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U.S.
NEOCONS SWIFT-BOAT LORD MALLOCH-BROWN by IAN WILLIAMS:
15/11/2007 (MaximsNews Network)
UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network /
- 15 November 2007 -- If
Gordon Brown wants to reassure British voters, and the world, that there is
distance between himself and the pathological ideologues in Washington who
dragged his predecessor down, he should stomp on any of his officials who are
party to the
smear campaign against Foreign Office minister Mark Malloch Brown, one of
his more inspired appointments.
While at
the United Nations, Malloch Brown provoked John Bolton, the US ambassador, into
paroxysms of thin-skinned rage, by suggested that the Iraq war was a disaster
and that the US had lost popularity.
In a
similar vein, when the swift-boating
of Kofi Annan was under way, he mounted a vigorous defence of the UN against the
neocon smear campaign initiated by Ahmed Chalabi when the UN refused to endorse
his carpet-bagging rise to power in Baghdad.
It is
worth noting that far from being the epitome of anti-Americanism, he had earlier
been attacked by third-worlders for being too accommodating to the Americans and
too nice to the Israelis.
But
then, so had Annan. But once he suggested that the war on Iraq was illegal and
that the full scale assault on Fallujah was a mistake, that was it. For the
American right, you are with them all the way or you are an enemy.
In the
US, swift-boating is now a regular tactic emanating from the network of
foundations and thinktanks endowed by deeply conservative family trusts, and
they have been guaranteed amplification in the Rupert Murdoch media.
The
tactic is to invent a scandal against a liberal hate figure and run it round
around until people think that with so much smoke there must be fire.
This
swift boat raid against Malloch Brown began when the Spectator
carried a cover article attacking him by Claudia Rosett, an employee of the Foundation
for the Defence of Democracies, a neocon thinktank which is financed by an
assortment of palaoeconservative family foundations.
It is
not too surprising that the attack was amplified by the Murdoch press and Labour
Friends of Israel.
The
substance of the accusation should be a source of pride for Labour: Bush's lame
duck administration does not like Malloch Brown.
With
Democratic majorities in Congress likely to increase at the next election, and a
likely Democratic victory in the White House riding on a tide of anti-Iraq war
sentiment, that surely makes him an asset. Unless, of course, your idea of being
pro-American is being pro-Bush 43.
But
since the advance
guard of the swift-boat armada has landed on British beaches, it is worth
checking the provenance of Rosett and the FDD. Her obsession with the UN almost
makes one wonder if a blue-helmeted peacekeeper jumped out of the woodshed and
frightened her when she was younger.
But
above all, try to imagine a journalist employed by a neocon thinktank writing
anything positive at all about the United Nations!
Certainly
one would have a long and fruitless search for any articles from the FDD or
Rosett on the one
definite oil-for-food scandal, which is the over $10bn of the UN programme's
surplus handed over to the American occupation forces for the development of
Iraq, which has yet to be accounted for.
Much of
it ended up paying for the no-bid contracts of the company that the
vice-president of the US formerly headed - but the stunning sound of silence
from Rosett and her neocon comrades implies that a scandal is not a scandal
unless you can tie it, no matter how exiguously, to a liberal or a UN official.
Rosett
can draw a salary paid for by the endowments of some of most reactionary people
on the planet, such as the Scaife
foundations, but that is not a scandal, while the idea that Mark Malloch
Brown, after working for many years abroad, is housed by HMG is insupportable -
or that he paid rent to George Soros.
One has
to remember that for American conservatives, association with the UN or Soros is
ipso facto criminal or unethical behaviour.
The
well-financed FDD is the Project for the New American Century
- a major cheerleader for the Iraq war - in another form. As its own website
boasts, it is closely connected with the Iraqis around the Iraqi National
Congress and Chalabi.
Its
board included Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich and
James Woolsey, not to mention Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and, until her
death, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick opposed US support for Britain in the
Falklands war, but the Thatcherites at the Spectator seem more forgiving than
their transatlantic peers.
Gordon,
meet Brown. Shake hands in public and put down the slimers.
IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com
Labels: United
Nations, U.N., Lord
Malloch-Brown, Neocons,
Swift-boating,
Ian Williams
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