Footnote to Further Thoughts About Blair Rage

My first-dash review of A Journey for The Independent is here. And here is a comment from Martina Devlin, an Irish journalist who opposed the Iraq war, but who takes a sane and balanced view of Tony Blair’s overall record:

His decade as British prime minister coincided with a momentous period in Irish history, a unique window of opportunity for peace. And Blair did not fumble it.

Yet war in Iraq and Afghanistan looks like constituting his legacy rather than peace in the North, even though it is reductive to focus on one without acknowledging the other.

This doesn’t mean I think Blair was right to go to war in 2003 — plainly it was a profoundly flawed decision with appalling consequences.

Among the disappointments of A Journey, published yesterday, is the way it shows Blair still failing to recognise the gravity of his error. Unfortunately, he continues to justify the bloodshed on the basis that Saddam Hussein (a dictator so ruthless, he murdered members of his own family) was too dangerous to leave in power …

Going to war was a mistake on Blair’s part, but it is wrong for protesters to call him a warmonger. I was particularly dismayed by the confrontational language used about him in a public letter from a group of creative artists, including members of the government-funded arts group Aosdana, urging Eason and RTE not to allow him a publicity platform.

Blair is no “notorious war criminal” and his €4.6m advance is not “blood money” — such terminology is needlessly provocative and hyperbolic. He devoted years of his life to ending war here. He brought Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness into mainstream politics. How can he be labelled a war criminal?

I repeat, I do not endorse his decision to hit the attack button in Iraq. I simply note that censure of his record there must be tempered with respect for his achievements here …

A final thought: Tony Blair donated his advance to charity. Bertie pocketed the fee, plus the artist’s tax exemption, while writing his book on our time, on a TD’s salary plus several public pensions. Remind me again, which of these men should be picketed?

If the Blair haters don’t want to listen to me, perhaps they will listen to her.

Thanks to Julie.

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• takeoman

  Have you ever visited the Middle East and tested your theory that Blair T. is trusted by all sides? Also do you thing stupid phrases like “you and your talking know-all hat” in anyway contribute to serious debate?

• AuntieMavis

  Blair was like the curate’s egg: good in parts.

  But essentially rotten.

• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PANMTJ57XEH7OY76UQABUYN2Z4 Neil

  Wow, totally brainwashed!! Independence of a bunch of bankers (i.e. transferring power away from a nominally democratically elected politician). Completing John Major’s Peace Process in Northern Ireland. Bombing the former Yugoslavia and fomenting ethnic hatred by blaming one side in 10 year long civil war. Overseeing a widening rich-poor gap, encouraging welfare dependence the influx of foreign workers, effectively deskilling a generation of young Brits. I’m not an expert on Sierra Leone, so won;t comment on that, just note UK multinationals’ interests in securing lucrative mining deals in the region.

• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PANMTJ57XEH7OY76UQABUYN2Z4 Neil

  So your primary source on historical events are autobiographies? The Northern Ireland Peace Process was a relatively minor side show. Blair’s main purpose was to let his globalist neoliberal friends in big business complete their takeover of the UK. Old internecine battles in Ulster simply didn’t make business-sense as the UK became little more than a province of global empire. I found Gerry Adams toadying up to Blair et al. quite frankly disgusting.

• http://dogsolitude-v2.livejournal.com/ dogsolitude_uk

  Please John, stop using the word ‘hater’. It sounds a bit, well, juvenile: “yeh word up all yu blair haters cuz im comin at u 4 dissin him brb got 2 watch twilight”

  That’s all I’ve really got to add to the discussion. I’m not a Blair ‘hater’, nor do I particulrly love the guy.

• Guest

  You are a liar of the Machiavellian school.

  I expect Cameron was not the only assistant involved in the preparation of the Lamont speech which got him the sack, so you?

• AlanGiles

  Mr Rentoul will never understand that you don’t have to “hate” to despise somebody. I despise Blair and I despise Rentoul for being such a crawler.

  That said, on the subject of autobiographies, he should remember what George Orwell said in his essay “Benefit of Clergy” on the autobiography of Salvador Dali. Words to the effect that all autobiograhies are lies, since, when looked at from the inside “all lives are merely a series of defeats”.

  However much Blair’s chief apologist tries to defend the honour of his hero, he will never change the facts that Blair was a hypocrite, ersonally avaricious, and never learned the lesson that it is very easy to start a war, and not nearly so easy to end one.

• AlanGiles

  Before you presume to call others an “old fashioned idiot” take a long hard look in the mirror -remembering of course, to remove your rose coloured glasses before doing so.

  Blair trusted by “all sides” in the Middle East?. Can you prove that, or is it merely another of your off-the-wall opinions?