The Guardian view on the Chilcot report: a country ruined, trust shattered, a reputation trashed | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian
As always in matters of military aggression, the humane perspective has to start with the victims. Since the US-led, UK-backed invasion of Iraq in 2003, estimates of the lives lost to violence vary from a quarter of a million to 600,000. The number of injured will surely be several times that, and the number of men, women and children displaced from their homes is put at between 3.5 and 5 million, somewhere between one in 10 and one in six of the population.
And Blair’s response, spinny as ever, begins with this: “The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit. Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.”
Actually, the report lays none of that to rest. In fact it does quite the opposite. Blair’s defence seems to be that “no one knew the dangers”. No one knew the intelligence might be faulty. Excuse me, but I seem to remember quite an outcry at the time. Remember Robin Cook’s resignation speech from the Blair government?
Or Chirac being interviewed by Amanpour:
“The threshold for war should always be high…” Truest thing a politician has ever said. Blair can delude himself as much as he wants, but history already knows the Iraq war was at best, a terrible mistake, and at worst a gross act of ego by men of arrogance and ambition. That includes Dubya and Australia’s own Grey Man, John Howard.
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And Aznar of Spain… Remember the Azores summit?
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Sadly, there’s never a shortage of hands when egotists are needed. 😦
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I watched Blair’s press conference in full yesterday. It seemed to me he set up a Straw Man argument against Chilcot and his detractors – where would Iraq be now had the wars not happened? No one can answer that definitively. Clever.
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I watched it too. Wasn’t that outrageous! I was screaming at the television. ***If we hadn’t gone to war with Iraq, who knows what could have happened, aliens might have come down and destroyed the country! Floods and disease might have decimated the population.***
I mean, seriously- how did they let him get away with that?
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https://twitter.com/JohnnyChilcot
😄
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Blair must realise his reputation is now in tatters. He’ll be doing whatever he can to salvage it, but no one will trust him.
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And it’s about time!
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In 1991 the U.S. decided to not remove Hussein because they feared a sectarian civil war would result.
In the 2000s the U.S. decided it could not leave Iraq because it was in the middle of a sectarian civil war and was afraid Iraq would end up a failed state.
In the 2010s the U.S. left Iraq and now it is a a failed state.
The outcomes were always predictable. Older politicians who fought WW2 and the Cold War were realists. Their successors are ideologues.
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Which works best?
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You left out some important parts. Like how in 1991 the U.S. was forced to stick with Hussein because our diplomats blundered and said, “Okay” when he asked if he could fly his helicopters over his southern provinces. He slaughtered the people that would have replaced him, and so the best choice became leaving him in power.
Then there’s the matter of your beloved realists who trained this dude named Bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight Soviets because, really, what could possibly go wrong?
Oh, and if Iraq’s a failed state, someone needs to tell them to stop their offensive against ISIS in their territory.
Or maybe you got your idealogues and realists backwards.
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