Sunday 31 January 2010

Nobody expects the Chilcot Inquisition!


I like old comedies, shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, full of anarchic humour. Watching Blair’s performance before the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War reminded me somewhat of the Spanish Inquisition scene, the one where the old lady is threatened with such dire tortures as the cushions and the comfy chair!

It’s just so frustrating, that panel of old dogs with gummy jaws, whose toughest questions have all the force of the cushions and the comfy chair. Yes, we are repeatedly reminded by the chairman that the object of the inquiry is to get at the truth not to apportion blame. But how does one get to the truth without asking demanding questions; how does one get to the truth, in other words, without detailed cross-examination?

There he was, Blair, a perfect target, not at all looking like a former prime minister of this country, rather a shifty prisoner in the dock, his hands shaking according to witnesses. But then he got into his stride; then he produced what was obviously a rehearsed strategy. It was the same gung-ho approach as Alistair Campbell; defend everything and apologise for nothing. Yes, there he was, he might as well have sung Non, je ne regrette rien.

I so wanted to be there also; I so wanted to conduct the kind of cross-examination of which the Chilcot worthies are incapable. So, former Prime Minister Blair, 9/11 changed the ‘calculus of risk’, to use your expression. Tell me, why was it necessary to attack a secular state actively hostile to terrorist movements like al-Qaeda? Did you not consider the possibility that removal of Saddam would immeasurably destabilise the whole region to the benefit of Iran? Were you not advised of the logistical and practical difficulties of invading and occupying a country like Iraq by a panel of academic experts in November 2002? Did you not then ignore that advice, saying that Saddam was ‘evil’? Would it be true to suggest that the invasion was based on a dubious value judgement, not on solid intelligence and practical politics?

Oh, I could go on like this. How I would loved to have tackled him on the bizarre logic of the March 2010 question; that weapons not there in March 2003 would have multiplied, nothing begetting nothing! The truth is simply told; the First Gulf War was absolutely necessary; the Second was a Bush war, unfinished family business into which a man, never fit to be Prime Minister, drew this country on the basis of half-truths, outright lies, shady deals and dubious manipulation. He misled parliament; he misled the nation. Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector, has compared Blair and Bush as latter-day ‘witch hunters’, only interested in such evidence as ‘proved’ their case.

The same day that Blair gave his evidence by some ironic coincidence BBC screened a repeat of Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, the episode dealing with Suez. This was a foreign policy disaster that effectively destroyed Anthony Eden, a bear of very little judgement. Still, for all his faults, he had qualities of simple integrity and decency, entirely alien to Tony Blair. I’m convinced that future historians will judge Iraq to be a far greater mistake than Suez. Meanwhile, the ‘calculus of risk’ is immeasurably greater now precisely because of Blair’s Bush War.

16 comments:

  1. You make some very good points here Ana - with your customary flair for expression.

    Blair's entire performance in the run-up to the Iraq invasions needs to be put under a forensic microscope. Why has there been no reference anywhere that I can see to those interviews he gave to camera, claiming that a new threat was emerging of al-Qaeda forming links with rogue states in possession of WMD. This became effectively the perspiring wild-eyed Blair doctrine, one he no doubt touted around the world, the White House included, infecting others with his visions of doom.

    Why didn't wiser counsels prevail, reminding him that politics is the art of the possible, not the barely conceivable, and that in any case it's the job of security and intelligence service to dream up worst case scenarios - not Prime Ministers?

    It's a telling indictment of our age, and of that intellectually-shallow man, ensconced on his fireside sofa of power, that he should have become obsessed with a conspiracy theory, like some teenaged internet geek bragging that he knows what really happened on 9/11 or "faked" moon shots.

    PS When you've a spare minute, please take a look at my subversive new site. Am just starting to get into my stride. ;-)

    http://www.sciencebod.blogspot.com

    It's called "A Rough Ride on MyT". I'm electronically locked out from MyT, as I expect you know.

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  2. Hiya Ana

    Did you not get the comment I sent you this morning?

    It wasn't earth-shattering, but I'm wondering now if blogspot is playing up...

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  3. I now have both, Colin! Sorry, I haven't been here since last night and comments only appear once moderated. Oh, and your contribution is excellent. :-) When I'm finished here I'll check out your link.

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  4. Colin, is it the Definitely Not MyT site? Otherwise I'm just getting Sciencebuzz.

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  5. No, I see; it's Rough Ride on MyT. :-)

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  6. First let's start with my singular disagreement. I disagree on the first Gulf War. Saddam posed no threat to us, and if anyone wanted to sign up to defend the chronically corrupt, quasi-extremist oligarchy of Kuwait, they were welcome to sign up as mercenaries. You said yourself in another blog that Saddam's regime in a country incapable of democracy was heavy handed at times, but was non-sectarian(regionally speaking) had high regional educational standards, forsook the sexism of Islam, and had very good social services by regional standards.
    All else though I'm in total agreement on. Cilcot was farcical in the extreme. I only wish Sir Martin didn't lower himself to be part of the charade, especially since he once had the unfortunate luck to blurt out that Blair was the new Churchill(oh, how I cringe at comparing the finest the the worst). I've met Sir Martin several times, just casually at book talks and such things. He's an utterly affable chap, always happy to converse about all things Churchill, which is why I say with much sadness that I lost some measure of respect for him in light of Chilcot.

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  7. Adam, I think that sometimes war is chess by other means. After the First Gulf War Saddam was held in check. He should have been kept that way.

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  8. Saddam was never a threat, never an enemy, he frankly could have been a useful ally. He was far more benevolent than the Saudis or Kuwaitis with whom we made common cause. I'm not a supporter of any non-Imperial intervention, but adding insult to injury is the fact that we usually take all the wrong sides.

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  9. He was an 'ally' during his Persian war. The man was too dangerous not to be ham-strung in some fashion.

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  10. He was a useful ally then, he could have been a useful ally in future years, if one was needed. He was the lesser of many evils, and far preferable to the fundamentalist Government currently in Baghdad.

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  11. The second war was a disaster; his removal was a disaster, serving the interests of Iran.

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  12. Hear, hear! I said so in 2003, it becomes truer by the hour. Blair's lives are counted in droops of blood spilt, and numbers of lives lost. Had he a Serbian name he's be in a gaol cell in The Hague.

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  13. Adam, you might care to look at The Disaster of Iraq, a piece I posted here at the beginning of May last year.

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  14. Sorry, Ana. Been on a plane and the Virgin wifi went out. Yes, I remember reading that piece, agreed with every word you said about the war, and bout the nature of Saddam's Iraq.

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  15. Sorry, Ana. Been on a plane and the Virgin wifi went out. Yes, I remember reading that piece, agreed with every word you said about the war, and bout the nature of Saddam's Iraq.

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  16. Yes, I read that last week, whilst in your archives. Everything you said about Saddam was true. He was a man as brutish as necessary and crucially a buffer against a fundamentalist Iran and against fundamentalism, primevalism, sectarianism, sexism, and barbarism.

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