The Chilcot report will, I suspect, be the most important news today.
This blog is not about foreign affairs but let me be clear that I was never convinced by any case made for war in Iraq.
Whether or not Tony Blair lied we cannot know. I rather suspect Lord Butler got it right when he said Blair convinced himself, and so could not have lied. But in that case the charge is even bigger, which is a hopeless lack of judgement with, quite literally, fatal consequences.
Either way then whatever Chilcot says I will forever hold Tony Blair responsible for this disastrous war, and all that followed in Iraq, the U.K., our armed forces, for so many families and the body politic.
I am not sure what in 2.6 million words will ever change my opinion on that.
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It was clever of the Americans to use Colin Powell to make the main case for the Iraq war as he had considerable credibility. Of course Blair also was at the height of his power. Nevertheless I was totally unpersuaded; the case was not convincing to me on the balance of probability and let alone beyond reasonable doubt.
My bigger worry was aftermath. At the time Dr Ghanim Putrus (now Prof) an Iraqi Christian from Mosul a colleague and dear friend was absolutely adamant that bad as Saddam was it would be ten time worse if he were removed both for Iraq and the supposed “War on Terror” (always hated that phrase). In short Iraq would disintegrate and international terrorism would be vastly increase. I’m not sure if even he predicted how bad it would be with IS in charge of his home city.
I left the Labour Party in disgust. What annoys me most is Blair’s lack of repentance – possibly my Catholic upbringing. Maybe I’ll be more forgiving after the report but I doubt it. I try to think Cognitive Bias but I expected better.
Spot on.
I’ve just read ‘Blair & Iraq’ by Steve Richards who talks about the missing third but crucial theory of why Blair went into Iraq. According to Richards, Blairs character will not be discussed in the Chilcot report and so misses the crucial question: Why did Blair support the US administration in its desire to remove Saddam?
A very interesting read about a PM who showed little to no interest in the Middle East before coming to power in 1997. A PM who morphed from a man obsessed with being popular with everyone, to becoming neutrally indifferent. One obsession that never stopped throughout his term in office was his close relation ship with Clinton and even closer relationship with a markedly right wing Republican president.
This book looks into the mind of an MP who typically followed obsessive patterns of behavior which not only steered his approach to leadership, strategy and policy making but his need to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bush on the war in Iraq.
On Blair’s character, it is not vey well known that he, as a barrister, defended a company who employed home workers who were claiming unfair dismissal.
“This case is also notable in that it was one of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s last cases as a young barrister. He acted for the employers. He appeared in the Employment Appeal Tribunal on behalf of the employer but his arguments to deny the ladies unfair dismissal rights were emphatically rejected in the judgment. The employers also lost in the Court of Appeal.”
see:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethermere_(St_Neots)_Ltd_v_Gardiner
Could we argue here he was simply taking on a job froma professional perspective? I suggest we see an opportunist destined to become the King of fees for after dinner speeches.
It’s called the bus stop principle – you take the next job in the queue
Simon, interesting to note that the last edition of Private Eye (1421) reprinted an excerpt from a letter sent to the then Labour leader Michael Foot in 1982, in which the author praised Tony Benn for being ‘”quite right in saying that the right wing of the party is politically bankrupt”‘ and urged Foot to ‘”indicate firmly that you believe the party needs radical, socialist policies.”‘
The author of the letter subsequently became leader of the Labour Party. Corbyn? No. Tony Blair!
Simon,
I have to agree with Richard’s observation here, though it is more commonly known as the “cab rank principle” (though, actually, “the bus stop principle” would actually be better, given that, as young barristers know, you can wait for ages for a case to turn up, and then three turn up together!).
According to the principle, a barrister MUST accept a case within his or her expertise. Of course, if several DO turn up, the barrister CAN choose, but if only one is offered, he or she must accept, and do his/her best for the client, irrespective of personal feelings.
To do otherwise would be for the barrister to substitute his/her opinions for those of the Court, where the merits of the case will be heard and adjudged accordingly.
Of course, there are wrinkles to this simple principle, one of which is the barrister’s relationship with his/her clerk, who will know his/her barrister well, and have a shrewd idea of that barrister’s strengths, weaknesses and preferences. But the simple fact is that a barrister cannot refuse a brief on the basis of his/her views on the client.
Were such refusals permitted, no one would have appeared for the Moors murderers, so that no testing of the evidence against them would have been possible. I have to say, though, that, even had I been a criminal barrister at the time, I would have found it hard to accept that brief.
Leo Abse, a Labour MP, wrote a book in 1996 about Blair from a rather freudian angle. What I remember is that he felt Blair wished to avoid conflict and be popular. Abse felt politics was about a struggle for what one wished to achieve. Abse also thought Blair was more concerned with style than substance.
I wonder did Blair enjoy the ‘Churchill’ view of himself, standing up for democracy against oppression, having to exclude the reality of an ill pre-pared invasion and its consequences, which British experts did warn him about?
The hard path would have been to told Bush, no participation in the the invasion with no plan of occupation. Thatcher would have done that, and I am no fan of hers. He chose not to. Was he seeking approval from the biggest kid on the block? national leaders are subject to the same drives as the rest of us.
Dr. Norman Dixon’s ‘Psychology of Military Incompetence’ is a great read. The incompetence he explains does not just apply to the military.
PM not MP!
‘I will forever hold Tony Blair responsible for this disastrous war, and all that followed in Iraq’
Likewise, Richard, only I’d go further and suggest this was part of a series of interventions that was essentially about neo-liberal expropriation of resources starting with Yugoslavia.
Libya was a copy-cat job-I will never forget that great chocolate teapot of politicians, Ed Milliband, standing up in the House saying that Libya was ‘not geo-political’. What??!!
Blair (the Deutsche Bank kid) is part of this pattern of neo-liberal resource expropriation-and the man considers himself some sort of Christian, ye gawds! If there ever was an argument for evidence of the Anti-Christ I’d say it was him (interpreting it in a Post-Modern way of course).
Too true Simon. I have recently been re-reading Grag Palast’s ‘Armed Madhouse’ which comprehensively dismisses the ‘insufficient planning’ arguments that I’m sure we’ll be hearing more of today.
The plans were extensive and detailed – they just focused on the expropriation of the country’s resources (hundreds of pages on new copyright laws etc).
For a humorous and serious take on it:
Jonathon Pie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O2Hfx8Xggg
For those not familiar with Jonathan Pie I suggest watching – very good indeed
I disagree Richard, it’s the same old stuff we’ve been hearing for years, unoriginal in the extreme, delivered to all appearances by a smug and self-righteous prig. Also, hang on, JP says Blair is responsible for 500,000 dead. He killed them. Is that everyone who has died in Iraq since the US invasion of Iraq? Or everyone who has died in the Middle East, in Syria and elsewhere? All Blair’s fault? (And the Arab Spring? Is that Blair’s fault too?) The Brits were in Basra, on the coast. Iraq was invaded and then occupied by the Americans. The Americans made mistakes and the Iraqis started fighting each other. All the important decisions were taken by the Americans and the Iraqis, not forgetting their Sunni and Shi-ite supporters in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Where were the British? Making their own mess in Basra, miles from the main action.
To heap all the blame for the Bush administration’s failures and the civil wars between the Iraqis onto Blair seems stretching it a bit. Is there a sort of quasi-colonial self-importance going on here? It must all be our fault because we are so massively important – “Britain’s Role in the World”, etc? As I see it, the British role was marginal at most, if not completely irrelevant. A minor player of little importance. A lot of posing for the audience at home, yes. Significant role, no.
The Iraq War was the decision of the Bush administration. The only decision the UK had to make was whether to tag along or break up the western alliance which has been the basis of European security since the Second World War. Unsurprisingly the UK government decided to tag along, unavoidably really after the Germans and French had got out of it and the UK was the only one of the big three left to keep the alliance alive. Remember this is less than 2 years after 9/11, the US administration is problematic, to say the least, full of hawkish boneheads, and the US is in a heightened state of emotional nationalist fervour. Not a sensible time to put in question the stability of the relationship between the US and Europe. As we have found since Brexit, it’s better to maintain stability inside imperfect collaborative structures than to break them up needlessly.
Anyone who imagines that the UK could have persuaded Bush and his advisers to abandon their plans to invade Iraq is not seeing clearly. You may feel it’s a disgrace that we were associated with such a mess, but that’s not the same as being responsible for it. As I see it there is no way Blair could have avoided supporting the US. That the US failed was not his failure, and the consequences of that failure should not be laid at his door. As for “killing” 500,000 people, that’s trolling, not commentary. JP accuses Blair of lying – the pot calling the kettle black maybe?
We may need a drink over that one
Call me!
The contrast with Jeremy Corbyn is significant.
Even if we accept the charitable view that Blair allowed himself to be swayed by the available evidence and didn’t lie outright, its still clear that he failed to exercise anything like good enough judgment taking the country into a calamitous war that has had major repercussions.
Chilcot should be severe on him.
For me, Blair’s problem is that he sees the world in a very Christian-oriented, good-v-evil light. Star Wars is not a documentary, but he seems to think a tyranny can be tidily ended by a big explosion.
Sounds like the Evangelical notion of ‘The Rapture’ In Blair’s case, it is more like the ‘Raptor.’
See:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2462892/Tony-Blairs-Iraq-selfie-new-exhibition-Imperial-War-Museum.html
Well having watched Chilcot’s summary on tv, and not having had the opportunity to read any of the detail in the report which will no doubt be drip fed out over the next few days/weeks, my initial observations are:
1. Bush and his closest advisers (on this issue clearly dictatorial against the will of the United Nations and intent on regime change with little concern for the consequences)
2. Blair and his closest advisers (on this issue clearly puppets of the Bush administration and dictatorial in their approach to bypassing International and UK laws, procedure and common sense morality)
3. An apparent endorsement of the need to have the legality of the Bush/Blair (and others) decision to take both countries to war against another sovereign state, decided upon within an appropriate international tribunal.
£10,375,000 spent on it (The inquiry). Not bad, I suppose. Perhaps Blair, in the spirit of Christian Charity could cover this from his loose change? Might improve his image, a smidgen?
He could ask Halliburton to pay. It’s a small “cost of doing business” considering the profits that ensued. Cheney could put his hand in his pocket…
I watched some of Blair’s own press conference before turning off the box in dismay. His arguments seem to boil down to:
1. It was his decision, based on the facts available at the time (actually it was Parliament’s decision based on a very dubious presentation of very questionable facts presented by Blair and his team)
2. The US had already decided to go to war against Iraq, so he had to decide whether to support our oldest ally (hardly a good reason to take the UK into a possibly illegal war)
3. Saddam had a long track record of WMD and having used them in the past (sadly he failed to mention where, when and how he got much of the WMD technology and that the fact that primary nation to have used nuclear and chemical WMD in war and have the largest stockpiles is the USA)
4. After 9/11 it was essential to stamp out terrorism and their source of WMD (well what a failure that has been, if that was the reason there would have been a much greater political and diplomatic effort to avoid war and much more extensive post-war planning and committment to avoid destroying and then having to try to re-build a shattered nation state.)
At which point I gave up and can only hope that some International court can be established to put both Bush and Blair on trial so that the public of both nations can be certain in future that their leaders will adhere to International law and not make it up as they go along for their own personal, political, religious or whatever other reasons.
Always worth reading Craig Murray at these times:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/07/the-truth-about-chilcot/
I’m currently reading Bower’s book ‘Broken Vows’ and although the writer is no fan of Labour at all, I think his portrait of Blair is compelling and comes closer to explaining how Iraq came about more than anything else I have read.
The portrait – bizarrely – is this: a man who tired very quickly of having to work with fellow LP politicians on the minutiae of policy in order to get things done his way – someone who seemed to eschew detail over end results. Someone who had very little idea of the intellectual traditions of the party he led.
A person who in the end lost interest in his own country and began to see himself as a world statesman of some kind and began to delude himself he was one just because George Bush told everyone he was a ‘great guy’.
I’ve read a lot about Iraq – past and present. Ancient Persia was way ahead of Great Britain technically and socially at a time when we thought we had it good when we were digging raw turnips out of the ground to eat. And look at what we have done to it? Even Saddam was considered an ally of the West at one time.
As I’ve said before, I am not religious and I do not really believe in Heaven and Hell. But Blair is apparently a full-on Catholic. Because of the pain and suffering he has helped to bring to Iraq, I do not believe his spirit will take an upward journey upon his death. Blair’s crime is worse than anything Shakespeare could have dreamt up for Macbeth; the fictional Scotsman had blood on his hands. Blair meanwhile is sitting in a bath of it and he does not even realise. And the bath is still being filled even now with outrage after outrage.
Say what you like about Harold Wilson, but he kept us out of Vietnam.
If I met Blair, I’d tell him to his face that his God would be judging him and that technically , he was doomed. He must be made to face up to what he has done somehow.
And as for Bush Jnr, Chaney, Wolfowitz, Perle & Rumsfeld – they are all beyond redemption as far as I am concerned. The lowest of the low to a man.
Blair’s decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Chilcot has laid that bare. I am sorry it happened and I hope future leaders will think twice before leading their nations into a foreign war.
Yet the inability of Blair and his advisors to accept their error of judgement and apologise should make us pause and reflect. Why can they not see the truth when confronted with it? It is because Blair has thought so long and hard over the decision that it has swamped his mindset, and blinded him to other points of view. He had to make a decision, and in his mind that justifies himself. No course of action is perfect. There are good and bad consequences of each, and he chose what he thought was the best thing to do.
The problem is that he is biased, because of his fixation on the decision, and inability to see the long term consequences of his action. Leaders do need to make decisions, and unfortunately it is not possible to eliminate this kind of bias, however much they would like to try. But a good leader should be aware of his or her own bias, and exercise sound judgement based on all the regulations and evidence available. Good faith is not enough, because one has a responsibility towards others.
If Blair were to apologise now that would make me very happy. But I will not be calling for his head. We have seen enough blood already.
Blair has a lot to apologies for besides the Iraq war:
1) Contributing to the final transformation of Labour into ‘Tory Lite’
2) supporting the grotesque rise of private debt and PFI
3) Supporting a disastrous housing bubble (despite Brown saying he would not allow it!)
The problem is he see’s all this as ‘Opus Dei’ , the work of God.
I don’t want his head either DavidB but here is a man who has made a terrible mistake of judgement – not just in his decisions but also in that he has chosen NOT to speak or listen to (quite deliberately I might add) people who had more sense.
Yet he walks around the world with impunity, adding to his huge wealth in the process. And for what?
The fact that the British Army was not in a fit state to go to Iraq and Blair sent us in unprepared because the Americans wanted to get on with it smacks of pure weakness and vanity.
My anger at this is fuelled by the fact that my company raised money for Help for Heroes for whole year in 2015. We raised a substantial sum.
We have met physically and psychologically maimed ex-soldiers who have told us some harrowing stories about the lack of equipment and even tactics to make the Iraq occupation work after the invasion.
We’ve seen blokes in wheelchairs without limbs because of under-armed vehicles or a shortage of bomb disposal experts and equipment. We’ve heard stories of men losing friends because of the shortage of desert battle dress (when you wear the green battle dress of Northern Europe in a desert, you are an easy target for a sniper).
All of this and more reeks of incompetence. Blair builds up his wealth and totes himself around like some sage of peace and dispute resolution. And yet our communities are now filled with damaged men and women from the ill equipped and briefed army he put there.
And in Iraq there is no peace and there has not been for 13 years.
I don’t want his head or his blood but I want him in a court indicted for going to war without justification and for also not carrying out his duty of care to ensure that his army was in a fit state to do what he asked of it. And this was a Labour government.
He has to be made accountable. His reputation has to be (shall we say) ‘realigned’ with the truth. He must be made unmarketable in world diplomatic circles. And then we can tell him politely to go away and shut up so he can enjoy his wealth and stop pretending to be a great statesman – because he is not one and never has been.
And finally we have to realise that in the PLP are other political opportunists like Blair and they must not be allowed to take hold of the Labour party ever again.
@PSR
I would not place a bar before him appearing in the courts of justice.
My only comment is that we must have due regard to the proper process, and heed all the available relevant evidence, so that we are not guilty of the same kind of rash judgement as he.
‘He must be made unmarketable in world diplomatic circles. And then we can tell him politely to go away and shut up so he can enjoy his wealth and stop pretending to be a great statesman — because he is not one and never has been.’
Well put: he could carry on giving after-dinner speeches at dodgy clubs for the wealthy to stop him getting too bored.
part of me (a not nice part) would have quite liked the introduction of the stocks so that the public could express there displeasure with full-to-the-brim chamber pots and rotten fruit) but then I returned to my more enlightened state a moment later.
I’m sure there are many thousands of disturbing details still to emerge from the Chilcot report, this one on the pre and post war discussions and planning for dividing up the spoils of the Iraqi oilfields I find extremely disconcerting (but sadly not surprising) especially when it appears there was so little thought given to the future of the country and its people as a whole.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/07/us-and-britain-wrangled-over-iraqs-oil-in-aftermath-of-war-chilcot-shows
Strange that we discuss this as if Britain is the biggest superpower and Blair the most powerful man in the world. Why is nobody demanding that George W Bush and his advisers are indicted as war criminals? Nobody discusses the equal guilt of the Tory party in the vote for war?
Blair’s defence is arrogant, and you would think he could add that the US was going to war at a certain time regardless of whether it had British support. He could make the defence that British help contributed to a swifter and more decisive victory. 120 British deaths may have saved a larger number of US or other coalition deaths, and maybe led to fewer Iraqi deaths than in a more protracted war.
Yes, Corbyn was right and Blair wrong, but surely it was not always obvious that replacing Saddam Hussein would lead to something worse.
Robin Cook’s resignation speech is strong evidence that the reasons for war were fabricated by both Bush and Blair. It will be interesting to see whether Blair is brought before the house to answer charges of misleading it or “malfeasance in public office”.
Anyway, no need for hindsight when so many in that place ignored those with foresight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9CqiiI2Irg