“and then executed in the most painful lingering way possible”

No he shouldn’t – that is just barbaric. Try to get him prosecuted if you think that he’s committed war crimes. I’d be interested to know how far you get.

I don’t agree with what’s he’s done with the NHS either.

The measured tones of the rest of your post aside; Tony Blair has no effect on the Scottish NHS.

I don’t agree with what’s he’s done with the NHS either.

I had heard of the famous Chicago speech. Where our Tony addressed a lot of, err, Americans?

Blair needed to address us, clearly and directly. Even his Chicago speech made points that have not been actioned, for instance:

“Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away once the fight is over; better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances with large numbers.”

If that was a criteria, and it ought to have been in both Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing you need a plan and then failing to apply your own yardstick to an intervention is having your cake and eating it.

The ‘why’ for Blair may well have been for the reasons you outline, but failure to meet any sort of Responsibility to Protect criteria, specifically in relation to the outcomes, suggests that the only criteria he really considered was the last one you mention, ‘to support the Americans through thick and thin’.

A government that is going to be a party to war, that squares it’s own internal legal position, is hardly what I was getting at. If Spain, for instance, decided to annex Gibraltar say, would you view an internal Spanish document as legitimising the subsequent war? Of course you wouldn’t.

On your last point, I agree that the failure to follow through in ’91 was a complete utter disaster for Western foreign policy. It’s what you get when you have short termists running government.

What Blair failed to do was have the courage of his convictions and put the case for humanitarean intervention to the fore rather then the narrow – and highly suspect – WMD case which took centre stage.

The Why for Blair was about human rights, the mistakes of the past – i.e. we owed the Iraqi people for letting them hang in 91 and the fear of what another ten years of sanctions woudl do to the country plus the need to support the Americans through thick and thin.

If it was all just about Oil we could have just lifted sanctions and bought SH off.

Arming the Opposition – I think we blew that play in 91 unforts. The heart was ripped out of Shia Civil Society and it has not really recovered since.

Having said that the US was never in the mood to try anything subtle. Twats.

Fair point, I often wonder the same. I guess if you hear the propaganda long enough without an effective counter (thanks SWP for running the Stop The War Coalition into the ground…) then it becomes easy to believe them?

I think Blairs autobiography will cover the interegnum between GW1 and GW2 in a lot of detail. I expect him to say he had sleepless nights over the million odd excess deaths that the sanctions regieme was causing. I expect him to say that he felt for the common Iraqi citizen.

In other words, he’ll spin it. It’s what he does.

It is odd how quickly people forget that there was no good legal reason for the invasion, at the time, and that all the nation building and democratic stuff only came much later. I have never understood, exactly, why he took us into that war. It is certainly not out in the public prints.

If the desire was to overthrow Saddam Hussein, arming the internal resistance would have seemed a better option. The Yanks are very, very good at that sort of thing.

You know something we don’t?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6610623.stm

Mr Blair will still be PM @ Christmas.

Except that wasn’t the theory. The war was sold on the lie about WMDs, when the lie was exposed (along with several dossiers of idiocy) the propaganda shifted to “removing a dictator”…

The question these days is how to spend large amounts of public money and not whether there should be investment in public services – a decisive gain for working class types like myself.

Even Iraq was a good idea in theory – take down fascist* dictator etc – let down by severely incompetant Allies etc.

Without Iraq he wouldn’t have half the unpopularity he has now, thats for sure!

Anyways, all in all 7/10 (including a 10/10 for effort but let down by a 6/10 for outcomes)

*At least Blair, unlike a worrying % of the Left/Centre Left can actually spot a genuine hard right fascist and confront them. Thats harder then just shouting ‘Bliar’ or ‘Bushitler’ and going back to comfortable existance.

TCH

You should read Assassin’s Gate, Fiasco and even Bob Woodward’s third book. The catastrophe is more than just a lack of interest in nation building. It’s different parts of the US government pursuing their own agendas – some of which may have included a strong desire to do something sensible – conflicting with eachother, all the while lead by a deeply uncurious President with no interest in asking questions as to what was going on.

It’s unacceptable

With Cook and Mo dead, Straw and Blunkett discredited, there is no one sufficiently famous to ‘lead’ against the tories apart from dour Brown (who is as much an architect of New Labour’s timidity as Blair).

If Blair hasd simply followed the logic of the first time, and shooed in regional assemblies (a la GLA ) on England elected by PR, (reducing the number of Westminster MPs in turn) we’d have a recipie to keep the latent English Tory tendancy penned into the petty minded parts of the South where it belongs.

As it is, the devolution acts in themseleves plus the election wins more than stand as a legacy of sorts. Such a pity he had to get into bed with a weird Republicanclique with no interest in nation building.