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How Tony Blair absolves himself of guilt by hiding his war crimes behind religion

By making religious ideology culprit for the 'war on terror', Tony Blair aims to write out of history the horrific consequences of his actions which brought so much death, destruction and instability to Iraq

It passes all understanding why the man who must take a large part of the responsibility for two catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be allowed to lecture the people of the world on how to avoid 'wars and violent confrontations'.

But, normally keen to stress his role in history, in a characteristically shameless article in the Observer , Tony Blair is keen to downplay the impact of the 'war on terror' he championed.

His thesis that the main cause of conflict in an arc that extends from Pakistan through Africa and to South East Asia is extremist religon is presented as a call for tolerance. Some have suggested it represents a 'mea culpa moment'. Really it amounts to an attempt to absolve himself and the other organisers of the war on terror of responsibility for the disastrous results of their decisions in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The argument that religious ideology is the main driver in these regions or any other is plainly false. The most significant political movement in the Middle East in the last few years was the struggle for democracy sparked off by the Arab Spring. This was an entirely political movement which brought together people of many religons and none in a common fight for basic freedoms.

Wind the clock back a few years and we find that religion played a minor part in politics in many of the countries Tony Blair lists in his article. Iraq, Libya, and Egypt for example were secular dictatorships as were countries Syria and Tunisia. Although there were religious divisions and tensions in some of them, they rarely erupted into violence. At the beginning of the last decade Al Qaeda's influence was limited largely to Afghanistan and Pakistan, now it has spread from Central Asia across the Middle East and parts of Africa.

What has changed in that time? The near collapse of a series of states and an escalating cycle of sectarian violence did not originate in 'a perversion of faith', as Blair asserts. Just as superficial is his view that the internet as a purveyor of extremist ideas is a root cause of the upheaval we are witnessing. The question is where have the pressures towards fragmentation come from, what is the source of the immense bitterness and alienation that has led to civil wars and failed states?

Two things come to mind immediately. It's no surprise that Tony Blair doesn't even mention the trauma that was unleashed on the Middle East and Central Asia by the 'war on terror'.

The West's shock and awe policies devastated Afghanistan and Iraq and traumatised the regions generally. Up to a million people lost their lives and four million were displaced as a result of the invasion of Iraq alone. A report in the Guardian outlines the terrible toll of malnutrition on children in Afghanistan - a consequence of nearly thirteen years of war. On top of the immense dislocation caused to civil society by these wars, anger and bitterness against the west has multiplied many times.

To make matters worse, as has been admitted by military insiders who took part in 'war on terror' invasions, the west deliberately stirred up religious tensions in their attempts to overcome popular opposition to occupation.

In addition to a decade and more of western military intervention, must be added the frustration and disappointment in the wake of the Arab Spring defeats. Here again, a large part of the blame lies with the west. From Egypt to Bahrain and Yemen the popular democratic movements have been violently suppressed, each time by regimes with the active backing of the US and its allies. While Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt, the revolution failed to take apart the deep security apparatus that had protected his regime for decades. The SCAF military dictatorship continues to be backed, resourced and advised by the US and its allies.

The idea that the solution to the problems of the Middle East and beyond is a campaign of education about tolerance and moderation from the likes of Tony Blair is beyond satire. The implication is that the problem of these regions lies with the people themselves -- in other words, blame the victims of the 'war on terror' for their own suffering.

Tony Blair has clearly decided that attack is the best means of defence. This latest intervention is no doubt partly motivated by concern at what the much awaited Chilcot inquiry on the Iraq war may reveal. Blair's office is briefing that the report will confirm he did give assurances to George W Bush in April 2002 that Britain would support the US in the illegal pursuit of regime change in Iraq. This may be part of a pre-emptive campaign to predict worse criticisms of Blair than will actually be in Chilcot's report -- a classic spin technique.

Whatever Chilcot's conclusions, the facts remain: Tony Blair made promises to Bush to take Britain into a war on Iraq behind the back of his own cabinet, parliament and the British people, to all of whom he then lied systematically over the following months in the lead up to the launch of the US-UK invasion in March 2003.

As he parades his 'concern' for the Middle East and Central Asia, and attempts to make religious ideology the culprit for the 'war on terror', Blair aims to write out of history the horrific consequences of his actions which brought so much death, destruction and instability to the region.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/hiding-war-crimes-behind-religion-how-tony-blair-absolves-himself-of-guilt#.UuwadbRu58E

 

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Salaam

Another response

Capitalism, not religion is the root of most wars

Tony Blair, former UK prime minister who deliberately instigated the invasion of Iraq on false claims resulting in over 100,000 deaths, attempted to shift the blame away from Western colonial slaughter to the age old myth that religion is the cause of all wars. Blair had the gall to assert that democracy was the only counter to religious extremism when he and George Bush bombed Iraq into the stone age in order spread liberal democracy to the Muslim world.

After spending the first part of the 21st century concocting the invasion of Iraq, Blair is now trying to wash his hands from war crimes by blaming Islam and religion generally. Whether it is the 21st century, 20th century, 19th century or the 18th century religion has played a minor role in conflicts. Since the emergence of liberal democracy in Europe in the 18th century most wars have been over supremacy and resources.

Britain’s once vast navy allowed it to conquer many foreign territories, which in today’s language would be nothing less than empire building through piracy. It became enormously rich primarily by making war. The exploitation of wealth from foreign lands, such as in Middle East, the brutal subjugation of people in places such as Africa created the bloodied foundation of the British Empire.

The fault-lines in the Middle East were drawn up by Britain in collaboration with France and are the source of many of today’s conflicts across the region. It was Britain that created the illegal state of Israel in the heart of Muslim lands and it was British global ambitions, not religion that led to some of the world’s largest slaughter in WW1 and WW2.

As Britain commemorates the 100th anniversary of WW1, it was not religion but British colonial interests that created mustard gas, trench warfare, the world’s first tank and the flamethrower, amongst many other weapons for war.

Blair, in blaming Islamic extremism, is following in the footsteps of past British leaders, accusing the victims for wars committed by its colonial adventures and attempting to wash his hands of war crimes. The British Empire blamed Australia’s indigenous aborigine population for disease, when they made them virtually extinct in order to exploit the nation and be free from the native population.

According to the Encyclopaedia of Wars, the first reference work of its kind, of the 1,763 major conflicts in recorded history, only 123 can be classified as having been fought over religious differences. That is less than 7%. The encyclopaedia also explains that the number of people killed in these conflicts amounts to only 2%. This means that even when wars have been fought over religious disputes, they tend to be less bloody than when they are fought for other reasons.

This is only the latest attempt by Blair to lay the blame for all the world’s ills on Islamic extremism. Not only is his claim of religious wars factually incorrect, it reeks of hypocrisy, coming from a man directly responsible of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and should be seen for what it actually is – a cheap, shameful and self-interested attempt to promote his faith foundation.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/current-affairs/capitalism-not-religion-is-the-root-of-most-wars

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece.

The Gospel according to millionaire war criminal Saint Tony Blair

Why do so many powerful people take seriously the fatuous and ill-informed pronouncements of the man who took Britain into catastrophic and disastrously misconceived wars?

All hail. For lo verily, the Prophet Anthony Blair, millionaire warmonger and late convert to Catholicism, hath descended from his spiritual retreat with Bono on Mount Davos and come amongst us, bearing not tablets of stone, but a column in The Observer containing his proposals on how the world and the Middle East might pursue peace in the 21st century.

Casting his compassionate eye across our troubled world, Saint Tony is saddened by a ‘ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places: Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Pakistan.’ He is also appalled by acts of terror ‘ in places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central Africa, in Russia and across central Asia, and in Burma, Thailand and the Philippines.’

At this point certain inconsistencies cannot help but catch even the most casual reader’s attention. Why does Blair’s indictment at contemporary violence only refer to the anti-government attacks in Egypt for example, and not the hideous slaughter of more than 1000 supporters of the ousted Muslim Brotherhood by Egypt’s military government last year, in a coup that he supported? If Blair is so appalled by the ‘ghastly roll call’ of terror attacks in Syria, why was he calling for Western governments to arm the rebels last year?

Does he know that his great friends the Saudis, whose corrupt business investments he did so much to protect when he was in office, threatened Russia with ‘terror attacks’ during the Winter Olympics last year if Putin did not change his policy on Syria? What in fact, do the events that he describes actually have to do with each other at all?

That last question, at least, does have an answer. For the Prophet hath looked deeply into all these events and concluded:

The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith. But there is no doubt that those who commit the violence often do so by reference to their faith and the sectarian nature of the conflict is a sectarianism based on religion. There is no doubt either that this phenomenon is growing, not abating.

An abuse of religion, golly who would have thought it? So that’s why the Rohingyas have become a stateless and victimized minority in Burma. That’s why anti-Russian rebels in the Caucasus have been fighting for years against Russian domination. This is why Sunnis and Shiites are currently slaughtering each other in Iraq – something that they weren’t doing before the Prophet got together with his equally devout mate George Bush to plot the war that caused the collapse of Iraqi society.

Forget the corrupt oil politics that drive the insurgency in the Niger Delta. Or the poverty and corruption that fuels the maniacally violent Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. Forget authoritarian governance, police and military violence, politics, the unequal distribution of resources, the role of religion in forging political and ethnic identities within states and between - forget all that because all these manifestations of 21st century violence are all the result of a ‘perversion of faith.’

To put it as politely as I can, and far more politely than Saint Tony deserves, this is total and unmitigated nonsense. That reactionary religious extremism exists is indisputable. It is also clear that such extremism has increased its political influence, particularly in the Middle East.

But that does not mean that the wars and acts of violence in the 21st century are ‘religious’ conflicts, let alone that they are based on a ‘perversion of faith’, whatever that means. Religious conflict did not cause the Syrian Civil War, anymore than it has caused the wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, or the ongoing violence in Palestine, Lebanon or any of the other countries that Blair so gormlessly attempts to envelop in his dim thesis.

In fact there is no need to ‘pervert faith’ in order to use religion as a justification for violence or a political instrument. All religions contain messages of peace and violence that can be drawn upon depending on the circumstances. Religion can be a tool of political control by states and governments, and in some cases such control can be exercised by favoring certain sectarian groups at the expense of others, or by using religion to promote geopolitical influence beyond their borders.

But religion can also provide a potent mobilising ideology for revolutionary violence, and the fantasy of a just state founded on religious purity tends to acquire more momentum under oppressive regimes where no other ideological critiques are permitted, as has so often been the case in the Middle East. Religion can also provide a rallying call for resistance to occupation, as Britain and the United States have discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the belief that religiously-justified violence is sanctioned by God can lead to some spectacularly cruel and fanatical acts of violence, but in strategic terms, most acts that fall within Blair’s ‘roll call of terror attacks’ stem from a template of modern revolutionary violence that can be both ‘religious’ or ‘secular.’

And however bloody some of these acts have been, they are no less fanatical than Blair and Bush’s catastrophic and disastrously misconceived wars, with their utter disregard for the potential consequences.

When Blair calls for greater western engagement in the Middle East on the grounds that ‘ All over the region, and including in Iraq…the same sectarianism threatens the right of the people to a democratic future,’ he entirely neglects to mention the extent to which the previous intervention in Iraq that he so fervently advocated has actually fuelled sectarian conflict, and created a vortex of violence that has sucked in Iraq’s neighbours.

All that is neatly obliterated by Saint Tony’s reflection on ‘my experience post-9/11 of how countries whose people were freed from dictatorship have then had democratic aspirations thwarted by religious extremism.’

And the solution? According to Blair, western governments must now set out to embark on a campaign to promote education and religious tolerance in the Middle East and across the world, against those who ‘disseminate hatred and division’ so as ‘not to allow faith to divide us but instead to embody the true values of compassion and humanity common to all faiths.’

Now resist the urge to be sick, readers, and sing hallelujah, for as Saint Tony reminds us, the world has the ideal instrument for realising this agenda, in the shape of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

So there you have it, the man who took his country to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which his own foreign policy establishment once concluded were a major driving force behind acts of jihadist violence in Britain and beyond, who supported Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, who has never yet seen a war that he did not support, just wants us all to love each each other – and help him make even more money in the process.

And yet all this remains puzzling, not because Blair can make such stunningly shallow observations in the belief that they are profound thoughts – he has always done that. But the real mystery is why so many powerful people take his fatuous and ill-informed pronouncements seriously – and why a former bastion of British liberalism feels the need to promote the views of this contemptible and dangerous narcissist, whose own actions have proven again and again, that he actually doesn’t know what he is talking about.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/the-gospel-according-to-millionaire-war-criminal-saint-tony-blair#.Uvc1BIUUZ8E

 

[Karl]

An English actor in "Yes Minister" and also "Yes Prime Minister" of the UK, also acted as the Emperor Alias Darth Sideous in Star Wars. As science fiction is a vehicle for satire do you think Lucas is trying to tell us something?

 

[Independent]

An English actor in "Yes Minister" and also "Yes Prime Minister" of the UK, also acted as the Emperor Alias Darth Sideous in Star Wars. As science fiction is a vehicle for satire do you think Lucas is trying to tell us something?

Er....no.

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Junon;

I agree with much of what has been said, I would have liked to ask Tony Blair, the same question William Wilberforce used to get slavery abolished.

Iraqi people are created by the same God who created you and me, at some point we shall all have to stand before God, how are you going to justify going to war in Iraq?

In the spirit of praying for justice for all people

Eric