Samizdata

I do not read Andrew Sullivan’s blog very often but when I saw the Michael Totten (who is someone I do rate rather highly) was guest-blogging there, I took a peek and saw an article Sullivan wrote a few days ago about the plot to blow up aircraft heading from the UK to the US, which quickly reminded me why I rarely visit.

I wonder if Lieberman’s defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn’t find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Riiiight. It is totally sound policy to distrust what the authorities tell us and instead just look for the evidence as we have been lied to again and again, and until I hit the paragraph I quoted above, I was mostly in agreement with what was being written. Lord knows there are more than ample reasons to give the Bush administration a sound and repeated kicking and I am the last person to urge people to trust governments, but concocting weird conspiracy theories is a clear sign that the point of rational criticism has been past and we are entering Bush Derangement Syndrome territory.

Both Bush and Blair will not hesitate to use any plot by Al-Qaeda, even those of the more common Keystone Cops Terrorists variety, to abridge yet more of our civil liberties without in fact improving our security one iota. But the notion that the timing of such tactical moves by the police are being micro-managed by Blair, let alone Bush, for maximum PR value is stretching things, particularly given that the PR effect of such a bust is extremely uncertain given the recent propensity of London’s Metropolitan Police for arresting, not to mention shooting, the wrong people.

Moreover, the fiasco in Lebanon was an entirely domestic Israeli cock-up caused by the most idiotic leadership in the Jewish state’s history, so other than the ravings of the perpetually BDS infected Kos/Democratic Underground crowd (who are frankly an irrelevant lunatic fringe in any PR calculations likely to be made in either the White House or Downing Street), it is difficult to see why a military and political screw-up by Israel would have Bush or Blair desperately looking to finesse a diversion of attention away from the violence in Israel and Lebanon. It was really not their problem in any major way and it had largly pushed Iraq off the front pages of the world, which was unlikely to be causing many sleepless night in Downing Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. And I really, really doubt Tony Blair is more than dimly aware of who the hell Joe Lieberman is given that he is hardly a household name outside the USA. Methinks the idea such issues were driving the Metropolitan Police’s actions is frankly bonkers.

Still, I will probably be reading far more of Andrew Sullivan’s blog in the days to come now that someone else is actually writing for it.