Intoxicated by power, Blair tricked us into war
H Ebony
December 14, 2009
"Intoxicated by power, Blair tricked us into war
The members of the Chilcot Inquiry have a choice: they can be loyal to the
Establishment or they can expose the subterfuge
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes
steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and
playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the
damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair
engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on
to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made
perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard
to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to
accept that the then Prime Minister's mind remained innocently open after
his visit to Crawford, Texas?
Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn't trouble her on the way to a
confident conclusion that Mr Blair's fundamental flaw was his sycophancy
towards power. Perhaps this seems odd in a man who drank so much of that
mind-altering brew at home. But Washington turned his head and he couldn't
resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him. In this sense he was weak
and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently
heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that "hand on heart, I only
did what I thought was right". But this is a narcissist's defence and
self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death.
"Yo, Blair", perhaps, was his truest measure. "