Kofi Annan, still wrong

I am all for people going on about Tony Blair and repeating what they thought about Iraq, but The Times (pay wall) leads its front page today with Kofi Annan doing both those things.

Annan, who as leader of the United Nations first set out the doctrine of “benign intervention” in 1998.

Who nevertheless disagreed with military action in Iraq, and still does.

He is wrong, of course. Tony Blair could not have prevented the American invasion. George Bush offered Blair the chance to stand aside from the first phase of military operations if he could not secure the vote in the House of Commons, but there was no question of the invasion not going ahead.

Other people – not Annan, who is talking about the time in March 2003 when Bush and Blair failed to secure a further UN resolution – suggest that, if Blair had opposed military action in 2002 he could have swayed Bush.

That was never likely, so it loses its plausibility as hypothetical history, but even then the Bush administration was pretty set on its course.

A more plausible alternative history is Jack Straw’s. Britain could have stayed out of the initial invasion if he, as Foreign Secretary, had opposed it. But the US invasion would have gone ahead. And he didn’t.

Recent Posts on Eagle Eye

• "Clearing the Battlefield"
• UKIP Surges to Record High
• Poll alert
• Was An Alien Space Fish Just Filmed Outside The Space Station?
• Economic History Lesson

• creggancowboy

  Blair “could have stopped the murder of Dr David Kelly”. Better headline Giovanni?

• stonedwolf

  John Rentoul isn’t still wrong, he’s just never right. Or funny.

  Rentoul is basically the antagonists in the World at War Hoard Mode.

• stonedwolf

  What conspiracy nonsense are you on about?

  Get your facts straight, mate. There is not now nor has there ever been any record of someone called “Dr David Kelly”.

• porkfright

  Exactly. History-especially that part since 9/11-exists chiefly in order to be rewritten.

• Richard Turpin

  John Rentoul, still banging the drum for Blair despite all that we now know about
  the man. Why? Does he have a bit of something on you perhaps?

• Darbeet

  was there even any point to this piece? I am lost