fronkis

Blair would have invaded Iraq on any excuse? Indict him for war crimes

I have several points, so I guess I’ll respond in-line to your post:

brokenbottleboy:

Tony Blair has admitted in an interview with Fern Britton (of all people!) to be broadcast tomorrow that he would have still acted to remove Saddam Hussein even without the excuse of weapons of mass destruction. He says:

“I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat. I can’t really think we’d be better off with him and his two sons in charge.”

He goes on to explain that Hussein was “a threat to the region” having used chemical weapons agains his own people.

Blair has always argued that Iraq and the region would be better off without Hussein but his justification for military action was the now largely discredited evidence on WMDs within the country. His change in stance is obviously in advance of his appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry into the War In Iraq.

Documents currently being scrutinised by that inquiry show Blair was in favour of and planning a war with Iraq for months before the invasion and that discussions with the US predate the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. It is becoming more and more clear (as if we were fooled in the first place) that WMDs were an excuse for a pre-existing policy, the faked trigger for an unprovoked war of aggression.

Blair was told by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, in July 2002 that “the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action”, so the UK and the US worked to create a justification. That was the WMD smokescreen. A Cabinet Office document from July 2002 says that Tony Blair told George Bush that the UK “would support military action to bring about regime change providing…efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion…”

I do agree that we were sold the wrong reason to go into Iraq.  WMD was a shit excuse.  Had we been sold, “We’re going into Iraq to remove a dictator with a horrific human rights record” (and had appropriately spelled out his record on the world stage) I would have wholly been behind that.

One of the biggest political mistakes of the late 20th century was the decision not to take Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War. The international community had the opportunity to end his reign (which it had previously propped up with arms and funds in the Iran/Iraq War). It did not and by the time of the second Gulf War, it had no right to attempt to.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney correctly posited that the taking of Baghdad would result in a multi-year occupation of Iraq that the United States did not wish to enter into. It was correctly viewed that it would be expensive and unpopular with the American people as we had just flexed our might in a decisive military victory in only 100 days. Stretching the operation into a multi-year effort where we already had international backing and could then pursue sanctions and peace keepers as a method of checks and balance did not make sense.

Yes, hindsight is always 20/20 and we did not know that Hussein would be so sneaky to skirt sanctions, the sanctions would not be too light, and that the UN Food for Oil program would be so horrifically corrupt, but at the time, it made sense.

Iraq at the time of the invasion was a relatively stable, secular state, hemmed in by the no-fly zone and the (controversial) sanctions policies. I would never argue that Hussein was anything but a disgusting dictator and war criminal but our time to remove him had passed.

So you’re saying there’s a statute of limitations on genocide? On torture? On terrorism on your own people?

It was a decision that Iraq’s people should have taken with support from the international community. We should have fostered support for opposition movements and aided the underground.

We did. They were crushed by Saddam in about a month.

The invasion was a badly planned show of force by a cowboy and his wannabe British buddy.

I firmly believe that if anyone other than Donald Rumsfeld would have been SECDEF at the time, we would already be out of Iraq. Dick Cheney or Casper Weinberger would have done splendidly and provided the overwhelming forces needed for such an operation. Iraq did not become a relatively stable area of operation until the surge at the end of President Bush’s second term.

The unprovoked war of aggression has destabilised and radicalised Iraq and increased tension in the Middle East. It has made us into occupiers. We may have arrived to cheers but we now find ourselves facing hundreds of coffins arriving every day as we attempt to wage war on two fronts against an enemy that doesn’t not fear death.

Actually, casualties in Iraq are at their lowest points as we’ve secured most areas and have had the Iraqis taking over operations. Afghanistan continues to be the difficult theater and hopefully with 30,000 more troops, a similar situation to Iraq in the past 24 months will prevail.  Though, I do think more than 30,000 are required. Please be clear in that “hundreds of coffins” do not arrive every day. There has *never* been a day where 100 coffins arrived. That is simply a way to emotionalize your argument with a figure that’s clearly not accurate.

The government we helped to install in Iraq is factional and corrupt, not some group of bright-eyed nation builders.

And mine and yours isn’t? Let’s not be all high and mighty and pretend that our given governments are perfect. The important part is that a democratic process of some sort is working its way out. My government was started from scratch and has had a good period to evolve. Your government has evolved over a long long time. This is the first time in 24 years that Iraq has had any form of government other than a dictatorship. It will take time to figure it out.

Blair is now able to flex and pose on the world stage as a statesman and The Quartet’s peace envoy. He should be on trial with George Bush for waging an illegal war. We cannot hold leaders from the third world up to standards that we will not apply to our own political classes.

Sir John Sawers, Blair’s former chief foreign policy adviser is now head of MI6. He told the Chilcot inquiry this week that Iraq was just one of several countries where Britain would have advocated regime change. Discussions took place in Whitehall surround methods of political action to undermine Hussein including an indictment for war crimes. Now it’s time that happened to Blair.

I think it’s a bit difficult to compare Bush and Blair to Hussein. Yes, both have done some boneheaded things and sold us the wrong reason to get into Iraq (though in the long term, I believe the region to be better without Hussein). Bush and Blair are not guilty of smiting uprisings with unwielding brutality. Bush and Blair are not guilty of gassing religious sects that don’t align with their own. Bush and Blair are not guilty of starving their own people by siphoning off money earned in a corrupt UN program for their own use.

He may have been dreaming of a move to Brussels to become the President of Europe but with those hopes dashed, we could still send him down the road to the Hague but this time in one of those orange jumpsuits favoured by Guantanamo Bay instead of an expensive Paul Smith suit. 1000,000 marched on the streets of London against the Iraq War and they were ignored. How long will we tolerate our leaders continuing to perpetrate wars based on lies that leave us less safe than we have ever been?

I’m not saying war is the answer and that we didn’t get a shitty bill of sale on getting into Iraq. I just think your characterizations of Bush and Blair in relation to the atrocities of *real* war criminals like Hitler, Milosevic and Hussein are a little unfair.