- While mulling over the visit of President Bush to Britain,
the image of Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance springs to mind.
In it, the policeman anti-hero stands in the middle of Harlem, clad in
a sandwich board on which is scrawled a racist message.
-
- Once he's spotted, Willis has to leg it fast. And so
will anyone who has the urge to stand up in the middle of London's Trafalgar
Square brandishing a sign saying: "I love Bush" next Thursday.
-
- The columnedSquare - beloved by pigeons and New Year's
revellers- is the place where a 20-foot effigy of the American leader is
destined to be toppled a la Baghdad.
-
- Members of the Stop the War Coalition have been busy
buying up US flags ö along with boxes of matches ö and designing
placards with such catchy phrases as "Blackhawks over there; Chickenhawk
over here".
-
- Disgrace
-
- "It's a disgrace that Tony Blair is once again ignoring
public opinion to entertain his friend at our expense," reads a Stop
the War Coalition leaflet.
-
- Not to be outdone in the creativity stakes, the British
newspapers are vying with each other over inventive headlines. The Mirror
went for simplicity and simply wrote: "Bush off". Some 91 per
cent of Independent readers who answered a poll on its website have decided
that Bush isn't welcome.
-
- A YouGov poll found that 60 per cent of those questioned
went as far as branding the US president a threat to global stability,
while a poll by The Times showed that 59 per cent of its respondents believe
that the standing of the U.S. has fallen since Bush took over the White
House. These come on the heels of a survey, conducted on behalf of the
European Commission, which ranks George W. Bush along with Kim Jong-il
of North Korea as the number two threat to world peace.
-
- Bush, surely, ought to be thinking "with friends
like these·" but instead of sending an official telegram to
No.10 reading, "I'll take a rain check. Air Force One has lost a vital
bolt", the American President is impervious to his critics. Indeed,
he is positively buoyant at the thought of chatting with his buddy Blair,
while Laura enthuses over B&B in Buckingham Palace.
-
- But Bush, who admits he lives in a "Security Bubble",
is cushioned from nasty public opinion. He hardly watches television, unless
there's a game; he detests giving press conferences, and it's doubtful
the Oval Office has a subscription to The Guardian, which has a propensity
to publish simian-like caricature assassinations of the American leader.
-
- On the other hand, his counterpart in Downing Street
must be rueing the moment, shortly after 9-11, when that invitation was
despatched.
-
- More than 100,000 British and European protestors are
expected to clog the streets of the capital during the visit, representing
not only a security nightmare of epic proportions but also a public relations
disaster for the Bush camp, which is approaching an election year.
-
- Bush's co-purveyor of "democracy" has already
been accused of non-democratic practices by trying to shove the demonstrators
into distant corrals where they'll be out of camera sight and monitored
by some 5,000 police and 250 US security agents. Bush won't get to ride
with the Queen in her carriage on this visit and the usual address to a
growingly disgruntled parliament is out.
-
- Bush's bubble will, instead, include a banquet at Buckingham,
a sortie to Sedgefield, the Prime Minister's constituency; and a session
of sympathy with the families of British servicemen, who lost their lives
in Iraq. American victims' nearest and dearestare still awaiting theirs.
-
- Tony Maddison, whose stepson was killed near Basra, told
the "Independent": "I'm beginning to feel Mr. Blair has
been a puppet, so I'm looking forward to meeting Bush, to ask: 'what are
you doing to our Prime Minister? Look what he's doing to our country?'
It seems that 61 per cent of those who took part in an ICM survey agree,
giving Blair the lowest approval rating since he took office six years
ago.
-
- Still, there's always a bright side. Despite the legendary
Anglo-American "special relationship", Britain's Home Secretary
has turned down a US government request that its agents and snipers should
receive diplomatic immunity in case they accidentally shoot an innocent
person.
-
- No Permission
-
- They also didn't get permission to shut down the London
Underground, fly fighter jets and helicopter gun-ships over the capital's
skies or use their deadly misnamed "mini-gun", normally fired
from a tank, to control the crowds.
-
- And what does Bush say about all this? "I'm glad
to be going to a free country where people are allowed to protest ·
I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be a fantastic experience."
Not so much fantastic as phantasmal. Watch out for fixed smiles and tight
close-ups from Fox News.
-
- Eat your heart out Hollywood. This is destined to be
an Oscar-winning performance by all concerned. I, for one, can't wait.
-
- http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/opinion.asp?ArticleID=103198
|
