TONY BLAIR UNDERSTANDS why don’t “WE” UNDERSTAND?

"…show them death and they will love the fever "- Peter Galbraith

Despite his poodle-like insistence on backing our doomed and misguided efforts in Iraq Britain’s Tony Blair is not functionally retarded. He set off on a diplomatic mission on Friday that seems squarely aimed at reassuring our perpetually ill-used NATO allies in Turkey about their prospects for joining the European Union and reviving the Middle East peace process.

Blair's trip to Turkey comes in the wake of European Union leaders foolhardy endorsement of a partial suspension of Turkey's EU entrance negotiations – supposedly as a punishment for Ankara's refusal to open-up its ports to Cyprus – but in reality a childish matter of “they’ve got bigger penises” type fear – which is to say that the Turks have a ferocious and battle hardened army and, other than the Brit’s, the rest of the Europeans don’t and therefore fear creeping irrelevance at Turkey’s decidedly manlier hands

“Egemen Baggis, a senior foreign policy adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, noted in an interview that Turkey is one of the few Western-oriented countries with the credibility to talk with Syria, Iran and Israel. He added that both Beirut and Jerusalem pleaded with Turkey to send troops to Lebanon to participate in the multinational force there because a moderate Muslim country is acceptable to Lebanese as well as Israelis.”

You can read-up on Turkey’s troubled EU bid HERE and HERE.

Blair’s aides said Blair would try to reassure Turkey that Europe was not turning its back. Britain and Poland (NATO’s only other owner of an army of killers as opposed to and army of policemen by the by – which isn’t to say that those policemen wouldn’t have been pretty freakin’ handy in Iraq even though they’re darn near useless in Afghanistan) fear that the partial freeze will further complicate Turkey's membership negotiation while stoking a growing anti-EU backlash in a Muslim country of 70 million. Blair and his cabinet have been the most vocal advocates of Ankara's because they view Turkey as a vital geo-strategic anchor in an unstable region.

Given that “we” really need to make a deal with the Turks to protect our Kurdish friends, it strikes me as functionally retarded that the U.S. has yet to, loudly, intercede on Turkey’s behalf.