Tony Blair should either apologise and accept responsibility for the mess that Iraq is in, or shut up, according to the Mayor of London.
Boris Johnson has described Tony Blair’s latest intervention, calling for bombs to drop everywhere from Baghdad to Damascus, as ‘slightly unhinged’ and ‘bonkers’.
In an interview, Boris was asked if he had any advice for Tony Blair. “My general message would be to put a sock in it really,” said the Mayor. “Paper bag on head time is my advice.”
Iraq intervention ‘tragic mistake’
Tony Blair and George W Bush oversaw the execution of Saddam Hussain. Hypocritically Mr Blair would never have voted for the death penalty in Britain. Furthermore they allowed the American ‘neo-cons’ to pursue a policy of destroying Iraq’s Bathist infrastructure. They hoped something stable would ‘evolve’ from the ‘democracy’ they imposed. But the chaos and sectarian violence that came instead persists in Iraq to this day.
Describing Britain’s Iraq intervention as a “tragic mistake” and a “misbegotten folly”, Mr Johnson seems at odds with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary. He still believes it was the right thing to do.
We continue to argue that Mr Hague has the blood of thousands of Syrians, including Syrian Christians, on his hands. Hague backed the Islamist rebels in Syria rather than President Bashar Al-Assad, with all his faults. He gave encouragement to Al-Qaeda extremists and turned Syria into a blood-bath.
Now the same ISIS extremists who are trying to overthrow Syria’s ruling Alawites, in order to massacre them and the Christians, are advancing in Iraq. President Obama is considering air strikes against ISIS in Iraq. What about ISIS in Syria?
‘Responsibility to Protect’
Her Majesty’s Government became involved at the instigation of pro-democracy activists like those at the George Soros-funded ‘Open Society’. Soros helped spread the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. It gave hard-line Islamists a foothold and left chaos in its wake by funding opposition movements around the Mediterranean. A doctrine invented by a Soros-funded think-tank, ‘Responsibility to Protect’, has given Western governments the excuse they needed to interfere and destabilise countries like Iraq and Libya.
Only in Syria was Western military intervention avoided because the House of Commons voted against it. We thanked God last August for such an answer to prayer. The Syrian Government has been able to fight the insurgents, despite the aid Britain and the United States gave the jihadists. And now the chickens have come home to roost wearing an ISIS black flag. Moreover, the Americans will have to fight the ISIS monster they have created in Iraq. But it’s high time we switched sides in Syria.
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Well done, Stephen ! Yes, I was beginning to think it was just me who had noticed this. Not only have the baddies in Iran suddenly become goodies, but the goodies in Syria must have become baddies. Presumably if it were not for the House of Commons, and if Obama had already sent troops to Iraq, we would now be accidentally at war with the USA, and there would be some red faces !
I’m not sure that many people realise that the S in ISIS does not stand for Syria, it stands for Sham. Al-Sham (which you can google, finding it well-dealt with in Wikipedia) comprises modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel including Palestinian bits, and Jordan. This is why even President Obama is now using the term “I.S.I.L.” , the L being the “Levant”, which is rather vague but approximates to Al- “Sham”.
Like Levant, Sham is not necessarily restricted even to the modern countries I have named, being particularly involved with the extreme south of Turkey. And I.S.I.L. have already mentioned an interest in invading Jordan. So make no mistake, this means trouble, but you knew that .
As for Blair, we all remember rather bitterly his enthusiastic but completely false warning that Saddam Hussein could attack US HERE (was it in 20 minutes ?). Now Cameron is warning us that British fighters returning from the Levant could attack US HERE (he doesn’t say how soon), which I find unnervingly similar. Moreover, I don’t know what we can do about it. If we take some kind of decisive action against I.S.I..L in the Levant, I don’t see why the British fighters would be any the less likely to attack US HERE when they come home afterwards !
I have a gut feeling that if the Americans get involved, this will somehow make it worse. It’s important to remember that not all Muslims agree with I.S.I.L. , for example the Shi-ites in particular don’t. Can American troops and drones tell which are which ?
[ If any Arabs did put forward at first that the S in ISIS stood for Syria, they would have had in mind Greater Syria, sometimes in the past called just “Syria”, which term certainly included Lebanon and originally more than that, but the usage nowadays is obviously confusing. In this obsolete sense, “Syria” is the same as “Sham”, see Wikipedia ].
What we should also remember is that the Syrian rebels were encouraged not only by Western ‘Arab Spring’ rhetoric but NATO air power intervention on behalf of Libyan rebels. The Free Syria Army thought they could succeed if they used civilian massacres ( which they may have engineered as propaganda) to get air strikes against Assad’s tanks artillery and aircraft.
ISIS is the bitter fruit firstly of Wahhabist Islam but also of western adventures in Iraq and more recently Libya, which is now a failed state. Our rulers seem to learn nothing from recent past mistakes.
To answer the question heading this post. NO!
Tony Blair is trying desperately to assuage his conscience for sending hundreds of our armed forces to death or disability for what? A sham democracy? An Iraq where people have died virtually on a daily basis since the UK/US left? An Iraq where basic things like water and electricity are in short supply? But of course from a US perspective it was probably more about oil and the big business that goes with it. (Why was Mugabe never overthrown before he wrecked his country — no oil and tobacco was no longer PC health wise)
As I have said before having lived in the ME democracy does not work practically or with Islam. People there would rather have a strong man like Assad, Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein etc who guarantee a stable, dependable society where things work. Democracy is a western concept which people like Blair, Bush and even Obama seem to want to impose at any cost. I don’t know what one can do to sort out the mess apart from standing clear and letting it play itself out.
Like it or not Tony this is your legacy.
PS Tony as an alleged Christian your actions also contributed to the virtual disappearance of the church in Iraq which was protected under Saddam. Ditto can be said for Assad. But of course the world does not care about Christians they are expendable and often not PC on moral issues
When you say a “Sham democracy” ……. ?
If Al Qaeda really did 9/11 and was public enemy no 1 then why did we destroy the regimes of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi both of whom were bulwarks against Al Qaeda and why did we train up Al Qaeda terrorists to destroy the regime of President Assad when he too is their mortal enemy?
Instead we have 2m dead, 4 once stable nations turned into a state of permanent civil war, the Middle East in flames and America bankrupt. And now the same culprits want to repeat the experiment in Ukraine and Iran. Welcome to the foreign policy of the Washington neocons !!
Since we are supposed to live in a democracy who exactly gave these people a mandate to do this and exactly whose interests do they really represent? Certainly not those of the British and American public. Do we need clearer evidence that we are actually controlled by an oligarchy/shadow government which has sold us a false narrative probably going back as long as 100 years? The only real question is who this oligarchy is and how long all this has been going on for.
And finally if this analysis is correct test it against this future paradigm. Now that the neocons are in hot water expect to see an upsurge in false flag operations, staged incidents and media hyping by the Sky-CNN-BBC-FOX matrix the goal of which is to demonize Muslims worldwide and turn the Islamic midget into an Islamic goliath. It’s a fantastic tactic to divert your attention and always guaranteed to work!!
Sometimes the survivors of concentration camps reproach themselves for being in some obscure arcane way responsible for the death of one of their comrades there, but my feeling is always that, whatever small misdeed they may have committed, the real blame must lie with the Nazis, not with any of their victims placed in this kind of situation.
Surely it’s a similar case here. However much you may argue that America or Tony Blair mismanaged things, the real culprit for the deaths and destruction is fairly and squarely on the shoulders of extreme Muslims including Al Qaeda. This is not, of course, to blame Muslims in general, very many of whom have suffered from all this much more than we have.
This false narrative going back 100 years would include very much the war against Hitler and the then Japanese Empire. Is this what Pimms intends, or is he considering some more minor incident in those years ? I would rather we had fought Hitler, myself, even if an oligarchy was in charge. In fact, it’s true. In the first part of the 20th century, almost as in the 19th century, British politicians did tend to come from an oligarchy of politically involved families; many army officers came from military families too. There was no secret about it, and the system worked quite well.
I believe the blame lies with Messrs Bush & Blair for creating the vacuum which ISIS has filled.
Blame also lies with Messrs Cameron and Hague for encouraging the Open-Society-backed rebels in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and especially in Syria. Muslim extremism has increased in all four, and the latter has become a particularly potent breeding ground for Al-Qaeda which then spawned ISIS.
Yes, the terrorists themselves are responsible for their actions, but it was our politicians who made their terrorism possible.
A Jordanian spokesman interviewed on BBC radio assured us that the Jordanian army is well able to cope with ISIL, but no doubt an Iraqi army spokesman would have said the same before losing Mosul to them. Both Mosul and Jordan are mainly Sunni. Next stop Jerusalem ?