The Special Relationship

The headline for this Sunday Telegraph article by Tim Shipman is "US commander seeks to quell crisis in 'special relationship' with UK force," but the worrying paragraph is:

Downing Street officials and diplomats in Washington are already on edge about Britain's standing with the new administration given their failure, thus far, to arrange a meeting between Gordon Brown and the new president before April.

I don't want there to be any doubt that I believe the FIRST head of state our newly inaugurated President should meet with is the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, and the second is the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. But, the third or fourth, and in short order, should be Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. April is too far away. That "special relationship" has been important to us, even when we have not been having a good relationship.

Without Britain there would be no United States as we know it. There would be no Monroe Doctrine. There would be no free and democratic Europe. That isn't to say they would have happened without us. They wouldn't have, but they happened because of a long standing partnership. Now is not the time to think twice about it.

Regards  --  Cliff