After hearing a clip from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's remarks Wednesday in Portugal on the BBC, I looked up the speech on Blair's official Web site. Reading it provided a stark example of what is for me the biggest difference between Tony Blair and George W. Bush: Tony Blair disagrees with my position on the war in Iraq.
Blair arrived in Portugal after attending a memorial in Madrid for those who died in the March 11 bombings there. Here is the key section of his remarks:
Let me repeat again my profound condolences to the Spanish people over their loss. The grief, felt and shared round the whole of Europe and the world, at this atrocity has been intense.
Everyone everywhere condemns without reservation the act of terrorism. However, outside of the shared grief, has been another debate.
Some, like myself, believe that the war in Iraq is all part of the same global threat to our security which we face. Others believe, with equal passion, that the war was an unjustified provocation of the Muslim world or at least a diversion from the true war against terrorism.
This is a disagreement we cannot at present resolve. Perhaps we never can but my plea tonight, here in Portugal, whose Prime Minister with great courage supported our action in Iraq but whose people like the British people were sorely divided over it, is that for now we surmount this division and seek common ground. It would indeed be a ghastly victory for the evil people who committed the carnage of the innocent in Madrid, if in addition to the destruction and death they also caused us to turn in recrimination on each other.
Here Blair demonstrates that he is able to do what George W. Bush is incapable of, and unwilling to consider. Blair accurately and respectfully states the position of those who disagree with him:
Others believe, with equal passion, that the war was an unjustified provocation of the Muslim world or at least a diversion from the true war against terrorism.
That is not a straw man. Blair does not twist the words or the position of those who disagree with him. He does not accuse them of "appeasement" or of being unpatriotic or weak or "soft on terrorism." He does not employ sleazy, dishonest tactics — "some would say the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein still in power …" — to distort others' beliefs. Nor does he question their conviction and the integrity of that conviction.
George W. Bush would never make such a statement. He has never listened to those who disagree with him with enough care or attention to understand their position. He has never entertained the notion that those who disagree with him may do so with integrity, conviction and, yes, patriotic motive.
For all his talk about being "a uniter, not a divider," Bush's inability to make the kind of statement Blair makes here —
Others believe, with equal passion, that the war was an unjustified provocation of the Muslim world or at least a diversion from the true war against terrorism.
— also means that he is not able to make the plea for unity that Blair makes, the plea to "surmount this division and seek common ground" and not "to turn in recrimination on each other."
Turning in recrimination on those who disagree with him is what George W. Bush is all about. Witness the all-out assault on the character, intellect and sanity of Richard Clarke (all while refusing to acknowledge or engage the substance of Clarke's critique). NBC News has reported that this attack on Clarke was directly ordered by the president:
A senior White House aide told NBC News on condition of anonymity this week that Bush personally ordered his aides to launch a heavy public counteroffensive against what he saw as a political assault.
If all of one's actions are motivated by reasons of pure political ambition, then one will perceive everyone else's actions as arising from the same motivations. Bush is not able to view Clarke's comments as anything other than "a political assault."
As I said, Tony Blair disagrees with the position I take on the invasion of Iraq. And — like Clarke and Jeffrey Record of the U.S. Army War College — I disagree with Blair's position "that the war in Iraq is all part of the same global threat to our security which we face." (I opposed the invasion for reasons other than this as well, but this is an important point of contention.)
The point here is that it is possible, in John Courtney Murray's phrase, to "achieve disagreement" with Tony Blair. It is not possible to achieve disagreement with George W. Bush because Bush will not accept the legitimacy of any disagreement. He offers instead only rancor, distortions of his critics' views, and recrimination.
Tony Blair is interested in common ground. George W. Bush is only interested in scorched earth.
UPDATE: In comments below, Josh provides about the closest parallel from Bush to Blair's statement. It's a wonderful example of the kind of I'm-right-you're-evil innuendo that has become Bush's stock in trade. Where Blair praises the conviction and acknowledges the integrity of those who disagree with him, here's what you get from Bush:
I hope they care deeply about the fact that when we find suffering and torture and mass graves, we weep for the citizens that are being brutalized by tyrants. …
I obviously felt like September the 11th changed the equation to the point where we needed to deal with emerging threats and deal with them in a way that would make America more secure. And they didn't see that …
I would hope you understand that I have learned the lessons of September the 11th, 2001, and that terrorists declared war on the United States of America, and war on people who love freedom … I have an obligation as the President to keep our country secure.
Yes, George W. Bush can be very cordial as he explains that he isn't sure that people who disagree with him care about "suffering and torture and mass graves." As he explains that they are blind to the lessons of Sept. 11. As they demonstrate an insufficient love for freedom and undermine efforts to keep the country secure. But he respects their freedom to be cowardly, apathetic, callous appeasers of the enemies of freedom. And he's such a magnanimous guy, he doesn't even hate them for it.
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