I don’t know if we’ll ever see a judicial accounting for the atrocity that is Iraq and for the box of horrors we opened there. However, there will at least be an accounting in the court of public opnion; every new fact that is revealed now about British and US leadership lies and obfuscations before the invasion makes that accounting more complete.
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
Tony Blair has been erecting his defence in advance for some time: the first line of defence is ‘he meant well, it was in good faith, he did what he thought was right.’ “I’m a straight kinda guy, you know?” Due to the unfortunate facts that hasn’t worked; so now he’s going with a new and novel defence – I was overwhelmed, it was all too stressful, too much for mere mortal man and anyway Geiorge made me do it. Cue Fawlty Towers’ Manuel – “I know nothing,”.
(Blair’s managed to get Andrew Rawnsley, in what might otherwise be described as a hit-piece, describing Blair’s ‘powerlessness’ in the face of Washington to the Nu Labourati in this morning’s Observer…. spinning, spinning, spinning, right to the end.)
But that defence won’t wash either.
Blair knew, and we have the evidence that he knew, that while he was telling the British people and parliament war was not being considered that war had already been decided upon. Not only were events already in train while Blair mouthed lies at home and abroad, he also knew that the US would do whatever it took to make that war happen illegal or not. HE KNEW.
He knew, because he told his closest aides, that there was no plan for what happened afterwards and that could lead to chaos and deaths, of innocent Iraqis as well as of his own troops,
And he did it anyway.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair’s decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair’s public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
‘Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,’ Mandelson tells The Observer’s chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.
‘But I remember him saying at the time: “Look, you know, I can’t do everything. That’s chiefly America’s responsibility, not ours.”‘ Mandelson then criticises his friend: ‘Well, I’m afraid that, as we now see, wasn’t good enough.’.
He was even offereed a free pass of sorts by Bush and turned it down.
[And it’s Peter Mandelson saying this: why didn’t he speak up at the time? Silly me. he wasn’t European Commsiioner for Trade then and secure in his position. My duh.]
Tony Blair didn’t have to take the country to war on a mission he knew was bogus for reasons he knew were lies, that was likely to kill innocents for no good reason, that his party and the electorate were against, and most of all that was clearly illegal under international law.
He didn’t have to do it. He could’ve said no.
Saying yes meant barefaced lying to Parliament, concerted government storytelling to the media, the subverting of the integrity of an Attorney General to produce a convenient legal opinion and some very nifty footwork indeed with intelligence dossiers. Along the way the institutions of government and the publicly-funded media would need to be be gutted and laid waste, and a civil servant killed, in order to keep up the fiction that Blair’s really just a straight kinda guy and the war justified, But hey, collateral damage and all that. Eggs and omelettes. The New Labour project and Blair’s legacy, that was thing to concentrate on.
I keep butting my head up against one thing: Knowing what he knew the decision to back the US would mean, exactly why did he do it? he calls himself a Christian. moiral man – so what was in his mind when he looked himself in the mirror in the morning he delberately lied to Parliament?
That’s the central question that I keep coming back to.
Is he just evil? Was it blackmail? Was it bribery? Was it a bedrock failure of character and personal morals? Was it some kind of religious decision?
What possible good result could he have been thinking was going to come from it, knowing what he knew? What on earth was going through his head – how could he possibly think that it would all be worth it? It seems unaccountable and mad.
But no, it wasn’t mad: it was a rational decision made by a rational man and he can’t escape responsibility that way, though I’ve no doubt he’ll try the insanity defence too at some point.
Not unaccountable either, if the millions of us who know him for a war criminal have anything to say about it.
I may not have the satisfaction of seeing Blair and his lieutetants in a Den Haag courtroom in my lifetime, but I can at least help ensure his and their names are mud wherever decent people gather, by exposing the war crimes that he and they have so knowingly committed.
There are those commenting on this story who say that it wouldn’t’ve mattered had the UK not backed Bush in Iraq; Iraq still would’ve happened. Yes, it probably would have, but the comdemnation of the plan by the UK, with its vote on the security council could’ve tied up the gung-ho USA in international wrangling for months and enabled the weapons inspectors to do their jobs.
As a postcolonial and imperial power the only real international currency we had was the alleged moral superiority of our political and legal system and an undeserved reputation for reasonability and fair play. Now even those fictions have been ripped away and we are no longer, nor will ever again be regarded as an honest broker in international affairs. We are a shamed nation.
Now there’s talk of Blair pushing Sarkozy to push for Blair to become President of the EU. Do his grandiosity and lust for power and money (though that job’s less power than position) know any bounds?
If there’s ever going to be any sort of national redemption, if we can ever look ourselves in the eye as a nation again, there will have to be a accounting ofl Tony Blair and his then government, and it’s up to us, those who first elected New Labour in 1997 and thus bear no small part of the responsibility, to help make sure that happens.
