{"id":68679,"date":"2007-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/04\/01\/pauvres-vaguelettes-poor-ferguson\/"},"modified":"2007-04-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T00:00:00","slug":"pauvres-vaguelettes-poor-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/04\/01\/pauvres-vaguelettes-poor-ferguson\/","title":{"rendered":"Pauvres vaguelettes, poor<\/em> Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Autre signe que les Britanniques ne sont pas vraiment partants pour la th\u00e8se de la provocation et du casus belli<\/em> dans l’affaire des 15 prisonniers pris par les Iraniens, cette chronique de l’historien fameux et n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialiste Niall Ferguson, dans le Sunday Telegraph<\/em> du m\u00eame jour<\/a>. On conna\u00eet Ferguson, ses prises de position extr\u00eamement vigoureuses, virulentes, en faveur d’une politique n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialiste anglo-saxonne (l’ anglosph\u00e8re’<\/a>). Fi\u00e9vreusement favorable \u00e0 la guerre contre l’Irak, Ferguson a rapidement connu une grande d\u00e9ception<\/a> devant les d\u00e9boires am\u00e9ricanistes en Irak. Il en a tir\u00e9 la conclusion que les USA n’\u00e9taient pas faits pour devenir un empire, celui que Ferguson appelait de ses vux.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tL’affaire des 15 Britanniques ranime la violente nostalgie de Ferguson pour l’empire britannique, pour constater bien entendu que ces temps-l\u00e0 ont disparu avec la reine Victoria. O\u00f9 sont pass\u00e9es les vagues, Ferguson ? \u00abwe need to understand James Thomson’s immortal lines: \u00a0\u00bbRule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves: Britons never shall be slaves.\u00a0\u00bb When first set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740 (after which, as if for emphasis, \u00a0\u00bbnever\u00a0\u00bb became \u00a0\u00bbnever-never-NEver\u00a0\u00bb), this was a forward-looking injunction to Britain’s rulers to go ahead and rule the waves, precisely so that Britons would no longer run the risk of being enslaved.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEn fait, ce que Ferguson regrette, ce sont les dames, ces vaillantes dirigeantes britanniques qui, depuis la grande Elisabeth jusqu’\u00e0 la Dame de Fer, surent se montrer impitoyables pour que l’Empire existe, ou que son r\u00eave ne meurt pas. \u00abI suppose a remnant of that spirit survived into the 1980s. There was certainly something distinctly Victorian about the Falklands expedition: the scale of the venture, the distance covered and the relatively small number of Britons to be rescued. Yet today, 25 years on, we live in a different world. We could not re-fight the Falklands War if Argentina invaded the islands tomorrow. Nor can we send a raiding party to punish the Iranian government today. If military action is going to be taken against Iran this year, it will not be initiated by Britain, but by the United States. And, to judge by Faye Turney’s conspicuous absence from the front pages of the American papers, a British hostage crisis won’t be the casus belli.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbWhich means that we fall back on the tried and tested options of the pre-Victorian Empire. Our captives can either be left to languish, or their freedom can be bought. But what might be the price of saving Seaman Turney? A free pass for the Iranian nuclear programme? Or maybe just an Iranian-controlled Basra?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAs he approaches the 10th anniversary of becoming Prime Minister, Mr Blair consciously invites comparisons with Lady Thatcher, the only other premier since Lord Liverpool to endure for so long. Yet this new crisis of captivity, like Mr Blair’s needless kow-towing over slavery, exposes the profound differences between him and her. When it comes to the crunch, Mr Blair’s greatest defect is that he is, despite his undoubted transgressions, fundamentally a nice guy. Margaret Thatcher was neither. Nor, come to think of it, was Queen Victoria. Nor Britannia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIf only you could come back, you iron ladies. Even though you never said sorry or precisely because you didn’t all would be forgiven.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 1er avril 2007 \u00e0 22H41<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Autre signe que les Britanniques ne sont pas vraiment partants pour la th\u00e8se de la provocation et du casus belli dans l’affaire des 15 prisonniers pris par les Iraniens, cette chronique de l’historien fameux et n\u00e9o-imp\u00e9rialiste Niall Ferguson, dans le Sunday Telegraph du m\u00eame jour. On conna\u00eet Ferguson, ses prises de position extr\u00eamement vigoureuses, virulentes,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6561,708,4048,2773,6559,6560],"class_list":["post-68679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-britannia","tag-empire","tag-ferguson","tag-iran","tag-otages","tag-victoria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}