Blair's "Iron Curtain" Speech: An Arc of Extremism...

For Prime Minister Tony Blair, it’s about a year before he gives up the office. So thinking Big Picture, he delivered an important speech in Los Angeles last week that has apparently resounded with the sound of one hand clapping. Hardly what Blair would have wished for. The PM spoke in language that recalled a speech given 60 years ago by Winston Churchill, a year after Churchill was forced out as prime minister. Blair followed Churchill’s pattern of seeking to influence America by delivering his speech here.

Here’s what Blair said in 2006:

There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region.

And here’s Churchill in 1946:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent.

Churchill spoke in Fulton, Missouri because his specific target was President Truman, from Missouri.

Blair spoke in Los Angeles because he wanted to elicit support from Jewish Americans, so powerful in the LA-based entertainment industry.

Other quotes from Blair’s address:

[W]e must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us.

To defeat [extremism] will need an alliance of moderation that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other.

[W]e will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.

What are the values that govern the future of the world? Are they those of tolerance, freedom, respect for difference and diversity or those of reaction, division and hatred?

Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.

For them, what is vital is that the struggle is defined in their terms: Islam versus the West; that instead of Muslims seeing this as about democracy versus dictatorship, they see only the bombs and the brutality of war, and sent from Israel.

[S]o much of Western opinion appears to buy the idea that the emergence of this global terrorism is somehow our fault. . [It is] rubbish to suggest that it is the product of poverty. It is true it will use the cause of poverty. But its fanatics are hardly the champions of economic development. It is based on religious extremism. . . a specifically Muslim version.

Why are we not yet succeeding? Because we are not being bold enough, consistent enough, thorough enough, in fighting for the values we believe in.

First, naturally, we should support, nurture, build strong alliances with all those in the Middle East who are on the modernising path.

Secondly, we need. . .to re-energise the [peace process] between Israel and Palestine; and we need to do it in a dramatic and profound manner.

Third, we need to see Iraq through its crisis and out to the place its people want: a non-sectarian, democratic state.

Though Left and Right still matter in politics, the increasing divide today is between open and closed. Without hesitation, I am on the open side of the argument.