I was a student at Cambridge University, UK, when Gulf War I broke out in 1991. As American aircraft pounded Iraq, the world paused to watch this unequal desert match unfold. But life at Cambridge continued uninterrupted. During Gulf War II, I found myself in a very different kind of Cambridge. It resonated with anti-war rallies. So much was the anti-war build up here that one almost felt sorry for American students and Fellows. They felt the need to state their position on the war before they began a conversation. Cambridge was indeed a microcosm that mirrored the larger, anti-war sentiment in Britain. But what was witnessed was anti-Blairism, rather than anti-Americanism. And perhaps that is what distinguished anti-war protests in Britain from those in Italy, Greece, France and Germany. For many Britons, Empire may have become a politically incorrect point to mention. But the idea that the experience of Empire makes the British distinct in the post-Cold War world still widely prevails. The political ambitions of the US are thus not seen as any serious threat. They are indeed dismissed as the amateur imaginings of a growing child. In fact, as the Americans advanced in Iraq, many of my British friends would say,‘‘If our boys were not there heaven knows what these US marines would have landed in.’’ It is this lack of an aggressive anti-Americanism that also made it possible for Blair singlehandedly to have taken his country into war, unmindful of the general outrage. It was easy for him to cope when he, and not a more widespread anti-Americanism, was the target of public fury. He knew that once the war commenced, the well-known British sense of patriotism would prevail. If the British press was any indicator, he proved correct. There was an abrupt silencing of the criticism of the war that had dominated the press thus far. And, yet, it was not so simple. The over-arching patriotism may help Blair’s political survival, but patriotism has its limitations. Even though it is an overriding sentiment, it does leave certain cultural creases untouched. And post-Cold War politics has shown us more than ever before that religion is a very central part of this cultural crease. Today, the large Muslim community of Britain is as engulfed in the tide of patriotism as the others. But for them Iraq is not just about ports and urban centers, or about civilisational cradles, or about concern for human rights and international law. It is all this and just a little more. It is a referent of a religio-cultural identity which, whether Blair likes it or not, has become an intrinsic part of what it means to be British. With the huge British Muslim population constituting the traditional support base of Labour, Blair’s political adventure may prove costly in the long run. The writer is a Smuts Visiting Fellow in the University of Cambridge
