Ba Ba Black Sheep – Bogeyman Blair

The Britons have a sinister sense of appropriateness of (dis)honoring their prominent political leader who went against the grain of the popular wisdom in making the disastrous decision of invading Iraq. In a competition for creating new nursery rhymes for the millennium, the winning entry cast the Prime Minister Tony Blair as the ‘star – or more accurately villain’ in the nursery song with the title of Baker Tony’s Pizza.

Most of the nursery songs with which I am familiar are apolitical; they relate to ordinary themes which are of interest to the children and with which they can effortlessly empathize. However, the conditions in the new century are very different from the past. The Iraq war and the terrorism are commonplace topics of discourse and discussion even at the dinner tables. Even the growing- up kids are familiar with them. For them, Tony’s Pizza may not be very offbeat; probably they would relate to it quite easily.

Lucy ward, Social affairs Correspondent of the Unlimited Guardian, who reported this story (September 20, 2005) wondered somewhat gingerly, “whether or not the rhyme is adopted by parents crooning their babies to sleep or by skipping-rope jumpers in the playground remains to be seen.” The lines do have a musical quality to them and they can easily be rendered musically for singing. The nursery song reads as follows:

Baker Tony’s Pizza
Baker Tony baked a pizza
very round and thin
He said he added olives
but he never put them in
The stuff that he had grated
and sprinkled on to please
Was only yellow sawdust
although he called it cheese
The rich tomato topping
was nothing more than dye
So Baker Tony’s pizza
made all the children cry

Blair’s deception to take Britain to war is the basic theme of the song although it is not explicitly mentioned. This deception is the hallmark of the Iraq war. In Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, Richard Clarke wrote, “Then I realized that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to take advantage of the national tragedy (9/11) to protect their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.” About President Bush’s obsession with Saddam, Clarke wrote, “Later, on the evening of the 12th (September), I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the president. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. Look, he told us, I know you have a lot to do and all… but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked.”

The president’s wish was accomplished by his CIA director, George Tenet, who gave him the false information and linked Saddam with al-Qaeda. He also asserted on December 21, 2002, that finding weapons of mass destruction (wmds) in Iraq was a slam dunk case. This opened the way for the president to invade Iraq. The fact that no wmds were ever discovered in Iraq proved a great embarrassment for Bush’s presidency. Tenet became the fall guy who resigned on June 3, 2004 for ‘personal problems.’ He was honored by the president with the award of the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom on December 14, 2004. President said, “George Tenet did a superb job for America. It was a high honor to work with him, and I’m sorry he left.” The political hypocrisy is boundless.

Nobody wrote a nursery ditty for the president to memorialize the hollowness of the excuse for attacking Iraq, but, sure enough, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones paid tribute in his “Sweet Neo-Con”. Later, as an afterthought, a Stone’s representative said that the song did not mention anybody by name; the implication was probably not lost on anybody. Mick Jagger said, “Sweet Neo-Con is not personally aimed at President Bush.. It is certainly very critical of certain policies of the administration, but so what? Lots of people are critical.”

True, lots of people are critical. The hurricane Katrina opened it up again if anybody was left in doubt earlier. According to http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050913/wl_nm/iraq_dc, (Katrina spills into Senate’s Iraq war debate),” Senate opponents of the Iraq war on Tuesday (September 13, 2005) called Hurricane Katrina a wake-up call to withdraw troops and focus on domestic needs, lawmakers of both parties acknowledged the relief effort will make it tougher for President George W. Bush to maintain support for the war.”

The Britons are more subtle than the Americans. The nursery rhymes author, Angela Martin, 57, said “her inspiration came from a desire to educate our children on the politics of the Iraq war in a light-hearted fashion,” and she did it superbly.

Tony Blair’s Iraq war is immortalized in Angela Martin’s Baker Tony’s Pizza.