There are many sound reasons why people might question the award of a knighthood to Tony Blair, from his botched reform of the House of Lords to the curse of devolution. But they should not include his decision to support the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Mr Blair’s handling of the Iraq brief was by no means faultless, as the numerous inquiries into the Iraq affair have demonstrated. The misrepresentation of intelligence relating to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and the lamentable lack of post-conflict planning, are two of the more obvious areas where Mr Blair, together with acolytes like Alastair Campbell, hardly covered themselves in glory.
But on the fundamental issue of whether to commit Britain to supporting the US-led campaign to overthrow Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, Mr Blair displayed moral courage of a very high order, a quality one suspects today’s generation of conflict-averse politicians would struggle to emulate.
Having abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban last summer, does anyone seriously believe that Joe Biden and Boris Johnson have the mettle to stand up to modern-day tyrants like the Russian President Vladimir Putin or the ayatollahs in Tehran?
By deciding to ally himself with the Bush administration’s campaign to remove Saddam, Mr Blair knew full well that he was putting his political reputation on the line, not least because of the fierce resistance he encountered from his own backbenches.
I remember George W Bush saying, when I interviewed him at the White House after the invasion, that Mr Blair told him he was prepared to lose power rather than back down on his commitment to tackling Saddam. When the US president, on the eve of the invasion, offered him the chance to withdraw from the coalition, the British prime minister replied: “I’m staying, even if it costs me my government.” Mr Blair’s resolve to confront Saddam was borne of his understanding that, in a world still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, a tyrant like Saddam could not be allowed to maintain his constant acts of provocation against the West and its allies, or indeed his brutal repression of the people of Iraq. In the bitter controversy that has raged over the Iraq conflict during the past two decades, one key factor that is constantly overlooked is Britain’s long-standing involvement in confronting Saddam dating back to the First Gulf War.
British warplanes were involved in enforcing no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq for most of the 1990s as Saddam refused to comply with the terms of the ceasefire – UN Security Resolution 687 – that required him to allow teams of UN inspectors to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction arsenals. Saddam’s constant obstruction of the inspectors – a key factor in the “flawed” intelligence that was later compiled on Iraq’s WMD – even resulted in the US and Britain resuming air strikes against Iraqi targets in 1998 as part of Operation Desert Fox.
Mr Blair’s determination to confront Saddam, therefore, preceded the September 11 attacks. So when the Bush administration declared war on rogue states, it only strengthened the British leader’s resolve to deal with the Iraqi dictator once and for all.
By sticking with his convictions when others would have crumbled in the face of the ferocious opposition he faced, Mr Blair showed the courage of a true statesman – on a par with Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands conflict. His appointment as a Knight of the Garter is a fitting reward for displaying such fortitude.
Given the brutal animosity Mr Blair has endured from his political opponents, on both the Right and the Left, it is hardly surprising that a petition calling for his knighthood to be blocked should attract hundreds of thousands of signatures. The anti-Blair campaign, moreover, has been buoyed by claims made by Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence secretary at the time, that Downing Street ordered his principal private secretary to destroy a sensitive memo questioning the legality of the conflict.
Yet the invasion might have had a more successful outcome had Mr Hoon forged a better relationship with his American opposite number, Donald Rumsfeld, who ran policy in Iraq.
The US defence secretary had formed a poor view of Mr Hoon after meeting him in London and was, thereafter, disinclined to take his calls, limiting London’s ability to exercise influence on key issues such as the Pentagon’s disastrous de-Baathification programme.
Mr Hoon’s performance is just one of the many reasons that the Iraq conflict, which began with US and British forces winning a stunning military victory, is now mainly remembered for all the wrong reasons. But that should not detract from the conviction Mr Blair displayed in opting to rid the world of Saddam’s despotic rule.
Counterpoint: no, he doesn’t he deserves to be in The Hague
It’s the age old do the ends justify the means again.
Was dispatching Saddam good? How good?
Is manufacturing a casus belli bad? How bad?
It’s reasonable to answer yes to both, to be happy that Saddam is gone and disgusted by our own actions that led to it.
Was killing him worth the lives lost directly in war and the subsequent knock-on effects in the Middle East?
If he deserves a knighthood simply for removing Saddam then perhaps every British soldier who actually risked their life doing it should have got one first. Blair just sat in an office telling lies.
The total lack of plan and hundreds if thousands of innocent people dead, the civil war and the rise of ISIS kind of take the shine off that.
Gordon Brown deserves a knighthood for removing Tony Bliar.
This was the attitude of the time of the Tories, who were eager for the war, for any of the young Conservatives who sometimes claim that the war was all Labour’s fault.
Blair was responsible for at least 929,000 people that have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and the subsequent knock on wars in Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Libya. Tens of millions in the region have had their lives destroyed by his actions.
Sure Hussein was a dictatorial arsehole responsible for the deaths of many, but the blood on Blairs hands is several orders of magnitude higher than Hussein’s. The difference isn’t even comparable.
The guy is a fake deceiving liar. He doesn’t deserve to be commemorated in any way shape or form. He did nothing except for plunge the country into chaos.
When I was a kid in primary school everything was running perfectly, then Blair came in and everything became chaos. He may have given schools more funding, but his government didn’t do anything to actually improve education. They just encouraged exam boards to make things easier and make it more about memory rather than skill.
10 comments
There are many sound reasons why people might question the award of a knighthood to Tony Blair, from his botched reform of the House of Lords to the curse of devolution. But they should not include his decision to support the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Mr Blair’s handling of the Iraq brief was by no means faultless, as the numerous inquiries into the Iraq affair have demonstrated. The misrepresentation of intelligence relating to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and the lamentable lack of post-conflict planning, are two of the more obvious areas where Mr Blair, together with acolytes like Alastair Campbell, hardly covered themselves in glory.
But on the fundamental issue of whether to commit Britain to supporting the US-led campaign to overthrow Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, Mr Blair displayed moral courage of a very high order, a quality one suspects today’s generation of conflict-averse politicians would struggle to emulate.
Having abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban last summer, does anyone seriously believe that Joe Biden and Boris Johnson have the mettle to stand up to modern-day tyrants like the Russian President Vladimir Putin or the ayatollahs in Tehran?
By deciding to ally himself with the Bush administration’s campaign to remove Saddam, Mr Blair knew full well that he was putting his political reputation on the line, not least because of the fierce resistance he encountered from his own backbenches.
I remember George W Bush saying, when I interviewed him at the White House after the invasion, that Mr Blair told him he was prepared to lose power rather than back down on his commitment to tackling Saddam. When the US president, on the eve of the invasion, offered him the chance to withdraw from the coalition, the British prime minister replied: “I’m staying, even if it costs me my government.” Mr Blair’s resolve to confront Saddam was borne of his understanding that, in a world still struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, a tyrant like Saddam could not be allowed to maintain his constant acts of provocation against the West and its allies, or indeed his brutal repression of the people of Iraq. In the bitter controversy that has raged over the Iraq conflict during the past two decades, one key factor that is constantly overlooked is Britain’s long-standing involvement in confronting Saddam dating back to the First Gulf War.
British warplanes were involved in enforcing no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq for most of the 1990s as Saddam refused to comply with the terms of the ceasefire – UN Security Resolution 687 – that required him to allow teams of UN inspectors to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction arsenals. Saddam’s constant obstruction of the inspectors – a key factor in the “flawed” intelligence that was later compiled on Iraq’s WMD – even resulted in the US and Britain resuming air strikes against Iraqi targets in 1998 as part of Operation Desert Fox.
Mr Blair’s determination to confront Saddam, therefore, preceded the September 11 attacks. So when the Bush administration declared war on rogue states, it only strengthened the British leader’s resolve to deal with the Iraqi dictator once and for all.
By sticking with his convictions when others would have crumbled in the face of the ferocious opposition he faced, Mr Blair showed the courage of a true statesman – on a par with Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands conflict. His appointment as a Knight of the Garter is a fitting reward for displaying such fortitude.
Given the brutal animosity Mr Blair has endured from his political opponents, on both the Right and the Left, it is hardly surprising that a petition calling for his knighthood to be blocked should attract hundreds of thousands of signatures. The anti-Blair campaign, moreover, has been buoyed by claims made by Geoff Hoon, Britain’s defence secretary at the time, that Downing Street ordered his principal private secretary to destroy a sensitive memo questioning the legality of the conflict.
Yet the invasion might have had a more successful outcome had Mr Hoon forged a better relationship with his American opposite number, Donald Rumsfeld, who ran policy in Iraq.
The US defence secretary had formed a poor view of Mr Hoon after meeting him in London and was, thereafter, disinclined to take his calls, limiting London’s ability to exercise influence on key issues such as the Pentagon’s disastrous de-Baathification programme.
Mr Hoon’s performance is just one of the many reasons that the Iraq conflict, which began with US and British forces winning a stunning military victory, is now mainly remembered for all the wrong reasons. But that should not detract from the conviction Mr Blair displayed in opting to rid the world of Saddam’s despotic rule.
Counterpoint: no, he doesn’t he deserves to be in The Hague
It’s the age old do the ends justify the means again.
Was dispatching Saddam good? How good?
Is manufacturing a casus belli bad? How bad?
It’s reasonable to answer yes to both, to be happy that Saddam is gone and disgusted by our own actions that led to it.
Was killing him worth the lives lost directly in war and the subsequent knock-on effects in the Middle East?
If he deserves a knighthood simply for removing Saddam then perhaps every British soldier who actually risked their life doing it should have got one first. Blair just sat in an office telling lies.
The total lack of plan and hundreds if thousands of innocent people dead, the civil war and the rise of ISIS kind of take the shine off that.
Gordon Brown deserves a knighthood for removing Tony Bliar.
This was the attitude of the time of the Tories, who were eager for the war, for any of the young Conservatives who sometimes claim that the war was all Labour’s fault.
Blair was responsible for at least 929,000 people that have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and the subsequent knock on wars in Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Libya. Tens of millions in the region have had their lives destroyed by his actions.
Sure Hussein was a dictatorial arsehole responsible for the deaths of many, but the blood on Blairs hands is several orders of magnitude higher than Hussein’s. The difference isn’t even comparable.
The guy is a fake deceiving liar. He doesn’t deserve to be commemorated in any way shape or form. He did nothing except for plunge the country into chaos.
When I was a kid in primary school everything was running perfectly, then Blair came in and everything became chaos. He may have given schools more funding, but his government didn’t do anything to actually improve education. They just encouraged exam boards to make things easier and make it more about memory rather than skill.