Comments:Wikinews interviews: Tony Benn on U.K. politics

Benn Needs a Longer Eye
Mr. Benn's opinions are very interesting, especially in the light of the liberal pattern of government under Neville Chamberlain in the late 1930's. This was the last time that Britain was faced with the immediate issue of confronting totalitarian foreign governments. Britain sought solace in negotiations with the 3rd Reich, sharing the platitudes of the League of Nations.

President Bush sees the confrontation with Fascist Islamics as an opportunity to prevent the evolution of a group of nations being controlled by totalitarian Islamists. In this he has been successful, and Tony Blair believed in the mission, however much the British electorate failed to see how very high the stakes are. Gordon Brown represents a short term placation of the need for Britons to feel secure in their own nation, but in the long term, such security will devolve, as it did in the era of Chamberlain. Would that another Churchill come forth to harken the British public, when Islamic Fascism begins to exercise itself on the British domestic scene and in greater Europe, especially the Balkans. Should Syria and Iran gain entry to the Mediterranean through a conquered Lebanon,that evolution will only have just begun, as Israel will be forced to fight for its very life.

The USA will work against that possibility by winning Iraq, and will bring Iraq into the modern world as a bulwark against the formation of an Islamic Fascist Axis of nations,which in turn would otherwise control the world's oil supply, and terrorize the Middle East with nuclear blackmail.

If Gordon Brown cannot inform the British public of this truth, nor see himself how such a possibility would already have occurred without US and British intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the future itself will be left to convince them. Mr. Brown does not have the power to redefine such reality over the long term, no matter how good his relationship with the press and the British public might be.
 * I think you're deluding yourself if you actually believe the Americans can win in Iraq. The country has been turned into a magnet for every Jihadist who wants to kill an American. As Benn says, without UK support this would have been condemned as another Vietnam. Where you are right is that rational discourse will not work - as it did not work with Hitler.
 * Draw hope from the fact that the world's fastest growing religion isn't Islam, it is Buddhism. They have a record of getting on well with people - except the Chinese. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Bush, subject to interpretation, 'bilaterally' crashes the party of the "axis of evil", Iraq, Iran and N Korea. It has always been known in my experience that party crashers have a history of hanging out too long. -Edbrown05 09:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Party crashers, after the drama is over, get dumped. -Edbrown05 09:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Afghan-Pakistan border region? Who's party is that? -Edbrown05 09:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, bin Laden is uncaptured, hang out? Don't think so, we missed him. Maybe next time, while tax dollars keep dialing up. -Edbrown05 10:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)