Voicing off : An anti-Bush protester screams through a burnt American flag outside the Mall at Buckingham Palace in London to protest US President George W. Bush's four-day state visit to Britain. (AFP/Jim Watson)
Posted on 11/20/2003 3:03:26 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
It's the call every Telegraph columnist has come to fear. "Trefgarne here," said the power-crazed new comment baron, and I sprang to attention. "You've got to write about the anti-Bush marchers," he said. "Get out into the streets and get some colour. There must be thousands of them! Go, paras, go!" Yessir, I said, and ran out into Whitehall. Helicopters whirred above.
Thousands of yellow-jacketed policemen dotted the deserted streets, like dandelions sprouting from concrete. Riot fencing ran in ribbons round Westminster. But where were the rioters?
Don't tell me, I thought, that the polls were right, and the majority of the British public, in its magnificent apathy, rather approves of a visit by the leader of Britain's closest and most important ally.
Could it be that the whole business had been hyped by the anti-war coalition? At last, I saw an obviously counter-cultural figure. She was young, good-looking and enraged. It turned out she was called Zoe, and she was, would you believe it, a reporter from The Daily Telegraph.
"It's incredible," she said. "I can't find any protesters either! There were three up by Trafalgar Square, but they've gone now. There's not even anybody protesting against Bush, and he's speaking now in the Banqueting House."
Don't worry, Zoe, I said. I told her I knew how wretched it was when an editor sends you out on a cold story. I'll give you a quote, I offered.
I'm an MP, you know.
I told her that I thought Bush should, on the whole, be welcomed. America had kept the peace in Europe for the past 50 years, and had fought for freedom everywhere from Guadalcanal to Omaha Beach, not forgetting Bosnia, where western Europeans had apathetically connived in slaughter…
But I noticed a glassy look had come over Zoe, and her pen had ceased to move across the page. OK, I said, let's go and find some protesters. We scoured the streets. Inside the Banqueting Hall, Bush was by all accounts being quite charming. Outside, at last, we found three people carrying a Bush effigy and wearing badges. They were the three that Zoe had already noticed in Trafalgar Square, but never mind. We fell on them, as an Atkins diet victim might fall on a chocolate cake.
Are you protesters? I asked, keen to show Zoe that I had not forgotten the essentials of journalism. "Yes," said their leader, a gingery cove called Ewan McKellar. Fantastic, I said.
Now I have a question for you. Here you are, protesting on the streets of London. The Metropolitan Police is showing you every possible kindness and consideration. The British taxpayer is coughing up a fortune to allow you to vent your spleen against the leader of the free world. Do you not think it paradoxical that, until April this year, the people of Iraq couldn't exercise the very freedom you are now enjoying? Do you not think it ironical that you are now demonstrating against the very man who gave the people of Baghdad that freedom to demonstrate?
Ewan looked at me in puzzlement, but I ploughed on. Do you think it a good or a bad thing that the people of Iraq are now free to demonstrate?
"Yeah, but Bush broke international law!" said Ewan. Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn't, I said. But what about answering the question: is the freedom to demonstrate a good thing or a bad thing?
"Yeah", said Ewan, "but what about Uzbekistan? Don't you know that Bush and Blair are currently supporting Uzbekistan, which is responsible for gross abuses of human rights?" I know, I know, I said. That is reprehensible, and we should do something about Uzbekistan. But just because you can't do everything, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something. And I repeated my question. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that people in Iraq were now free to take to the streets and insult their rulers, just like people in London?
"Well, freedom is a good thing," said Ewan at length. "Yes," agreed May-King Tsang, who was holding the Bush effigy and the badges. "It is good that they are allowed to demonstrate." What do you think? I asked the woman in the middle, a nice person with a French accent who refused to give her name.
Shouldn't we just say thanks to Bush? I looked up to see the Bush mask leering sightlessly down on us. It seemed rude to be talking about him in the third person. Thank you, Dubya! I said, raising my arms in sacerdotal appreciation of the effigy. Thank you for giving the people of Baghdad the first glimmerings of freedom.
Don't you think we should all say a big thank-you to Bush? I asked the woman with the French accent. "No," she said, and no, unlike her colleagues, she did not think it was necessarily a good thing that the Americans had brought this essential democratic freedom - the freedom of assembly - to Iraq. "It is not up to us," she said. "It is not up to us to impose democracy. It is up to them to protest if they want."
Hang on, I said: you mean it was always up to the Iraqi people to take to the streets and protest, even if that meant that they would be inevitably tortured and killed by the Mukhabarat?
"It was nice to meet you, anyway, Boris," said May-King, and we parted in polite and mutual incomprehension. They can't understand how I can fail to grasp the obvious: that Bush is a Texan warmonger, who has made the world more dangerous by his arrogant unilateralism.
I can't understand how they can fail to see that the world was already proved hideously dangerous on 9/11; that inertia was a counsel of cowardice and despair; and that, whatever the faults of his government - from Guantanamo Bay to steel tariffs - Bush has rid the world of a tyrant, who deprived his people of freedoms taken for granted in London.
Voicing off : An anti-Bush protester screams through a burnt American flag outside the Mall at Buckingham Palace in London to protest US President George W. Bush's four-day state visit to Britain. (AFP/Jim Watson)
And we all know how hard the LIBERAL media is working to force that perception.
Have you noticed that no Dem ever criticizes these anti-american protests? Think about it.
The Left is against a strong U.S. and for a strong anti-American front.
That's usually the tight shot.
Three protesters and one of them's French? Have all the other protesters called in sick? Hell the anti-war protests in Washington were far bigger than that.
Maybe the Brits have seen their consulate blown up in Istanbul by Moslem terrorists and thought better of protesting the visit of the only person who is actually doing something about it.
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