In America, the US public was led to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for (amongst other things) the 9/11 tragedies, in the UK the buzz phrase was weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence reports before the war hinted at the fact that Saddam’s capabilities when it came to making war were seriously depleted, years of harsh economic sanctions, put in place by the US after Gulf War I had crippled the Iraqi economy.
Indeed, it was estimated before the war that around 500,000 Iraqi children had died of starvation as a direct result of the sanctions. Speak to the average Iraqi citizen today and you’ll hear the same stories, "we were poor and oppressed under Saddam, but at least we could walk around without the constant fear of being shot or blown to pieces."
Politics has always been about opportunism and band wagon jumping, if a politician sees an opportunity to win favour (and votes) then that is pretty much all it will take for said politician to get his media and PR team on the case. Tony Blair saw this opportunity in the aftermath of the twin towers attacks, the buzz phrase that would emerge from the ashes of the stricken buildings was; ’war on terror’. The phrase is classical Orwellian newspeak, it can be expanded or reduced to take in whatever situation the speaker of the phrase wishes and its meaning can’t be specified in any true terms. The phrase isn’t war on terrorists because that war would be easy to measure in real terms, i.e. how many terrorists you kill or foil.
For Tony Blair, the war on terror gave him the global soapbox that would cement his place in history. Blair wasn’t interested in the intelligence he was getting from Mi6 and other sources saying that Saddam Hussein was less of a threat to world peace than he was. Blair also wasn’t interested in the think tanks and analytical reports that said that post war Iraq would turn into a bloodbath with formerly suppressed and oppressed rival religious and political factions fighting to fill the power vacuum left behind by the despot’s departure.
Blair’s lack of interest spread to the reports by his own and US intelligence services; that said after the initial attack Iraq would become a breeding ground for terrorist and insurgent activity all Tony Blair was concerned with was his legacy. Blair had hinted what kind of vain, gutless, headline grabbing leader he was when just weeks after getting into office in 1997 he invited Margaret Thatcher to tea at Number 10.
As a Labour leader many people would have been forgiven for thinking that he might invite a great Labour icon to tea with him, perhaps the iconic Neil Kinnock or even Arthur Scargill the man who locked horns with Thatcher over the miner’s strike of the early 80s.
But by inviting Thatcher, Blair showed in those early days what he was all about, headlines, spin and PR, Blair also was showing where his personal beliefs lay, depending on who you speak to Thatcher was either the best or worst thing to happen to the United Kingdom. But one thing that can’t be argued is that the defining moment for Thatcher as a world leader came in 1982 in the Falklands war, Thatcher was thereafter portrayed as the Iron Lady and she will be remembered forever for that conflict.
If one analyzes the speeches made by Tony Blair into the run up to Gulf War II (clone of the attack) one gets the sense that Blair saw himself in a kind of Churchillian role, a saviour of not just the UK but the world at large. To see him standing ’shoulder to shoulder’ with George Bush was to see a child who had just been told he could in fact go on holiday with his best friend, it was to see a puppy being lovingly stroked and played with by his child master.
As Blair himself told us on a number of occasions, no matter what anyone said he just had the overwhelming feeling that despite all the voices of doom, he was 100 per cent right. ’History - we were told - would judge him’ and not the International War Crimes Tribunal as many have hoped for.
Periodically, when we celebrate V day and look back at the madness of the Second World War, we look back and remember what happens when you let mad men take you to war, we see that in 1945 the five founding members of the UN Security Council drew up the United Nations Charter, we are reminded that pre-emptive strikes and regime change were made illegal so that in the future if a Hitleresque maniac where to try and invade a country for his own gains we could recognize and stop it.
Unfortunately for Iraq and the world when the heavily armed writers of rules want to break those rules it is very hard for them to be stopped and it is for the people on the ground to know and see the legacy of madmen.
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Originally published on MySpace [1]
