Delusions

In the grand Stratego game unfolding in the Middle East (and killing off hundreds of innocent people, displacing half a million innocents who've lost everything they had to define their lives, but let's not tarry on inconsequential collateral damages, our air strikes have a perfect surgical precision), I have found myself wondering what the heck Tony Blair was doing.

For a very long time, I've found myself wondering just where the UK was going, and how its governement could believe the path it had chosen would be beneficial. When I saw Tony Blair rallying W's insane cause and speech of "Crusades" and "Changing the Middle-East" through the folly that led the US in Irak, I just went, "duh, has Blair taken leave of his senses?"

Well, he has not--or not in the sense I first thought.

Reading today's edition of the Guardian, I have found a few scraps that may be the start of an explanation to Tony Blair's apparently crazy choices and decisions. Why did Tony Blair play along with the brutish, coarse and beyond stupid, primitive rethoric of Georges W Bush? Why did he play along with "Crusades" and "Bring Them On" (W has since then been on the receiving end of his "bring them on", not that he'll ever admit as much)? Why is Blair allowing himself to be seen as the US's dog? Why does he let W talk to him as one would a pal during a student party? Why does he bow at anything W says and play good and obedient "aye aye sir" underling?

Well, it would appear Tony Blair believes he can accomplish something by being on the good side of W. It would appear our dear Tony believes he has a mission to accomplish, and that in order to reach the higher goal, he needs to kind of sacrifice his image by doing a bit of "W boot licking".

There is something that is almost coherent in that line of thinking. It's true that you need to US if you're going to do any good in the Middle-East. You need its military power (although how much of it is left now that they're firmly trapped in Irak and not anywhere near winning free of that swamp?), you need its influence on some Arab countries, and first and ofremost on Israel (if one can conceive that the US will ever go against Israel's will, that is yet to be proven possible). It may also be true that in order to make friends with the US, while it's being led by the likes of W and his goons, Cheney and Rumsfeld overshadowing his every action, you need to play dog and win that friendship through displays of blind, mindless loyalty and all that jazz.

Still, when I contemplate plans like that, when I contemplate Tony Blair playing along with primitive speeches and black and white views of the world, I can't help but ask: Mr Blair, are you simple-minded, naive or blinded by your sense of being burdened by a mission only you can achieve?

You can play W's game all you want, you won't make him change his mind. You won't bring him to your line of thinking. You won't make him see the other side of the coin. W's game is a game of alpha males locked in a sandbox and battling it out. In this game, brains and strategy, intelligence matter almost not at all. You allow yourself to be used, you allow the UK's image in the Arab World (and elsewhere) to be diminished and tainted. But you will get nothing in return.

Trying to counter that by naive displays of your opposition to W in domains like stem cell research that, in the grand scheme of things in the Middle East have zero importance, is nice and all, but will produce no result--or it might, but the opposite of what is desired. Instead of portraying Blair as a courageous opponent to what is nothing more than the obsucrantist policy of a man who's the puppet of raving religious fanatics (yes, I do believe that the Bible Belt people in the US are as dangerous, if not more, than the Islam fundamentalists), this kind of action simply leave off the sensation of a pathetic attempt at showing one's independance from W.

All in all, I always come back to the same conclusion: people who have "missions" are dangerous people. People with missions quickly become blind to anything other than what they perceive to be the one and only path they can walk. People with missions are easily manipulated, and lured the way one wants.

Delusions--it's the worst flaw in people with missions.

And it's a fatal one.

The only way out is to take off one's blindfold and to stop this blind forward race. to accept the possibility of being mistaken, of failure, and to stop. To stop and get a good look around, and change things while there is still time. But doing this takes courage, a lot of it. And Mr Blair doesn't look like he's ready for a much needed bit of soul searching and truth confronting.

In the meantime, Israeli bombs kill hundreds of innocents. Disturbing wounds and burns seem to indicate the possibility of use by Israel of Phosphoric bombs and maybe even chemical weapons. The Hezbollah sends missiles on Israeli cities and kills innocent Israeli civilians. And chaos--grows.

Entropy thrives.

Sometimes I wonder, are human mistakes and blindness just another expression of the second law of Thermodynamics?