Will The Real Tony Blair Stand Up, Please?

From AxisofLogic.com

Does Tony Blair imagine himself as “Richard the Lionheart” against the supposed tide of “Islamic extremism” forgetting that neither he is Richard the Lionheart nor is there a Crusade going on? It is a plain old day light robbery being staged in full view of the whole world and he is being seen as the comic side kick of the murderous thieves.

The Neocons are Neocons. For years their agenda was clearly spelled out. They were shouting themselves hoarse with how they would shape the world given a chance. Only nobody was taking them seriously. The world at large and the Muslim world in particular, found out the deadly earnestness of their ominous intent much later while digging the graves of a hundred thousand odd innocent human beings.

But what about Tony Blair? What were his compulsions? Why did he join this monstrosity? What was it that drove the man to telling the lies that he told his nation to get them to allow him to join the Neocons' sick adventure? What moral imperatives compelled him to ditch all pragmatism and forced him to avoid leveling with his people? What high beliefs were those? Or was he driven not by high beliefs, but by something rather sinister or compulsive? Were those compulsions on his personal level or as the leader of a nation guiding whose destinies was incumbent upon him?

He said before the war that his goal was not regime change. Does that mean that he joined a war led by a nation whose objectives he either opposed or worse still, was not privy to? And why does he continue to extend unflinching support to this unspeakable offence if that was the case? These are just some of the questions that continue to beg for a final answer.

Tony Blair was the only European leader who implanted himself on the Neocons’ band wagon with a resounding thump. Hindsight now shows that he knew the truth all along. His continued ardor for the Neocons amply demonstrates that, while seemingly pushing for a UN sanction to legalize the Iraq war, he was all along willing to give them unreserved support even without one. He just never said it in so many words, that's all.

From claims that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction that he could launch within 45 minutes to the slogans of “liberating” and “democratizing” Iraq—Tony Blair stopped at nothing. The widespread Iraqi resistance to US and British occupation forces in Iraq, the indiscriminate killing of women and children in Fallujah in particular, combined with evidence that the Bush administration actually authorized the organized torture of innocent civilians in the Iraqi jails, has exposed Blair’s claims as nothing but barefaced lies. No need here to repeat his fabled rhetoric, as the facts are now known by all and sundry.

Few share Blair’s honey drenched arguments regarding the intentions of the Bush administration. The world now sees Bush as he should be seen--the agent of a corporate mafia, suitably camouflaged with the required religious plumage, and deadly serious upon foisting its control over the globe by military force, whatever the human cost.

What then were/are the real reasons for Blair’s unflinching support for the Neocons?

Could it be that by going along with the corporate tainted Neocon agenda, Blair's aim was to maintain the traditional ability of British capital to play the world’s markets? Britain is the world’s fifth largest trading nation, with one in four jobs linked to business overseas, and the world’s second largest overseas financier. Britain is also the largest overseas investor in the US. Furthermore, the US provides 38 percent of Britain’s foreign investment, compared with 46 percent from all EU countries combined. A shrewd opportunist, he did argue that, “The Cold War is over. The US is the only superpower.” And that “Europe is economically powerful but not yet politically coherent.”

Or perhaps it was simply to bring back to life a washed out glory by riding on the back of American led 21st century imperialism? He has, after all, often stressed upon the reality of Britain’s historic decline as a world power. Was he finding it hard to resist the land lust of imperialist genes surging through his loins? Britain, after all, is still attached to its imperial past by a frayed, yet still intact, umbilical chord. She continues to occupy Gibraltar and ended its colonial rule of Hong Kong barely seven years ago.

Or was it the plight of Germany's Schroeder that gave Tony Blair the chills? For Germany’s token opposition to their agenda, the Neocons treated Schroeder like an outcast, a pariah barely worth acknowledging. They did not let go of a single occasion to mock and rebuff him.

Or was it the Neocons’ battle cry of "you are either with us or against us"?—a trumpet that forced many a world leader to their knees. Did Blair’s liver too turn into jelly reducing him into a wrecked bundle of nerves? Why else would Blair risk leaving the familiar, though nostalgic, company of traditional European imperialist powers?

Maybe something else gave Blair the jitters as well. As George Bush's lawyer he had canvassed for the Neocons' colonial war of aggression. He had become his Master's Voice in propagating the newly declared US policy of pre-emptive strike. Iraq was to be targeted, not for what it had done, for many of those acts were with overt US blessings, but for what it might possibly do at some time in the future. On this basis, almost any country deemed to represent a threat, however minor, to the strategic interests of America might be bombed back into stone age. Was it that in the course of peddling the Neocons’ cause, Blair became privy to such hideous truths of their intent that he thought even Britain was not beyond the searing focus of their frightening designs?

Or does he imagine himself as “Richard the Lionheart” against the supposed tide of “Islamic extremism” forgetting that neither he is Richard the Lionheart nor is there a Crusade going on? It is a plain old day light robbery being staged in full view of the whole world and he is being seen as the comic side kick of the murderous thieves.

At one time Tony Blair looked like a strong leader with great promise. Combined with a gift of gab, he seemed to overshadow all around him, at home and on the continent. Ironically, his unswerving support for the Neocons’ misadventures has earned him the nickname of US poodle rather than a place in the European hall of fame. Subsequent events proved him, instead, to be a great deceiver, a past master at selling half lies and half truths, schooled rather in the art of never admitting yet not categorically denying. History now bears out that all his moralizing, all his lofty rhetoric dished out, was in the sure fore knowledge of the Neocons’ real agenda. He only proved that his oratory skills and high-sounding rhetoric were nothing but the lamb talk of a wolf.

Whatever Tony Blair’s reasons, he should know though that Robert Fisk spoke for most of us world citizens when he wrote in The Independent of February 15 2003 "In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to, tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as 'intelligence'. We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage."

History will record George Bush as having been a “little man” who had great power thrust upon him. Tony Blair, on the other hand, was ostensibly a tall man who dwarfed himself of his own volition. Does he even know as to how and why he embarked upon this journey of self-miniaturization? Is his political and moral decay a personal inevitability, a fait accompli? Or could he yet produce something worthy, something of what, for some, he originally seemed capable of?

Will the real Tony Blair stand up, please?
By Anwaar Hussain Feb 26, 2005, 09:59

Courtesy of Fountainhead
© Anwaar Hussain
eagleeye@emirates.net.ae.