January 29, 2010
Global Delusions
I’ve been mostly ignoring the Chilcot enquiry. Flying Rodent sets out all the best reasons why, so I won’t repeat them.
But today was a day nobody could ignore.
From 2000-2008, we British sneered at the Americans for their dim-witted cowboy President. Yet it seems the joke was on us. For whereas the yanks were ruled by a public fool, for 10 years Britain was led by a man who belonged not in Number 10, but down the rabbit hole.
Tony Blair today claimed that Saddam Hussein was a
“monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world.”
Perhaps Blair did believe this prior to 2003. But it now seems fairly incontrovertible that there was no evidence for Iraq possessing WMD (not least because none ever turned up). It also seems beyond reasonable doubt that American and British intelligence knew that Iraq had no WMD prior to the invasion….and that Blair knew this, misleading the British Parliament instead.
So when Blair says that he thought Saddam was a threat to both the region and the world, he’s either alluding to WMD – in which case we know he’s lying or deluded – or he’s referring to Saddam being a threat because he was allegedly a sponsor of terrorism.
The last claim isn’t necessarily insane, taken alone. It becomes so, however, if we couple it with remarks from Blair like this:
“It was better to deal with this threat, to remove [Saddam] from office and I do genuinely believe the world is a safer place as a result.”
For the world manifestly isn’t a safer place. Resentment against American power and British duplicity in the Muslim world was only exacerbated by the 2003 war, as any fool can tell. Whilst we’ll never know if the 7/7 attacks and the spate of subsequent failed terror attempts wouldn’t have happened if the Iraq war hadn’t occurred, one thing is manifestly obvious: whatever else Iraq achieved, it certainly did not make such attacks less likely. Mehdi Hasan argues powerfully that it positvely hightened the terrorist threat.
Abroad, the Iraq war drained resources and attention away from Afghanistan. Whatever you think about that conflict, it is incontrovertible that the Afghan situation was made worse by the huge diversion of resources and attention to Iraq. Afghanistan is now a major problem. Even worse, the conflict risks spilling over into nuclear-armed Pakistan, as the Afghan fuels the rise of radical Islamism over the border.
Yet Blair tells us we are safer.
Even more spectacularly, he claims that removing Saddam means Iran is now less of a threat to global stability:
“today we would have a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran” [both in terms of nuclear capability and] “in respect of support of terrorist groups”.
It’s nauseating to follow the mental somersaults Blair performs to draw this conclusion. Not least because nuclear weapons have somehow crawled back into the story.
But recall that after Iraq was invaded, given the fact Afghanistan was already occupied this meant that Iran’s immediate neighbours to both the West and East were under occupation by foreign forces, and have been ever since. Foreign forces which are statedly hostile to the Iranian regime. And Blair expects Iran to be less bellicose now?
The whopping great irony-cum-paradox is that the disaster of Iraq has however made Iran more of a threat, because the option of a US-led invasion of Iran is actually completely off the cards. In terms of human and financial cost – not to mention further regional destabilization – it’s simply not going to happen. And the Iranian regime knows this, meaning it’s hand has been considerably strengthened. If it is interested in funding terrorism, or developing nuclear weapons, it can do it with greater impunity than ever before.
Yet Blair is so convinced of his grounds that he defiantly told Chilcot that he’d do it all again:
“The decision I took – and frankly would take again – was if there was any possibility that [Saddam] could develop weapons of mass destruction we should stop him.”
It’s been much commented that Blair seems to believe that if he simply repeats the courage of his original convictions then he will therefore be absolved from blame. As though mere good intent will cancel-out the horror of the actual consequences.
After today, I can no longer subscribe to that analysis.
The truth is that Tony Blair is a man completely deluded.
He cannot differentiate between the fantasy of WMD his spin-machine fed to the world’s media, and the fact that no such WMD ever existed.
He believes he has made the world a safer place by fuelling the rise of domestic terrorism, rendering the middle east less secure and more hostile, and increasing Iran’s scope for developing nuclear arms.
And he claims he would do it all again.
Tony Blair does not belong on trial at The Hague, as many have suggested. He belongs under the permanent supervision of trained medical professionals.
Peter said,
January 30, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I thought that the intelligence services believed that Iraq did have WMD. In which case, Blair did not knowingly mislead parliament in that particular regard. He just acted on false information.
I might be wrong in my initial statement though, I haven’t paid much attention to the various Iraq inquiries.
Paul Sagar said,
January 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Peter, check out the link to Mehdi Hassan’s guardian piece embedded in the ‘lying’ link above. There’s loads of evidence that there was no good Intelligence on WMD at all…hence why Colin Powell initially refused to take the White House report to the UN on the grounds that it was ‘bullshit’.
Will said,
January 30, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Paul, is that the same Colin Powell who sat in front of the Security Council maintaining that cutaway diagrams drawn by an artist in Washington constituted documentary evidence of Saddam’s mobile weapons labs, as if he was Reed Richards showing monster comics to the Skrulls?
Paul Sagar said,
January 30, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Yes. He described that very report as ‘bullshit’ hours before presenting it. In fact, he literally threw it across the room.
But he was ordered to present it by his seniors. And being a military man -a four star general no less – he followed his orders.
Coercing Saddam and lessons for Iran « Left Outside said,
January 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm
[...] may be the continuation of politics by other means but it must never be an aim in itself. Blair may claim that invading Iraq has lessened the threat from Iran, but if the war drums begin to beat in the [...]
Tom said,
January 30, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Surely the point is that the intelligence agencies thought that there were wmd (or a likelihood that Saddam had them) but didn’t have any reasonable evidence to back it up. Hence the “bullshit”. Indeed, I seem to remember reading various articles where earnest US military types talk about how they expected to find WMD. This was my reading of the situation. Which is different from saying that intelligence knew that he didn’t have any. As you have.
Paul Sagar said,
January 30, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Fair point. My original wording too strong.
There is a distinction between ‘the intelligence agencies knew Iraq had no WMD’ and ‘the intelligence agencies had no credible evidence for Iraqi WMD, but some sections of the intelligence community – as well as Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al – nonetheless decided that Iraq must have them anyway’
so yes, fair point. But I think my overall contention re Blair is sound enough.
Bill le Breton said,
February 1, 2010 at 9:37 am
Paul you write the following :
But recall that after Iraq was invaded, given the fact Afghanistan was already occupied this meant that Iran’s immediate neighbours to both the West and East were under occupation by foreign forces, and have been ever since. Foreign forces which are statedly hostile to the Iranian regime. And Blair expects Iran to be less bellicose now?
Perhaps you should consider that because they expected Iran to be more bellicose (and feared that Israil would/still may endeavour to prempt Iranian aggression) that they have deliberately positioned/and keep their forces ‘on these borders’.
B
Bad Conscience said,
September 1, 2010 at 10:21 am
[...] Perhaps most amazingly, it was also revealed today that Blair does not regret undertaking an illegal, unnecessary war which led to thousands of civilian deaths, destabilised the Middle East, increased the risk of domestic terrorism, diverted resources from the failing war in Afghanistan and rightfully discredited the Labour party in the eyes of millions of voters. What was particularly astounding was that Tony Blair had certainly not said exactly the same thing – complete with crocodile tears and solemn tales of nightmares – at the Chilcot Enquiry earlier this year. An appearance which led some observers to conclude that Blair was in fact certifiably insane and living in a world of his own delusions. [...]
Ideology vs. Fantasy « Bad Conscience said,
October 28, 2010 at 11:42 am
[...] which originate within the Labour Party) a pretty deranged individual. Tony Blair appears to have taken a long vacation from reality. His wife appears to have joined him, as evinced by her mad-cap [...]
Windbag « Bad Conscience said,
November 30, 2010 at 9:13 pm
[...] – particularly after the full nightmare of Iraq was under way – he had clearly descended into a world of fantasy. One in which the Mesopotamian Adventure had been a triumphant success. Where Britain [...]
Nick Clegg is transforming into an arrogant Tony Blair | Liberal Conspiracy said,
December 1, 2010 at 9:37 am
[...] – particularly after the full nightmare of Iraq was under way – he had clearly descended into a world of [...]