Yet even today as Sir John Chilcot read his half hour statement to a baffled audience, Tony Blair was unrepentant: ‘I believe we made the right decision’. In the aftermath of tenure as UK’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair made millions in a similar fashion as the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation. Clair and Clinton are a product of the same era of politics in the 1990s and they are so wrong on foreign policy and choosing the same Arab regimes of the Gulf States as their close friends. After Iraq, both parties set the nest steps towards Libya and Syria. The chaos these people wrecked, unbelievable. Next chapter Clinton II.
Most fortunate that after Brexit and the UK’s alienation from mainland Europe, the Chilcot report on Iraq Inquiry will lead for a political split of the British people with the politics from across the Atlantic. Great Britain, an island adrift in a self-inflicted wound by Eton elitists. Unsurprising as the EU referendum showed so very clearly, the City of London outside the reality of everyday life of people from Mainstreet. It’s another step towards a Revolution on Inequality in the Western world.
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.
…The 2.6m words of his report will necessarily take much longer to digest, but the defining sting was conveyed in just six words penned by Tony Blair himself, in a letter to Mr Bush in July 2002 – “I will be with you, whatever”.
…Politics demeaned
Meanwhile, as Jack Straw and top officials would plot in private for how to secure a UN seal of approval for a course that was already set, Mr Blair protested in public that he was pursuing a “diplomatic solution”. There was diplomacy, all right, but it was diplomacy aimed at licensing war. When even this failed, the final cabinet discussions were less concerned with the real looming battle, than about the PR war with the French. For any progressive internationalist, and Mr Blair was once one, the most damning of all Sir John’s verdicts is that the result of the invasion was not – as was claimed – to uphold the authority of the UN, but instead to undermine it.
The gap between the public and the private rationale fed the mistrust which has since – amplified by the banking and MPs’ expenses crises – fuelled the Brexit vote. The whole conduct of politics in Britain was demeaned, but the highest price was paid on the left. The otherwise unthinkable ascent of Jeremy Corbyn occurred, prompting Labour’s lapse into civil war. Many Labour MPs are still struggling to understand it. As they do so, they should reflect on the cool rage of Mr Corbyn, who always opposed the war, in the chamber on Wednesday, and contrast it with the complacent tone adopted by David Cameron, who originally voted in favour.
Mr Blair’s impulse to trot alongside a know-nothing cowboy might reflect a deep need to bury the CND badge of his youth and earn some muscular respectability. Mr Corbyn’s ascent is the most ironic of the consequences of his historic mistake. But by far the most serious are still being played out far away – on the streets of Iraq.
From my diaries ….
○ Do Recall World Begging Uncle Sam … – Feb. 2011
○ Saudi King Abdullah: “… no other option but WAR” – June 2006
Damn. hate to see those villains on my computer screen again … even Stephen Hadley, architect of Obama’s overthrow of Assad in Syria.
I’m always optimistic, will lessons be learned? The US media is pretty screwed up already spinning the Chilcot’s scathing report on the decision to go to war. CNN’s mistress of deceit Amanpour inviting the first of a serie of neo-conservatives to discuss the report’s conclusions and advise for future debate in Whitehall. Just watched the start of her interview with former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.
○ Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Offers a Prescription for Success | Atlantic Council – April 2016 |
○ Townhall Meeting Ms Clinton with CNN’s Amanpour by Oui @BooMan on June 21st 2014
No surprise here, both Amanpour and Ms Clinton are advocates for neocon foreign policy and were trying to outdo each other. What expression is used when two women are in a contest of being more hawkish? I checked the transcript how often the progressive word peace was used during the long interview and Q&A session … just once as in ‘peace of mind.’
Obama as commander-in-chief and rogue generals:
○ Breedlove’s war: emails show ex-NATO general plotting US conflict with Russia
The buck stops at the President’s desk in the Oval Office of the White House.
Posted earlier in my latest diary – British Empire Report: Its 179 Deaths In Focus [Update].
That’s what the Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry concluded. Will lessons be learned? It will effect the relationship of not only the UK , but of all leading nations with the US.
○ The Iraq Inquiry – Statement by Sir John Chilcot: 6 July 2016
“But in this case Mr Blair did not regard the British people but the US president as the boss. He would occasionally let slip to his voters ‘I’m afraid I believe in it‘, as if that assertion was a substitute for argument.
Seeing as he was in reality monstrously wrong, this certitude had dire consequences. The faith-based failure to plan for the invasion’s aftermath, rightly damned in trenchant terms by Sir John, was the most catastrophic for the Iraqi people, and indeed for the British service personnel in harm’s way.
But for the processes of governance, the political discourse, and the UK’s place in the world, greater damage was done by the political – and perhaps psychological – need to wrap up a crude decision to stick with the US in righteousness.
For any progressive internationalist, and Mr Blair was once one, the most damning of all Sir John’s verdicts is that the result of the invasion was not – as was claimed – to uphold the authority of the UN, but instead to undermine it.”
[From The Guardian Editorial]
Clintonites and Blairites are rooted in the Third Way and belying the susceptible public. It’s so 20th century, old-fashioned style politics … a bit melancholic, not touching the younger generation of today. Now take the Obama administration and change, he clearly saw that policy of regime change by sending our troops overseas was a failed option. So Obama chose for secrecy, virtual warfare and proxy wars to attain the same goals set by his neocon policy advisers and predecessors. Different tools, same destruction and suffering, also a grotesque failure but no one will blame the President. Obama will reach the Hall of Fame of presidents due to an even worse U.S. Congress. Relative speaking he has done well. History will judge harshly.
○ Corbyn apologises after Labour’s role in Iraq war ‘laid bare’ by Chilcot report
How dreadful it would have been if a Blairite would have made a statement on behalf of the Labour party if Corbyn’s ouster had succeeded.
I am glad to see Tony Blair getting heavily criticized in the Chilcot Report. He is so pompous, arrogant, and unrepenting for his huge blunder. Bush always acted as if the U.S. had a huge coalition, but it was basically Great Britain. Great Britain is not going to be our poodle anymore. They have their own problems and will remove themselves from our quest to spread democracy (war) all over the planet. Families of the British soldiers killed in Iraq plan to take legal action against Blair and called him the “world’s worst terrorist.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3676790/179-kids-slaughter-Tony-Blair-got-blood-hands-Famili
es-killed-Iraq-War-plan-legal-action-against-Blair.html
If ever a man was in the right place at the right time, it’s Corbyn over the past two weeks. He stood tall and tough against most of the Labour MPs that have blood on their hands as they followed Blair who was following Shrub (aka dim son).
The combination of Brexit and the Chilcot report is cutting though to huge numbers of Brits. Americans still aren’t yet there, but I’m encouraged that we may still get there. That our own scum may have to pay some price for their wanton killing and destruction.
It is my observation that Americans respond loudly when their pocketbooks are threatened. Future attempts to try to cut Social Security and Medicare will be met with cries to cut the bloated defense budget. A lot of those baby boomers who marched against the war will react against these cuts. They are not the more passive generation of their parents, but came of age during an anti-establishment period which included civil rights, women’s rights, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and consumer protections. Decades of neoliberal economic policies have affected a good percentage of these boomers. They are relying on these government programs. Below is a link which discusses that most boomers are not prepared financially for retirement. Interestingly, retirees were a major donor group to the Sanders’ campaign. The first baby boomers are now 70 years old.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/retiring-well-not-most-baby-boomers.html
Boomer activism in the late ’60s and early ’70s wasn’t anywhere near as widespread as the media portrayed it. And a lot that were active all too quickly reverted to the ethos that was instilled in them as children in the ’50s and early ’60s. Also note that only those boomers born in the first half of that generation were old enough to have participated in that activism and for a goodly chunk of them, their activism wasn’t rooted in principles and ethics but was based on protecting their own butts from being sent to Vietnam. It was the length of the Vietnam War that facilitated some of that activism which in great numbers only began as the war hit that three and a half year marker and when in past wars a real light at the end of the tunnel could be seen.
Early boomers have always been sandwiched between what I refer to as the McCain generation and latter boomers and early gen X. IMO McCain better represents his generation than the Clintons and GWB do the early boomers. The McCain generation was less directly impacted by war, had limited to no personal memory of the Great Depression, and being a small generation, enjoyed easier employment prospects. Later boomers/early gen X as children enjoyed a higher standard of living and more personal materialism than those a decade or so older, weren’t personally challenged by a war or even a draft, and initial employment opportunities and income were only slightly worse than what their older siblings had experienced, but they could fill that gap with access to easy credit which was quite new.
○ Jeremy Corbyn a veteran of Stop the War Coalition of 2001
Years long, my opposition to Iraq War and the likes of Tony Blair …
○ Blair, Lies and Mass Destruction – Legality of Iraq War by Oui @BooMan on Dec. 14th 2009
○ ‘Stop The War Coalition’ Newsletter by JimStaro @BooMan on Jan. 20th 2006
In BooMan archive on front-page stories, there was just a single hit for “Stop The War Coalition” …
○ “Nightmare of a million on the march” [G8 Summit in Scotland] by SusanHu @BooMan on June 2nd 2005
Middle East Eye
On our home front:
Democracy Now! — Hillary Clinton Booed by Teachers over Charter School Comment
Billmon: Her own little “Sister Souljah moment.”
Yes — she already got that NEA endorsement when she needed it and can now move on to pandering to those angry white folk that resent the job security and pensions that teachers get.
In step with the other fascist state called by HRC as our most coveted ally …
○ Jewish Groups Pay to Send U.S. Police to Train in Israel | Times of Israel |
Previously for the Iraq occupational forces, the US Army used the urban warfare training center of the IDF special forces in Israel’s Negev desert.
○ U.S. military personnel have trained in the Negev desert at Israel’s Adam counter insurgency urban warfare training facility
○ Israeli Involvement in the Occupation of Iraq
Excellent diaries @BooMan, from the archive search ‘Jenin’ …
○ Rogue State: Israel and UN Resolutions by Sirocco on July 28th 2006
○ IDEALS — Rachel Corrie in London Play by Oui on April 22nd 2005
Note: Interesting bit at end of diary:
“Sometimes mentioning Rachel Corrie can get you in deep trouble at dKos — Rachel Corrie and dKos temperament
HRC is so anachronist – outdated with ideals – and so pro-establishment. The Revolution on Inequality will come sooner than later!
○ The Saudi-Israeli Alliance and Piggy-back Coup of 2005
○ NYT Interview On Foreign Policy: Hogwash Mr. President!