How can Rich Lowry, an editorial honcho of the “National Review,” and a syndicated ranter, get away with writing junk history?

Lowry, in a “NY Post” love feast (11/22/03), on George W. Bush’s recent visit to the UK, totally ignored the massive Anti-Iraq War protest action on the streets of London against his badly flawed hero. Instead, he waxed nostalgically about a highly romanticized version of Anglo-American history. I suppose it was a lot easier for him to dig into an imaginary past, than try to defend the Bush-Tony Blair Junta and their mindless decision to invade Iraq.

Lowry’s kind of pseudo history only exists in his fertile mind. In his fulsome ode to the Brits, he roared how they had “spread ‘liberty’ to the world across the centuries.” What baloney! His tract is a classic example of a lesson in junk history.

As for the befuddled Bush himself, history is mostly a blank page. He isn’t a reader and his knowledge of the Brits, too, is extremely limited. He knows that in old England, that you have to drive on the left side of the road and that the pubs are the place to get a pint of lager and enjoy some pretty good grub. Sadly, this is about it for Junior Bush.

In any event, Great Britain, during its over three centuries on the bloodstained imperial stage, hasn’t given a good hoot for “liberty.” It has been a ruthless colonial power that believed in dominating people, including the American colonists. In his seminal, “The Slave Trade,” Hugh Thomas underscored how the evil of slave trading was one of England’s “foremost sources of income until well into the 19th century.” Lowry’s so called “liberty-seeking” Brits also created the first concentration camp, in the Boer War (1899-1902), where over 26,000 detainees perished.

As for the American Rebels, they really did care about “liberty” and they were willing also to fight and to die for it. Their gallant struggle for freedom, (1775-1783), must never be forgotten or minimized by Lowry or his ilk. And, the American patriots were willing to battle the invading British hordes again in the War of 1812-14. That conflict included a valiant defense of Baltimore City, where the “Star-Spangled Banner” anthem was born, and also a great victory, at New Orleans, led by the gutsy general and later president of the U.S., Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson.

Lowry is simply full of hot air about the Brits spreading “liberty.” Genuine “liberty” rarely touched British held territories in China, India, Africa, Australia, Tasmania, the Middle East, Ireland, Central and South America or anywhere else that they so roundly looted. Piracy, opium running and a vindictive divide and conquer policy were just some of the hellish devices of the predatory Brits.

Lowry made a big deal, too, about how the “Anglo-American civilization...is indispensable to the security and freedom of the world.” More propaganda! For example, it was the Brits who originally made an awful mess of the Middle East. They created Kuwait out of a wrongly partitioned Iraq. In fact, Great Britain was the first country, not Nazi Germany, to engage in the aerial terror bombing of civilians. It was in Iraq, during the 1920s. It was the British also that gave the Zionist intriguers a stake in Palestine, via the dubious Balfour Declaration, an instrument which some believe brought the Americans into WWI (“Special Report: The Balfour Declaration and the Zimmerman Telegram,” John Cornelius, 09/97 and 09/98, “WRMEA”). The fact that the Brits didn’t own any of the Middle East land in the first place and didn’t consult with the indigenous Palestinians, before giving it away to the Zionist Cartel, still doesn’t bother the arrogant London cabal in the least.

Today, if Lowry stood in Coalition-devastated Iraq, at the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, he would be at a source that once “watered Sumeria and Akkad, and nourished the Hanging Gardens of Babylon” (Will Durant’s “Story of Civilization”). The peoples of this ancient land, once known as Mesopotamia, (part of which is holy also to Christianity), prepared the first codes of law, under the magnificent Hammurabi. They also taught the West, via the Egyptians, Greeks, Moors, Byzantines, Persians and others, too, the rudiments of mathematics, physics, philosophy, astronomy, medicine and mythology, that are such a well spring of our rich cultural inheritance.

A loud noise, too, was made by Lowry about how the boring Bush-Blair duo are going to lead Mankind in the “War on Terror.” The real truth, however, is that these two reckless war hawks have transformed Iraq into a recruitment poster for the al Qaeda terrorist network. Lowry also made much of Bush’s speech at Whitehall Palace. He bellowed, “The Americans and the British are brothers.” Lowry is wrong, again!

An ugly historical fact was ignored by Lowry. After the Boston Tea Party, the legendary Ben Franklin was driven, on Jan. 29, 1774, to Whitehall, to the area known as the “Cockpit.” There, he was viciously denounced in a “torrent of abuse” at a session of the Privy Council by a British legal viper, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn. Franklin, who had strongly advocated on behalf of the colonies, sat in stony silence for over an hour as he and the American Rebels were called every vile name on the books. As a sanction, Franklin was also dismissed from his post as Deputy Postmaster. Asked later to explain his targeting by the Brits, Franklin answered, “I am TOO MUCH of an American.”

Finally, Lowry’s junk Anglo-American lesson in history is exactly that-JUNK!

© William Hughes 2003

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (Iuniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at: liamhughes-AT-mindspring.com.