Reflection on a discourse by Tony Blair to the American Congress

Résumé du document

Tony Blair addressed a discourse to the congress of the United States of America (USA) on July, 17th, 2003. It is a political text strongly related to the political context at that point of time, which I will discuss later on. The discourse can be explained by looking at each of the sentences and relating them to other concepts. Some of these key concepts are America's fear of the unknown, Blair's ambivalence in politics, the relativist versus the absolute theory of ethics. First of all, the text being addressed in July 2003, many crucial events occurred on the world arena of international relations not long before that. The war on Iraq had only "ended" a few months earlier (may 2003). A lot of issues still had to be solved regarding Iraq. Earlier before, the war on Afghanistan had been conducted by the US, and the war on terrorism was still going on. The world was divided on these war. Blair and the US were in favor of the war whereas some others countries were against it (i.e. France, Germany, Russia). That led Mr Blair to a serious problem, which stance should he take, the American or the European one? The people of the UK were mostly against the Iraq war, however the historical background has to be taken into account here.

Extraits

[...] That is exactly the step fundamental Islamic took to destroy the world trade center. They didn't accept the western values and their influence on their world. That is explained in Tariq Ali's book where both the US and the Islamic fundamentalists are indeed fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is very much related to religion and God, and here ‘human spirit' has a religious connotation. Bush is often talking as a fundamentalist with his ‘evil axis', one of the fundamentalist act being demonising opposition (18). [...]

[...] Paton, HarperCollins: 1964, New York. - Ethical relativism by W. T. Stace in "Philosophy and contemporary issues" edited by john R.burr and milton goldfinger; macmillan : 1972; Toronto. - An introduction to political ideas by Peter M. R. Stirck and David Weigall; pinter publishers limited: 1995, london. - Language, society and power, an introduction, Linda thomas and Shan Wareing, Routledge : 1999, london. [...]

[...] The fact that here it is "ours" here doesn't change anything, he talks for the audience and the speaker together. he also uses a lot of general terms : ‘anywhere', 'ordinary', ‘human spirit'. 'democracy', 'dictatorship', 'freedom' .These have loose meanings. The first two ones don't give a clear cut figure while the other can be interpreted in many different ways For instance, during the cold war, in 1949, the eastern part of Germany was called the Democratic republic of Germany. [...]

[...] To conclude, Tony Blair made a very powerful speech to the members of the congress. He didn't directly raise any question but he stated believes and facts that were accepted among most of his audience. Although he had to be cautious with words he still used some controversial concepts such as ‘universal values'. He gave a strong support to the US policy by backing up their feeling of being under threat even though threat is only a subjective concept. Therefore, the outcome of the speech is favorable for the UK, the US would continue to help the UK, and the strong relationship between these two countries would continue. [...]

[...] In both cases, the notions could be opposed to other values. In other words democracy can be opposed to another regime that is stable and not oppressive. So by choosing these notions he is trying people to think that everything not being democratic or ruled by the law is an error, and has to be fixed. Additionally, the speech may be argued biased because not objective. As a matter of fact, both the speaker, and the people he is addressing his speech to (primarily members of the congress) are westerners with a set of values that they hold for true. [...]