Tony Blair thought that Iraq would be Labour's Falklands.
I’ve never liked Tony Blair. Never have, never will. I guess
to me, Tony Blair is a bit like a British Hillary Clinton, minus the breasts,
of course. He just gives me this feeling that something just isn’t quite right
about him. The smile, the gestures, the character. He just seems a bit off. And
I’m not doubting that in his time he was a very credible politician, his
charisma, his charm, it clearly won a lot of people over. But during the time I
was old enough to actually have an opinion on him, it was never favourable.
I’m not saying that everything he did was bad, no, he passed
a lot of highly constructive legislation. However, I never had the feeling that
what he did was out of principle, more out of faux pas attempt to appease the
masses, I’ve never liked that, never have never will.
Yes, it’s better than having someone who is principally a
bad person. But saying Tony Blair is
better than, say, George Osborne, is like saying the common cold is better than
swine flu: they’re still both illnesses you really don’t want to deal with.
Then came Chilcot, and everything most people knew about the
Iraq War was confirmed. Blair had manipulated and been rather uninformed, I
don’t have enough free time to read thousands of pages unless someone’s paying.
Which, unfortunately, they’re not.
Tony Blair and plenty of his allies came out and said that
there were ‘no lies’ however, I’d like to quote Piers Morgan: “If I sell you
my car and claim it's perfectly safe, but don't show you existing paperwork
suggesting the brakes might be faulty, that's not technically a 'lie' either.
But it's a serious, wilful omission of detail which can have catastrophic,
lethal consequences.”
Tony Blair knew he was uninformed, but acted like he wasn’t
and completely knew what he was doing, with the backing of the Tories and my
all time favourite media mogul: Murdoch, all creating this image that he was
the missionary to rescue the Iraqi people.
He wasn’t. Hussein’s army was finished in barely any time at all, we
were left with no exit strategy and pretty much deserted them with an anarchy
and a scattershot army. This subsequently provided the roots for numerous
groups who have spread terror across the Eastern world.
There’s no doubting that Saddam was an evil dictator who had
committed some awful atrocities, but compare it to the chaos today… nothing
like it. Not even close. Why would we rush in? Well, in my opinion, it was
Blair’s own narcissistic ploy to have himself written into the history books,
much aligned to Thatcher’s affair with
the Falklands, just with a very different result. He wanted to be this Great British patriot, but patriotism begins at home, Tony Blair went out into Iraq with his armies, artillery and false pride, however, all he returned with was an increased terror threat on our own soil.
A ridiculous idea in hindsight, but with all his allies and
friends to tell him he was in the right who was to say otherwise? That 1.5
million strong march was ‘fatuous’ in his view. He was floating on his own
cloud of self-appointed sanctity, I’m relieved we’ve finally brought him back
down to earth.
What now? He’ll probably skulk his way through a few
interviews and fade into the background, only time will tell. I’d be very
surprised if he was actually reprimanded for his actions, politicians work on a
different level than the law. That’s the sad truth.
But what can we do? He’s made enough wealth to cover for all
this and he I doubt he will ever pay the full price for what he’s done, one can
only hope that lessons are learned from this very sobering disaster of an
intervention.
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