Britain

Britain faced incredible hurdles in garnering any public support for an invasion of Iraq. Quite simply, the British people did not want it. They didn't want it so much that Blair's government (very clumsily) had to create an entire dossier of false evidence compelling enough to create even a minimal semblance of support. While support for the war reached a peak just as President Bush was declaring that the war was over (May of 2003), British support for the war in Iraq has never been much higher than 50%.

After yesterday's bombing in London that killed at least 50 people, we've been reading an awful lot of "stiff upper lip" rhetoric. "London's been bombed before, and the indomitable British spirit has always pulled them through..." "Britain knows terrorism, and has fought it with toughness and determination..." "They can bomb London, but they can't kill our spirit..." That sort of thing. All well and good, by the way, and the British people have all my sympathy at this moment of national tragedy and national mourning. And, frankly, I know that nothing can kill the indomitable British spirit, any more than anything can kill the indomitable American spirit, or, for that matter, the indomitable human spirit.

A lot of this rhetoric is hard-blown hot air and obfuscation. Defending the "British way of life" is certainly a commendable thing, and it always was. When defending the "British way of life" means slaughtering Irishmen rising up from centuries of oppression, without concern for "collateral damage" to innocent--because no Irishman was truly innocent--people, the whole piece of rhetoric can finally seen as shallow at best and, more likely, entirely false. If what is going on in the world is something other than "defending the British way of life" or "defending freedom" or spreading democracy" or "a war between good and evil," people will know.

The right is calling for tougher measures to "fight terror." Britain's history of fighting the IRA demonstrates that tougher measures are no guarantee of success. In fact, tougher measures usually succeed only in dragging a society of laws down to the level of terrorists. Frankly, the British people got tired of this; it was to Tony Blair's credit (with the help and support of Bill Clinton) that he saw this and negotiated a framework for a devolved, power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

The British people did not and do not support the war in Iraq. It took lies, both in Britain and in the US (and of course, in the UN) to get the British and American people to support this invasion and occupation. To this day, little--if ANYTHING--has been mentioned in the US mainstream media about the fact that the Project for a New American Century had been calling for an unprovoked first strike against Iraq for the purposes of regime change since the mid-1990s. As recently as two weeks ago, President Bush repeated the lies that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks on the US. On FOX, Sean Hannity still insists that Iraq has WMDs.

But the people aren't buying it anymore. And that means both the American people and the British people.