Iraq war isolating the U.S./ killing the American-British relationship

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-ferguson10oct10.story
The Breakup
The Iraq war is isolating the U.S. and killing the American-British 'special relationship'
By Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford. His latest book is "Colossus: The Price of America's Empire."

October 10, 2004

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. <snip>As dramatized by the British playwright David Hare in "Stuff Happens," Bush and Blair are players in a Shakespearean tragedy. Somewhat unexpectedly, Bush turns out to be the devious Iago to Blair's naive Othello. The victim is not a woman, however. The victim is Britain — lured into a war that a large majority of British voters now regard as unjust and unnecessary.

The question is worth pondering: What exactly has Britain gained — besides applause in Washington and opprobrium everywhere else — from Blair's uncritical support of the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policy? <snip>

This is just one aspect of a fundamental divergence in popular culture that increasingly makes the special relationship. Perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly how European the British are becoming than their attitudes to U.S. politics. Asked in a recent poll to choose between the two candidates for the presidency, 47% favored Kerry, compared with 16% for Bush — at a time when the president was between 5 and 10 percentage points ahead in U.S. polls. On the legitimacy of the Iraq war, too, the British public is now closer to Continental opinion than to American. <snip>

If the special relationship were a transatlantic flight, the Americans would be in the cockpit. The British would be the sleeping passengers. Sooner or later — even if Kerry makes it to the White House — British foreign policy is going to wake up.