On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair is still trying to justify his decision to join George W Bush in what proved to be the most disastrous foreign policy decision in recent British history.
More concerned with his place in History than the Blair's spurious grasp of events merely seems to be a concocted series of 'what ifs' and prely hypothetical conjecture. He stated on Iraq,
“If we hadn’t removed Saddam from power just think, for example, what would be happening if these Arab revolutions were continuing now and Saddam, who’s probably 20 times as bad as Assad in Syria, was trying to suppress an uprising in Iraq. Think of the consequences of leaving that regime in power".
It's amazing how Blair has a clairvoyant talent to know what "would have" happened if he "hadn't" invaded. It may help him to sleep a bit better at night but it is not persuasive as an argument to anyone who isn't Blair or a fanatic acolyte of this deranged creature.
Not least if you lie to yourself about the sum total of dead being 100,000 as opposed to the real figure which is about 600,000 or even over 1 million dead according to the peer reviewed Lancet Report. And then ignore real statistical facts by conjuring up one about Saddam being '20 times' worse than Assad.
'I’ve long since given up in trying to persuade people it was the right decision. In a sense what I try to persuade people of now is to understand how complex and difficult a decision it was...Because I think if we don’t understand that, we won’t take the right decision about what I think will be a series of these types of problems that will arise over the next few years....You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to come. The issue is how do you make the world a safer place?"
How can Blair claim it was a "complex decision" when it was quite clear from the evidence he had already made up his mind to join the US invasion of Iraq as far back as 2002 when he met Bush at Crawford and looked at maps of Iraq's oil wealth ? ( see Strachan's The Last Oil Shock )
Blair kept repeating he invaded because "it was the right thing to do" when quite clearly the decision has led to more deaths than otherwise would have happened. So he has had to give up justifying the war and shifted to an attempt to justify being in the position of having to make a decision.
Instead of being asked to look at evidence and facts, the public, even presuming many even bother listening to this has-been, are being asked to empathise with his anxiety over the war, even if one "disagrees" with it, an attempt to accrue to himself a form of integrity he never had at any time in his wretched failed career.
Blairs words are not the words of a leader with a grasp of complexity nor even any substantial knowledge of the history of Iraq and the sectarian and ethnic tensions that were always likely to emerge on getting rid of this dictator and, as it turned out, having no coherent plan for a post-Saddam Iraq.
If the decision was so "complex" you would have though he'd have taken consideration of that. Yet, as with everything Blair says, the point is all about how he would be able to put the point across because he would be bound to be misunderstood.
Yet Blair, who now in 2013 wants to portray the decision as agonising and complex, presented the decision back in 2003 to invade Iraq as a stark binary choice: "either" we get rid of Saddam Hussein "or" he poses a real threat to us and his peopl ( hence the misinformation about WMD's, the 45 minute warning ).
Blair's career is entirely one of bad acting and wish thinking. His political line tends to shift and change according to the message he wishes to convey. A decade on, and he has learnt nothing. As is clear from the threat to Iran embedded in the line it is a 'problem' that is to 'come'.
Blair's entire "career" since he left office has been one long post ex-facto rationalisation for his role in unleashing carnage in Iraq. His hyperactive fidgety inability to clear off the global stage is possibly due to his colossal vanity.
The interesting question is whether Blair has a conscience over Iraq or whether he's even faking that in order to preserve his public image as a 'statesman'. From the contrived speech after Princess Diana's death in 1997 and his use of 'the people', from the outset Blair was a dangerous fraud.
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