LETTERS FROM THE U.K.  

THE RESURRECTION OF TONY BLAIR 

Since he left the political stage in Britain last summer Tony Blair has been busy trying to recreate himself as a lead player on the international scene. His egotism is such that one suspects he may aspire to achieve the stature described by Shakespeare in the words “Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus.”  It is a sad comment on the debased state of contemporary political life that a man of such crushing mediocrity should be considered a figure of world importance. The eager accomplice of George W. Bush in his disastrous war against Iraq, is considered capable of brokering a peaceful settlement to the problems of the Middle East. The man who orchestrated the U.S. inspired chorus of slander and lies against the French government for failing to follow Bush’s baton in the lead up to war in 2003, is being seriously considered for the presidency of the E.U.   

Blair was as happy to abandon British politics as were most British people to see the back of him. He has left the Labour Party, which he clearly hated, in a state of dispirited disarray far worse than anything inflicted on it by James Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s. There is no evidence that Blair possesses any genuine knowledge or ability to qualify him for the assignments he has been awarded. The most recent of these is his appointment to the U.S. investment bank of J.P. Morgan as a ‘strategic adviser.’ One may reasonably assume that he will not be called upon to provide much strategic advice for the £500,000 (US$1 million) a year he will receive for his minimal commitment of time. He is reported to have clinched a deal for several millions sterling for his memoirs. They are likely to be as banal as those of his former propaganda chief, Alastair Campbell, although, unlike Campbell who was trained as a tabloid journalist, Blair has little talent as a writer, so he will need quite a bit of assistance. In the United States he gained a reputation in Republican circles as an accomplished speaker. I have always found this rather baffling as, compared to his predecessors such as Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot – to say nothing of numerous talented parliamentarians past and present, he is distinctly unimpressive. I can only assume that his reputation in the United States rests upon comparison with George W. Bush, a man to whose mind single words  come more readily than complete sentences. However he is rated as a speaker, what he will say is, sadly, quite predictable. Only in the insane world of the celebrity lecture circuit could such platitudinous simplicities command the £250,000 that Blair will receive for each speaking engagement.  

The former prime minister has entered the ranks of the super-rich, to which status he has long aspired. While in office he was never happier than when rubbing shoulders with the world’s wealthiest people. His unbounded avarice has enabled him to join them in record time. For the quote that follows I am indebted to Guardian columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a kindred spirit of mine who got the true measure of Blair a long time ago. Acknowledging his recent conversion to Catholicism and taking a few liberties with the Magnificat, he says of Blair: ‘He hath exalted the mighty in their seat and put down the humble and meek. He hath filled the rich with good things and the poor he hath sent empty away.’ This could be his epitaph. 

Blair and Iraq revisited. 

In the topsy-turvy world of those who wield political power and influence in this country, little attention is paid to those who challenge the dogmas, lies and evasions with which the politicians and their servants in the media seek to manipulate public opinion. Amongst British journalists there are relatively few who have expert knowledge and experience of the Middle East. Notable amongst them are Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk who write for The Independent, and Jonathan Steele of the Guardian. Their voices are seldom, if ever, heard in news coverage on radio and television, as their expert knowledge and opinions lie outside what is considered by the broadcasting media as a ‘reasonable consensus.’  

Jonathan Steele is a veteran journalist who has, over the past forty years written extensively on South Africa, the Soviet Union and the Middle East. He knows Iraq well and has visited the country many times, before the 2003 invasion and since. His latest book, Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq has just been published. It contains a damning indictment of Blair. This book is comparable to the work of the U.S. writer Seymour Hersh in its scrupulous investigation and documentation involving interviews with people on the front line in Iraq, former cabinet ministers and diplomats. He provides irrefutable evidence that Blair did not simply ‘go along’ with Bush and the neo-cons; he was, from the start, a cheerleader for the invasion. Steele relates that four months before the invasion Blair, uncharacteristically, invited a group of academic experts on Iraq and international security to give their opinions. Apparently they chose not to offer their views on the rights or wrongs of an invasion that seemed inevitable, but confined themselves to the likely consequences. They told him, in so many words, that the invasion would not be welcomed and the consequences would be chaotic and disastrous. Blair ignored their advice. Despite his public claim that the invasion would be undertaken solely to rid the country of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ he claimed it possessed, it is clear that in 2002 he was obsessed by the need to remove Saddam Hussein. Driven by his Manichaean view of the world he showed no interest in the opinions of the experts. His reaction to their carefully considered arguments was, ‘But the man’s uniquely evil isn’t he?’ On being told that Saddam was ‘constrained by various factors’, he simply reiterated, ‘He can make choices, can’t he?’ Professor Joffe, an Arabist from Cambridge, commented to Steele, ‘He meant he can choose to be good or evil, I suppose.’ Joffe considered Blair to be ‘someone with a very shallow mind, who’s not interested in issues other than the personalities of the top people, no interest in social forces, political trends, etc.’  The experts remarked that Blair ‘wasn’t focused.’ One commented ‘He wanted us to reinforce his gut instinct that Saddam was a monster. It was a weird mixture of total cynicism and moral fervour.’ There you have it. In this respect also he is at one with his friend Bush. It is all the more surprising that so many people in the U.S. seem to regard him as their president’s intellectual superior. 

Steele blows sky high the claim by the Anglo/U.S. invaders that they were bringing democracy to Iraq. There is space here to relate only one of the episodes he highlights to show that this claim was a sham. According to the official account, the Iraqis elected a government with sovereign powers, able, if it wished, to tell the occupiers to leave. In April 2006 Steele was in Baghdad where he had gone to interview the then prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. It happened that British foreign secretary Jack Straw and U.S. secretary of State Condoleeza Rice were there at the same time on a lightening visit to demand al-Jaafari’s resignation. He had failed to pursue sufficiently vigorously the occupying powers’ demand that he clamp down on the Shia militias. He also had the temerity to ask for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The prime minister was being recalcitrant, so the gloves had to come off. Steele witnessed something of the bullying while waiting to conduct his interview in an ante room adjoining the prime minister’s office. Jaafiri’s ‘guests’ had arrived uninvited, and, following the meeting they snubbed him by leaving the building with his main political rival. Steele got his interview, though apparently Jaafiri was in a highly agitated state. He tried to turn the tables on his tormentors by reminding them that their governments had supposedly come to Iraq to bring democracy and should therefore respect the outcome of a process that they had themselves imposed in the name of democracy. To no avail. Shortly thereafter Jaafiri was replaced by Nouri al-Maliki, who in turn was subjected to a grilling by Rice and Rumsfeld to ensure that he would not embarrass them by raising the question of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.  

Steele reminds us that a sovereign government of an independent country would not tolerate heads of state and high-ranking officials of foreign powers arriving uninvited and demanding the resignation of a prime minister. He writes: ‘In no other country in the world are foreign leaders able to show up at whim. In Iraq they can. In the best imperial manner, they recommend who to sack from cabinet, and who to appoint. They insist on certain laws being passed or demand changes in the constitution.’ 

I wrote in an earlier article dealing with Afghanistan, that British political leaders seem either to know nothing of history or to have forgotten what they did know. This applies to Jack Straw, who, as a former radical student leader of the 1970s might have been expected to know better. Britain’s imperial involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 19^th and 20^th centuries was not a happy one. Playing second fiddle to the United States in new imperial ventures will be no more successful in the twenty first century.