The Hindu Business Line : Bush-Blair bombast

THE utterances of the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the US President, Mr George Bush, ever since the storm over fabricated intelligence broke over their heads, have been revoltingly shrill and brazen, bringing back memories of the vitriolic propaganda blitz of Hitler and Goebbels against countries targeted for invasion and annexation by Germany.

Just as any excuse was good enough for the Nazi aggressors to annihilate those they did not like, the Bush-Blair duo also are determined to defiantly stick to their pernicious "regime change" and "pre-emptive strike" prescriptions. The kind of words they use to attack countries and leaders they are allergic to have not been heard in the past 100 years; they have a racist and imperialist tinge, and violate every norm of diplomatic discourse.

Mr Blair's address to the joint session of the US Congress and the inflammatory statements indulged in by him and Mr Bush during the subsequent media conference are only the latest in a series of unbecoming acts which seem to assume that the entire world is composed of morons who are incapable of independent thinking.

The bogus nature of their accusations about its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and buying uranium from Niger in Africa for building its nuclear arsenal has long been exposed, and Mr Bush and Mr Blair have lost credibility at the bar of public and parliamentary opinion.

While Mr Bush and his neocons have the temerity to assert that Saddam Hussein did have WMD which would one day be found and that the bit of intelligence about purchase of uranium from Niger which he put in his State of the Union message had solid basis, Mr Blair goes several steps further and declares that the elimination of Saddam is in itself something that amply justified the war and "history will forgive" the mendacious claims about WMD and uranium.

Apparently both leaders, as was said of the Bourbons of France, have learnt nothing and unlearnt nothing from the trauma they have put Iraq and the world through and from the demands for inquiry and impeachment they are facing from their legislatures.

Quite unfazed, they have begun hurling threats at Iran, Syria, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and God knows what other country next on their list marked for execution for not toeing their line. Unless they are stopped in their tracks, they would soon wreak more destruction by their megalomaniacal recklessness, setting at naught efforts at building up a harmonious, equitable world order.

It is time a special session of the UN was convened to take note of the disastrous manifestations of unipolarity and devise modalities of countering them.

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