Tony Blair insists that the world is safer now, after the war in Iraq, than it was before. What planet is he living on? Saddam Hussein was a vicious tyrant, who had no compunctions about killing his own people, but he never had ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The suggestion that he could have attacked London “within 45 minutes” was a fantasy, a fabrication. Weapons inspectors searched the country for WMD, and found none, yet Bush and Blair refused to listen and continued to mobilise the troops.
Bush’s call to arms was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 (he either didn’t know the difference between militant Islamists and secular Ba’athists… or he knew but didn’t care). And Blair’s support for Bush was precipitate and unquestioning. In a letter to the president, in 2002, he promised “I will be with you, whatever". This wasn't just "my country right or wrong"; it was "our special relationship right or wrong". Blair hitched his wagon to the wrong star: a man who was proud of his ignorance...
No comments:
Post a Comment