Rule Britannia

Everyone knows that the United Kingdom's best and brightest hate the idiot chimp AWOL corporate tool President-select (Hail to the thief!!!!!) Bush, right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

The people over at the The Guardian usually don't produce much of note. (Buggers had the temerity to slam the character of Jean Grey in X-Men 2, don't you know.) However, as President Bush was winging his way across the Atlantic (should've been steaming into Southampton or Liverpool on SS United States) the Guardian up and published letters to the President from Britons.

Some of them are the usual tripe from people who need to be given close-range exposure to a Clue-by-Four. See Harold "I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments" Pinter.

Another couple of them are from noteworthy Britons, and they're excerpted here:

It is regrettable that Tony Blair misled you into thinking that he could deliver Mr Schröder, Mr Chirac and Mr Putin to vote for a UN resolution. The PM does, I am afraid, have delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately, the doomed strategy of making weapons of mass destruction the cause of war has discredited the war in the UK. You did better to say frankly that you wanted to remove the Saddam regime which so brutalised its people and destabilised the region.

-Michael Portillo, Conservative MP

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

. . . .

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan.

-Frederick Forsyth, author

But when the chips are really down, Britain is as always a firm ally, standing alongside the United States in the cause of making the world a safer place. That is what we have done for well over half a century and what we shall continue to do, whatever the chants of the demonstrators. It's called the special relationship.

-Charles Powell, member, House of Lords and foreign affairs advisor to Margaret Thatcher & John Major

Europe is bent on constructing in the EU a new nation on the old European pattern: flag-waving, glory-seeking, protectionist, exclusive of other races and creeds and full of touchy amour-propre, to say nothing of naked resentment of the US. This is a world that needs, just as much as it did in 1945, the unique American ability to be at once strong and principled in its global leadership.

Please pledge, Mr President, that under your leadership that proud tradition will be maintained and that the US will never, whatever the provocations from Europe or elsewhere, slip back into the bad old pre-1945 vices of nationalism, unilateralism, autarky and the laws of the jungle.

-Peter Jay, former ambassador to Washington

And a personal favorite:

Are you getting out enough? The world is divided into two groups of people and here I draw no political or social distinctions. I am, of course, referring to those that run and those that do not. When you kindly granted me an interview last year, your first question to me was "Are you still getting out?" I remember the look of puzzlement that settled upon the faces of your inner circle. "Yes, Mr President," I replied, "and I hope you are too." More puzzlement. In fact, I am sure they felt that they were being deliberately excluded from the conversation in some Masonic-type code.

Maintaining your daily running diet will keep your head clear and your mind focused, and will remind you constantly that, as a runner, you have the advantage over others, knowing that the road is often undulating and the gradient and surface uncertain. You will also know, as any runner does, that the session has to be completed and, unlike the bluffers who make up the ranks of the political intelligentsia, you do something on a daily basis that is objectively measured. Good luck and, as they would say in the north of England, "Get the miles in."

-Sebastian Coe, Conservative MP and former world-class miler

Go figure. Some of the responses I've been reading around the world of blogging indicate that the British are actually in favor of the President and aren't a bunch of slobbering toadies to totalitarianism, but one can never be sure with polls. After all, before them come lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Glenn Reynolds.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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