Iraq
where they met with Iraqi Prime Minster Ibrahim al-Jaafari to pressure him to form a new government, pronto. Only problem? Al-Jaafari is under
pressure from both the United States
and a majority of his own Shiite Alliance to step down and get out of Dodge.
He’s vowed to stay. So…no government soon, kids.
And while Rice and Straw were doing the diplomatic fandango,
this past weekend in Iraq?
A U.S. chopper
was shot down, its two crew members killed. Three U.S.
servicemen died. A Shiite mosque was blown up. 42 bodies, handcuffed and shot
in the head, were found in Baghdad.
A Sunni Arab sheik was assassinated.
“We’re going to urge that the negotiations be wrapped up,”
Rice declared, in regards to the bloody disaster called Iraq.
Good luck, kiddo. If British school kids think you’re full
of it, just imagine what Iraqi adults think.
When you can’t get a good photo op in England?
Our biggest ally?
You’re toast.
Burnt to a crisp.
Posted: 4/3/06
Source: mkanejeeves.com
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