The Case Against Tony Blair.

Evidently, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was one of controlling Iraqi oil and removing the over dependence of the USA and UK on a Saudi regime that was looking more unstable. The foreign policy of the USA has increasingly been based on diversifying supplies of oil as documented in Michael T Klare's seminal Blood and Oil.

The continual shifting between moral and legal precepts to rationalise the invasion are relevant only in trying to absolve Blair from the notion of intentionality as regards the crime of aggression. The fact that insurgents murdered and killed in Iraq after the invasion hardly absolves Blair from his part in initiating it.

The actual consequences of the Iraq war were not, of course intended. But pursuing the war, ignoring the due procedure of international law and doing so as part of a plan to take the resources of another nation, even if under the control of a criminal dictator, was intentional and was the aim.

The war was an intentional act of geopolitical strategy. Any effects that could have been posited as "moral" would have been a spin off from a successful invasion and only had Saddam Hussein really offered a threat so serious that no military action would have been more harmful to life than invading.

This was the case put before the electorate.And that view was discredited by the manipulated "intelligence" and fraudulent claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction. The war was not about a "moral case" even if a moral case could be offered.
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Nor about non-existent WMD, the acronym itself being a euphemism, one that downgraded a sensationalistic term implying the imminent threat of being blown to bits by a rogue state to a sort of bureaucratic process when that form of spin was required to downgrade the original implications.
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Weapons of Mass Destruction could destroy us in 45 minutes. WMD was the preferred term for an administrative procedure based on a supposed objective detachment based on a discussion of fact and evidence. That would be a matter for debate. And one that could be spun out.
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That Saddam had the intention to use Weapons of Mass Destruction was supposedly obvious. Yet it was hardly less obvious than the intention of the USA to invade Iraq no matter what the evidence really was. And that was made quite clear from much of what leading neoconservatives had said in the run up to war.
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Weapons of Mass destruction was a pretext that turned out to be a ruse to invade, though the real question is whether Blair knew that there were no WMD or whether he simply believed any facts were "essentially true" just to be able to justify an action he had already decided on.

No matter the level of self delusion, the rationale for the invasion was to grab Iraq's resources. That was decided upon by Bush and Blair at Crawford when they looked at geological maps of the oil wealth ( as documented by David Strahan in his The Last Oil Shock ).
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All else was a form of logic chopping apologetics. Blair must be put into a War Crimes Tribunal, his motives and actions questioned forensically and all the factors looked at and subjected to assessment. This is not only something vital to uphold principles of justice. It is essential to preserve democracy and accountability.

Given that resource wars are the norm today-as is Afghanistan, a war to construct the TAPI Pipeline and to secure geopolitical advantages in Central Asia-it is unlikely that any Western government will consent to Blair being arrested and put on trial as he should be. They could never embark on such a war again.

So unless Power is to trump the Rule of Law and expedient falsehood win over truth and justice, Blair must be tried. For the alternative assumption might be, however, that if other Powers without democracy can protect their access to resources without the annoyance of such things as public enquiries, rule of law etc, we might be "better off" without them.