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. In the Footsteps of Tony Blair: Thailand Sending Troops to Iraq Eugene Jones, Bangkok 08/24/03: Repeating the folly of Blair, Thailand’s PM, Taksin Shinawatra has agreed to send troops to aid the occupation of Iraq in spite of popular sentiment against the move. Tony Blair and, to a lesser extent, John Howard have added new dimensions to the word "sycophant" in their subservience to George Bush. Now the Thai Prime Minister, Taksin Shinawatra, seems to be determined to follow them on this road to folly. For the second time in less than two weeks PM Taksin, only a month after boasting that Thailand is free and independent of foreign masters upon paying off its IMF loan, has bowed to his masters in Washington and shown Thailand, like the UK and Australia, to be a vassal state of the US empire. Despite overwhelming opposition from the Thai public, Mr. Taksin handed over the wanted terrorist, Hambali, to the US (See Bangkok Post, 12 August, 2003). Hambali was an operative wanted in Indonesia for involvement in the Bali bombing and captured in Thailand last week. Now, again defying public opinion, the Taksin government has decided to send 443 soldiers (mostly engineers) to Iraq in order to please the Americans. Originally they had planned to send 886 but that number was halved by the Cabinet (The Nation, 24 August, 2003). However, the move is seen to be an attempt to give legitimacy to the US-British occupation of Iraq. The large Muslim population of Thailand are rightly outraged by this disregard for international law and subservience to an empire that conducted an illegal war based on contrived evidence and in defiance of the UN. The opposition in Parliament has also blasted the Taksin government for caving into American demands. While most of the rest of the world is insisting on the rule of law in international affairs, Britain, Australia and now Thailand appear to be vying with one another in groveling to the Bush regime.
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