Cherie Blair lambasts Bush over human rights
No one likes being tweaked by an outsider. When that outsider happens to be an international human rights lawyer AND the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, well, I suppose you can imagine why the Bushies are seeing red. Of course, not being used to having to listen to a dissenting voice, it’s understandable that the Bushies first reaction is to kill the messenger…figuratively speaking, of course.
Cherie Blair has criticised the policies of the US President George W Bush, attacking his stance on terrorist prisoners and gay rights.
The Prime Minister’s wife was condemned by supporters of the US President, after a speech to Harvard law students which contained a stinging rebuke to Bush, while on a lecture tour of the United States.
She attacked the manner in which the White House has dealt with the human rights of UK citizens detained at the US-run Camp X-Ray prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Blair said the decision by the US Supreme Court, fiercely opposed by Bush’s government, to give legal protection to two of the Britons detained at the camp was “profoundly important” and a “significant victory for human rights and the international rule of law”.
She took a sideswipe at Bush’s record on gay rights, condemning the arrest of a homosexual couple in the President’s home state of Texas, for defying a ban on gay sex. The US Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the law, which had been backed by Bush, was a “model of judicial reasoning”. Blair also called the US legal code an “outdated grandfather clock”.
The controversial speech was seen as flying in the face of long-held tradition that British political figures, and those close to them, do not criticise other countries during foreign visits.
Doing so just days before the US elections makes the intervention all the more embarrassing for Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as Bush.
Never being predisposed to countenance criticism to begin with, the Bush Administration can base their misplaced outrage on the worn-out diplomatic tradition of foreign diplomat or those close to them not voicing their criticisms on foreign turf. It’s an outdated courtesy that plays perfectly in to Bush’s suppression of dissent. Think I’m wrong? I’ve got three teachers in Oregon who can vouch for this. They were expelled from a Bush campaign rally for wearing “Protect our Civil Liberties” t-shirts. How subversive….
Cherie Bush is not a politician, and while diplomatic niceties may be convenient, she is under no obligation to play the game according to diplomatic custom. She can expresses her views honestly, and we should be thankful that she is. This is STILL America, and freedom of speech is still part and parcel of who we are. Let’s enjoy it while we still can.
