To save you the effort, here's basically what Blair has had to say so far.
1. F**k the lawyers.
2. F**k the liberals, invasion's cool.
3. It doesn't matter if evidence is fake and/or hyped up by his advisers, what's important is whether he personally believes it.
3. Let's f**k Iran!
4. Mmmmmm, Bush.
Mmm, great plan. He really is a third-rate mind (at top rate fees - £2000 per minute at one recent function - more than Ronaldo).
18 comments:
Nothing wrong with 99% of that.
But let's not even think about touching Iran, please.
Am I the only politics obsessive not getting all heated about Bliar giving evidence to Chilcott?
Don't we know full well (from when he was PM) that he's going to smarm his way out of answering any tricky questions?
I feel the same, Kate and what's more I've decided I support Blair again. I agreed with the invasion and once he empowered his vision on the disgruntled MPs in the House of Lords which I found at the time to be the finest show of strong minded in duality and free-thinking from any politician since Churchill. Whilst it’s blatant the U.S much like in the Vietnam years as Richard Hofstadter claimed a benign ‘illusion of U.S omnipotence’ which of course ended in hilarity following their defeat in ’75, it’s a curious notion to think that perhaps, we saved their asses and in the process began re-building Iraq.
Whilst war is unforgivable in this case it was inevitable because any sense of weakness would’ve been pounced on by the Taliban and Saddam himself who let’s not forget was a criminal of the highest order.
Hmmmm, you say strong minded and free thinking, I say self interested, thinks he knows best, sanctimonious, and ignorant in that he doesn't listen to or value the importance of the advice of others. I speak as I find, having been on the receiving end of his 'modernisation' attempts in the public sector.
Oh yes, that's true of course and it’ll sadly be his legacy bundled with every other mistake made. He is indeed, sanctimonious and greedy as we see his speech-giving income but on this front I genuinely believe he thought of the interests of not just the UK but the entire world in his heightened sense of self importance. We carried the can for the Americans who wanted blood after 9/11 yet it’s the conclusion we all wanted: rid the world of evil in the Iraqi parts and establish decorum. Financially and emotionally we’ve spared too much and people are growing increasingly tired of hearing of more deaths so Blair will be persecuted along with his advisors when it's clear we did the right thing.
Benjamin:
The Taliban have never been near Iraq. That was Afghanistan.
There aren't any MPs in the House of Lords. They're in the House of Commons.
What do you mean by 'duality'? Blair didn't persuade his own MPs: more than half of Labour Party MPs voted against the war.
If you support going after all 'criminal' regimes, shall we start with Israel, Pakistan and India (nuclear weapons states)? The Saudis for how they treat women? North Korea? Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan? Or is police work only carried out against one's enemies (though of course Saddam gassed the Kurds while he was supported by the US).
Whose 'asses' have been saved? Iraq under Saddam was a dictatorship almost as bad as Saudi Arabia, but people weren't being killed en masse.
Oh come on Vole you know I'm not a politics student it was just my view! It's the message sent to the Taliban if we failed to back the U.S and yes, I didn't think my post through as I put 'Lord's' instead of 'Commons' when I've been there enough times to know the distinction.
I mean duality as in, winning over his advisors such as Lord Goldsmith and several others. The Brownites were always going to be against it and whilst those states are less than agreeable the threat at the time was Saddam so the enquiry and debate has to stick with that rather than bring in other political tribulations.
We saved the Americans from fighting the war alone and yes, too many deaths that cannot be reasoned with but Blair mis-lead us on WWMD front only as I've said the way I see it, the invasion was necessary. We shall agree to disagree!
Check out my newly titled blog on J.D Salinger, everyone.
Nor am I. But I do know that Afghanistan was invaded in 2001, years before Iraq…
I also don't think that the West has the right to invade other countries out of manipulative self-interest.
I'm sure the Americans are very grateful…
Of course, Vole but I fail to see where I mentioned Afghanistan other than state the Taliban at large would be encouraged by Iraqi u-turn!
Our Vietnam War Studies class is going to be extremely inciting stuff when you take over for the lecture. I shall hope you have a great weekend.
Sad that a lecturer has been out-duelled by a student here.
You are of course right in your main point Benjamin. Disposing of Saddam was the right thing to do at the time, and I support that decision now as much as I did then.
Everyone who opposed it just needs to grow some bollocks.
“any sense of weakness would’ve been pounced on by the Taliban”
“the Taliban at large would be encouraged by Iraqi u-turn!”
This is utter rubbish. The invasion of Iraq only benifitted the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and Iran for that matter.
As the Vole pointed out the invasion of Afghanistan happened a couple of years before that of Iraq. It was strategically foolish to even put it on the table.
First of all, it took attention and resources away from sorting out the problems in Afghanistan, which should have been helped when the Soviet Union collapsed, but everyone in Washington was too busy slapping themselves on the back. I believe Gorbachev tried to warn the U.S. that something like this would happen at the time. Very poor war torn country + shit loads of guns = disaster, I think was the gist.
Secondly, it helped Al Qaeda recruit many more people to it's cause. There were no Al Qaeda groups in Iraq before the war, but they flooded in afterwards. The 7/7 bombers may have done it anyway but the war in Iraq definitely encouraged them.
Thirdly, it empowered Iran by removing it's main enemy and creating an Arab Shia controlled state. Blair said he was worried about a nuclear stand off between Iran and Iraq but that was not imminent, this was for the UN to sort out, and the weapons inspectors should have been given more time.
Blair said that the correct planning didn't occur because they didn't expect Al Qaeda and Iran to exploit the situation. I know it's much easier with hindsight, but this seems pretty obvious to me. Their seemed to be a complete lack of intelligence (a misnomer if ever I heard one) of the state of Iraq at the time.
I still think the main reasons we went to war were misguided Neo-con ideology and the need to bring Iraqi oil reserves onto the market so that rising demand could be met because global supply that was going to start hitting its limit. That Saddam was a brutal dictator was just a convenient way to justify the invasion. If that was the only reason way don't we invade Myanmar or North Korea.
Once again, whole arguments ignored in face of irrelevant focus on the Taliban that I brought up to show global consequence of non-action. Whilst the invasion has lead to heightened threat as you state, what would occurred if Blair hadn’t met the approval and therefore withdrawn, where's the authority that our nation delivered to such foes in the past and who’s to say the Taliban wouldn’t have spread their malicious sense of justice to Iraq anyway? In juxtaposing the seemingly unappeasable Saddam they would create mayhem.
Blair continues to insist that he did the right thing and to say he wasn’t a threat without the WMDs at the time is quite astonishing as Vole highlighted the Kurd massacre and treatment of his own people. I simply believe retribution had to be served otherwise it’d given the sense of empowerment to the regime and Saddam along with his twisted brothers needed to be removed and that had he not done so he would have become a more severe threat (even though we now know he was no threat at the time). To be fair many of us believed him when we were told that Saddam had WMDs because of his track record and backed the war on those grounds. Many including myself took Blair's representations at face value and whilst it turns out we were wrong as you correctly state, in hindsight it’s easier to judge.
Not meaning to be pedantic but if you two are capable of dishing it out! You make several points well but ‘Their seemed to be a complete lack of intelligence (a misnomer if ever I heard one) of the state of Iraq at the time’ is shooting yourself in the foot. Perhaps some of us are more supportive of our Government simply because of extreme nationalist pride whilst you and Vole have experienced far more mishaps and chaotic leadership than my generation so inevitably you will voice more dis-concern and angst. Obviously we needed Iraqi oil, would you rather the next generation struggled in the shortage? Also mentioning North Korea along with other nuclear states thus containing its ambitions is clearly much more difficult, as I said, a topic for another debate.
Concentrating on Iraq and the enquiry, I firmly believe Blair and Bush hadn’t seen the consequences in their infinite wisdom but the right path that Brown and Obama would too. Forget the lies, the greed and mis-leading evidence as right now I have friends fighting in the Afghan and Iraqi war who see it as their duty and had it not been for my profound hearing loss I’d joined them. I just think rather than dwell on the past and obviously the consequence of the invasion has lead to more extreme insurgents and danger across the globe: we have to fight them otherwise where would we end up?
As far as I can see Neal makes the most convincing and compelling argument here.
As for those that are inclined to be of the opinion:
'Obviously we needed Iraqi oil, would you rather the next generation struggled in the shortage?'
Can I politely suggest that you next time you are in the library, you check out an ethics textbook. Also, are you familiar with the concept of renewable energies?
Ethically and morally, that statement was entirely disagreeable I must confess but renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and biomass forever touted as alternatives to fossil fuels yet the world leaders are desperate for oil. Is this through dis-trust of it’s sustainability or imperialist greed of the U.S?
I take your point about believing Blair on the WMDs, but to me at the time the idea of invasion came out of nowhere. The main concern was that the sanctions needed changing so they affected the leadership rather than the people. Unlike the first Gulf war Saddam had not invaded another county, and it looked to me like the whole thing was cooked up by those nutters in the Whitehouse. People like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld wanted Bush Sr to continue on into Iraq after liberating Kuwait, but he wasn't having any of it cause he knew it would turn into a bloodbath. Blair lied to us, Saddam wasn't a threat to the UK or USA, except that he controlled large reserves of oil, therefore it was illegal to invade without UN authority.
Blind allegiance to our leaders is a dangerous thing. For democracy to work properly we must always question their decisions. Too much national pride also worries me. I'm not particularly proud to be British, it's just where I was born. There are things I like about it and things I don't, but I feel lucky to have been born here. There are many British people I admire for their achievements and sacrifices, but that's no reflection on me. Just because we were born on the same island doesn't make me proud. On the flipside, I don't take personal responsibility for the horrendous things done in the British name, other than that I should learn about them and try to understand why they happened. This doesn't prevent me from being a good citizen, and I would feel the same sense of responsibility wherever I lived in the world.
On humanitarian intervention - I don't believe their main concern was the welfare of the Iraqi people, as pointed out above the Kurds were gassed while the U.S. was supporting Saddam , but yes, Saddam was a threat to his own people and I imagine that the Kurds are pleased with the invasion, but I don't think it's a good idea to go around attacking nations unilaterally just because we don't like them. Ideally it should go through the UN. There was a presedent with the intervention in Sierra Leone, which worked out well, but regime change in Iraq was a much more complicated matter. North Korea was probably a bad example, that one was tried before during the Korean War and was a disaster, plus China wouldn't allow it. Darfur is probably a better example. I'm not sure of the situation there now, but a massive genocide went on and next to nothing was done about it.
I think the Bush administration thought it was going to be easy, that they would be treated like heroic liberators, get rid of the evil leader, put a puppet in his place to keep everything running smoothly and make a deal with their oil business mates to develop the oil fields. However, that's not how it was. They created a power vacuum in a country with a lot of ethnic and religious rivalries, and chaos ensued that has cost shit loads of money to get under control and killed many 1000s of Iraqis and soldiers. This also meant that it took much longer than expected to get the oil to market. They just didn't think it through properly, ideology over pragmatism.
You are right though, what's done is done, and the soldiers now need support to try to make the best of it, but they have been badly let down by the decisions of Bush and Blair.
The oil question is a more interesting debate. Imagine if Tony Blair had come on TV and said something like:
Hey guys, sometime in the next decade or so if we keep burning oil the way we are there isn't going to be enough to go round. This is a problem because the way we are set up economic growth is dependant on an increasing supply of oil. But I have a plan, Iraq has got quite large reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia we think, and they are hardly being used. So we should go over there and take their oil fields, get them flowing and take out their leader, he's a nasty piece of work anyway.
That, I think, would have been more honest.
It would have been much better to invest the billions of dollars it cost to fight the war in Iraq in a low carbon economy, Here's a few suggestions:
Build a European supergrid
Invest in concentrated solar power, offshore wind etc.
Invest in electric cars with vehicle to grid technology
Electrify the railways and build more
More research into building renovation and build more affordable homes
Research into new ways to farm productively without petrochemical derived fertilisers
Bringing Iraqi oil online has only delayed the inevitable, probably not by even for that long. Building a low carbon economy now would be much better in the long run, but you are right to question it, I think the turn around will have to be pretty quick. There was a report commissioned by the U.S. Government in 2005 into the consequences of peak oil known as the Hirsch Report after its lead auther Robert Hirsch but called - Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management. It's a pretty dry read as you might imagine but he reckons a crash program would need to be initiated 20 years before a peak to avoid a shortfall in energy supply, and this is not considering climate change so he uses gas to liquid and coal to liquid.
These are also worth a look:
The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK's Energy Future – UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security
Global Oil Depletion: An assessment for the evidence for a near term peak in global oil production – UK Energy Research Centre
Neal and Kate have made my points, in my absence.
Benjamin: if you want Iraqi oil, how about paying for it rather than invading? And yes, weaning ourselves off oil is good environmentally and morally: the less dependent we become on the dictators, the less power they'll have internationally and internally.
As to the Kurds, who gave Saddam the idea of gassing them? Churchill, that's who - shortly after the 1st World War in another Western oil grab.
The point of democratic rule is that actions are undertaken after informed debate: not because one man's beliefs provide an answer. I can believe that the earth's flat but my belief doesn't make it true. Sincerity is NOT a guide to fact. Moreover, as I hope you recall, Blair was told that intelligence on Iraq's WMD was 'sporadic and patchy' yet he told Parliament that it was 'a growing threat' 'beyond doubt'. That's a deliberate lie.
Hussein wasn't a threat to anyone except his own people. Personally, I'd like to overthrow every government which behaves as his does, but it's not going to happen. I'd start with Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Burma, Israel… but it's neither practical nor moral. What happens is that powerful states encourage appalling behaviour by their friends (Apartheid South Africa only lasted as long as the west needed an anti-Communist state in Africa, and plenty of other African and Asian states were bankrolled by one side or the other: don't forget that the West supported Pol Pot because he opposed Vietnam) while using identical 'crimes' as justification for attacking enemy nations.
What gives the UK the right to referee the world's problems like this? Formerly having an Empire? Possessing nuclear weapons? Neither are exactly a sound moral basis for biffing ex-colonial states. Poorer states are not a piggy bank for the west.
Why do you think it's so great to fight for your country? I can see the point of a limited Afghan war: Al-Qaida (trained and initially armed by the UK and the US to ensure that the USSR had its own Vietnam) committed a terrible crime, but it's become yet another colonial war. The UK was defeated in Afghanistan repeatedly in colonial days, and seems not to understand that country any better now. Imposing a discourse of nation states on a society modelled on different lines is misguided to say the least.
When your country has made reparations for slavery, Kenya, the Malaya campaign, Ireland etc. etc. etc., then we'll talk.
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