Oh, by the way, meant to mention, forgot to tell you, we were all chuffed to our bollocks when Labour won the election.

Guardian, February 17, 1998

House of Commons Speech

HOUSE OF COMMONS SPEECH

There’s an old story about Oliver Cromwell. After he had taken the town of Drogheda, the citizens were brought to the main square. Cromwell announced to his lieutenants, “Right! Kill all the women and rape all the men.” One of his aides said, “Excuse me, General. Isn’t it the other way around?” A voice from the crowd called out, “Mr. Cromwell knows what he’s doing!” That voice is the voice of Tony Blair. “Mr. Bush knows what he’s doing!”

But the fact is that Mr. Bush and his gang do know what they’re doing and Blair, unless he really is the deluded idiot he often appears to be, also knows what they’re doing. They are determined, quite simply, to control the world and the world’s resources. And they don’t give a damn how many people they murder on the way. And Blair goes along with it.

He hasn’t the support of the Labour Party, he hasn’t the support of the country or of the celebrated “international community.” How can he justify taking this country into a war nobody wants? He can’t. He can only resort to rhetoric, cliché, and propaganda. Little did we think when we voted Blair into power that we would come to despise him. The idea that he has influence over Bush is laughable. His supine acceptance of American bullying is pathetic.

Bullying is of course a time-honored American tradition. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson said to the Greek Ambassador to the United States, “Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fellows continue itching the elephant they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good.”

He meant what he said. Shortly afterward the Colonels, supported by the United States, took over, and the Greek people spent seven years in hell.

As for the American elephant, it has grown to be a monster of grotesque and obscene proportions.

The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom has, in the last twelve years, brought about the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Serbia. All this in pursuit of the American and British “moral crusade” to bring “peace and stability to the world.”

The use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War has been particularly effective. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths, or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood.