Un Swissroll

Les conférences de presse auxquelles se soumet Tony Blair, c’est autre chose que ce que connaît Chirac, ou même Bush, sur la forme comme sur le fond! On y voit la presse dans ce qu’elle a de pire (l’instinct de meute) et de meilleur (la persévérence). Le goût très britannique pour la confrontation, sur laquelle repose l’essentiel de l’apprentissage politique, en ressort très bien (par comparaison, je dirais qu’en Suisse c’est plutôt l’aptitude à  proposer une solution qui est privilégiée, ce qui donne évidemment de moins bons spectacles — quant à  savoir si les solutions soient meilleures ou moins bonnes…). C’est un exercice mensuel, dûment agendé et télévisé, instauré par Blair en 2002 en réponse aux critiques sur la forme toujours plus présidentialiste que prend le gouvernement britannique et, en conséquence, la nécessité de compléter par d’autres formes le contrôle parlementaire traditionnel (lui aussi extrêmement éprouvant, avec la partie de catch oratoire de PM Questions le mercredi en début d’après-midi). Je ne sais si les successeurs s’y plieront également, et en même temps je ne vois guère comment ils pourraient y échapper.

Celle d’hier semble avoir été un sommet du genre, à  lire Harry’s Place (déjà  ici) ou Norman Geras (qui incitent à  lire la transcription complète et regarder un extrait vidéo). Et je partage d’autant plus leur avis que j’ai pour ma part entendu, ce mercredi, un brave Genevois expliquer que la multiplication des attentats est évidemment due à  l’intervention en Irak, et qu’il est faux de dire que les terroristes en veulent à  notre mode de vie: ils veulent seulement que les gouvernements occidentaux changent de politique à  l’égard du Proche-Orient. Les circonstances faisaient que je ne pouvais lui demander s’il fallait en conséquence abandonner les militants de la démocratie dans les pays arabes à  leur triste sort, voire se réjouir d’une disparition d’Israël pour mettre fin au problème. Sur ce rapport de cause à  effet, Blair a été clair et précis:

Let us just take this issue of Iraq and expose it for a moment. Frankly the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism. If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them? Why are they every day in Iraq trying to kill people whose only desire is for their country to become a democracy? Why are they trying to kill people in Afghanistan? Why are they trying, every time Israel and Palestine look as if they could come together in some sort of settlement, they go and wreck it? Why are they killing people in Turkey? What is their excuse there, or in Egypt, or in Saudi Arabia? They will always have a reason and I am not saying that any of these things don’t affect their warped reasoning and warped logic as to what they do, or that they don’t use these things to try and recruit people. But I do say we shouldn’t compromise with it. I am not saying anyone says any of these things justify it, but we shouldn’t even allow them the vestige of an excuse for what they do. That is my answer to that.

Puis à  un journaliste établissant une comparaison entre les civils tués en Irak par les terroristes et ceux tués par la coalition (soutenant par ailleurs que ces derniers sont plus nombreux que ceux là ):

Excuse me. First of all – I don’t accept that at all incidentally – but secondly there is all the difference in the world in us taking action against these terrorists and as will happen when military action is taken innocent civilians get killed. We deeply regret every one of those lives. They don’t regret the loss of innocent, civilian life. They rejoice in it, that is their purpose. And all the instability in Iraq would stop tomorrow if these terrorists and insurgents stopped. And my point to you Adam is, I am making a more fundamental point because I actually don’t think the public is in quite the position that you think they are. Yes, it is true that of course they see these issues as linked in some way. Yes they do. But they also know perfectly well that we cannot give these people any shred of justification for what they do. And when people say, and I have read this over the past few days, people talk about this as if we are doing this in Iraq, they are doing this here. There is more or less an equivalent. Until we get rid of this frankly complete nonsense in trying to build some equivalence between what we are doing helping Iraqis and Afghans get their democracy and these people going in deliberately killing wholly innocent people for the sake of it, until we eliminate that we are not going to confront this ideology in the way it needs to be confronted and my point to you is this, it is time we stopped saying OK we abhor their methods, but we kind of see something in their ideas or maybe they have got a sliver of excuse or justification. They have got no justification for it.

And one other thing I want to say whilst I am on this subject if I might, neither have they any justification for killing people in Israel either [est-ce une référence à  la formule malheureuse de Benoît XVI?]. Let us just get that out of the way as well. There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, in Iraq, in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere, in the United States of America. There is no justification for it period and we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. Not just the methods but the ideas. When we actually have people going into the communities here in this country and elsewhere and saying I am sorry, we are not having any of this nonsense about it is to do with what the British are doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or support for America, or any of the rest of it. It is nonsense, and we have got to confront it as that. And when we confront it as that, then we will start to beat it.