Ayoon Wa Azan (British neoconservatives)

The British government is pursuing a policy that is not much different from the policies of the US neocons, even if the government denies this. Prime Minister David Cameron is an extension of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who alongside George W. Bush waged a war on Iraq based on falsified premises. That war ended up killing one million Arabs and Muslims. The epitome of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim neocons in the British government is the Foreign Secretary William Hague. I previously criticized Hague when he would remind us time after time of former Israeli captive Gilad Shalit’s birthday or the anniversary of his kidnapping, while ignoring ten thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israel, who include women and children. Hague’s office protested my position, but I rejected it and insisted on my opinion. Of course, I belong to the other side, and my opinion is expected and easy to attack. So today, I will choose a view from the British media, specifically the rightwing The Daily Mail, which usually supports the Conservative Party, and is the favorite newspaper of the family. Author and historian Dominic Sandbrook, in a full page about Hague’s mistakes, begins by addressing the atrocities of the civil war in Syria, from the claims about chemical weapons having been used, to the militant who extracted the heart of a soldier from his chest and ate it. He sees more reasons to be concerned, and wrote that after weeks of sustained pressure by Hague, the European Union lifted the ban on arming the Syrian opposition. Sandbrook wrote that as soon as the ban was lifted, Russia announced it was sending S-300 missiles to Syria, which are able to hit targets beyond Syria’s territory, in Lebanon and Israel (Russia will also sell Syria ten MiGs). The writer says that he does not understand what Hague is trying to achieve in Syria, adding that he neither supports Bashar al-Assad’s corrupt and brutal regime, nor the bloodthirsty tactics of the rebels, and their links to Islamic extremists. The above is also my view, as I have recorded it here, in this column. What I want to add is that William Hague is the last of the neocons still in a prominent political post. Hague had also supported the war on Iraq with enthusiasm, and supported the NATO intervention in Libya which left the country with dozens of militias, and perhaps a million militants, and now exports terror and weapons to Algeria, Mali and the Sinai. I turn to David Cameron, who is just another version of Tony Blair. If he were prime minister after 11/9/2001, he would have no doubt supported the war on Iraq. Today, I read in the British press that the report of Sir John Chilcot about Britain's role in the war on Iraq was supposed to be completed in a year and a half, according to Chilcot himself in early 2010. Yet the report keeps being postponed, and I read that it may not be completed before the end of next year. Worse than this is what former Foreign Secretary David Owen disclosed during a cultural festival. Owen said that Cameron was trying to block the publication of documents that expose the role of the Blair government in the war, in return for Blair’s neutrality during the upcoming parliamentary elections. I consider Blair a war criminal and I demand his trial. Blair had the gall to write an article in The Daily Mail this week, in which he claimed that there is a problem within Islam, and in which he deemed the murder of the soldier Lee Rigby to be more than just individual terrorism. The murder of the soldier is heinous, and was perpetrated by two terrorists of the most despicable kind. But if the problem is bigger than them, then the question should be about the role of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in feeding extremism by conspiring against Iraq. To be sure, the US president accepted deliberately falsified evidence for the war and Blair went along with it even before he saw it. And now, Cameron is reportedly seeking to prevent the evidence condemning the war criminals from being publicized, becoming himself an accomplice in the crime without a convincing reason. For one thing, Cameron was never part of the war cabal, and does not need to cover up Blair’s role. There is sufficient evidence to send Bush and Blair to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, but Barack Obama chose to look “forward,” and left the American war criminals to roam free. Meanwhile, Cameron is being accused of attempting to cover up the facts that are supposed to be part of an independent inquiry, which seems to continue on and on with no end in sight. The number of the victims in Iraq who perished directly and indirectly because of the war has reached one million. In Syria, around one hundred thousand people have died, while the British government, through its foreign policy represented by the neocon William Hague, wanted to arm the opposition from day one without knowing what the opposition is or what it wants. Indeed, there are hundreds of armed groups operating in Syria, representing the honest patriots, all the way to fundamentalist terrorists. I cannot judge anyone, but I say for myself that ever since I took the British citizenship, I have voted for the Conservative candidate for Parliament where I live in London. Next time I will not vote, and this is the biggest form of protest I am able to muster. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.