Why War is the Right Choice by Tony Blair

great speech...even if this was given to every single peace protester they would still be against war in iraq. i wish some of the protesters would see the bigger picture and not a picture they want to conjure up.

 

Tony Blair is very heroic. I hope it doesn't cost him his job as Prime Minister.

 

Ha, see the bigger picture. That makes me laugh because I could say the same to you, but then you probably wouldn't give my opinion the time of day.

First of all, I'm on the fence. I definately want Saddam gone, but I'd rather we help the Iraqi people do it instead of just dropping bombs all around them. Sure, it's not our intention to hurt the people of Iraq, but you're fooling yourself if you don't think that many innocent people will die either from errant bombs, debris, destabilization of their infrastructure, or blowing up hospitals that we thought were depots for WMD. I can't find any concrete evidence as to what the deathtoll was in the gulf war, so I chose the one that wasn't extreme, if you can call these numbers that. According to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the bombing resulted in 2500 to 3500 deaths. Sounds about right, Bahgdad claimed 35,000 which is obviously ridiculous, I couldn't find what our govt claimed, though it is most likely severely understated. According the same document, 110,000 people died total if you count deaths from injuries and lack of medical care due to the destabilization of Iraq. Obviously, if we actually finish the job this time, that won't be the case.

Ok, so 3000 people, probably more since I doubt Saddam will surrender this time. Hitler didn't. That's what bothers me about war. There's no justification for that. There was no justification for what happened on 9/11, though that is totally irrelevant to Iraq. I know for a fact that pointing #'s like that out will get me the usual response from war hawks, "it's a necessary evil, blah blah, sacrifices must be made for the greater good." You know who else thinks like that, terrorists. That's my issue, I won't accept civillian deaths. That's why I am extremely pissed that Bin Laden is still out there and will probably die before we ever get him.

Another reason I'm not all gung ho about this is because I don't consider Iraq a threat. So many of you are worried that Saddam is gonna launch a missle up your ass, when he can't, and don't seem to care that North korea continues to threaten us. Even if Iraq has weapons, why would they use them on us. What do they gain? I'm sure they know that there are nukes aimed at them 24/7 incase they attack us and Isreal. They aren't much of a threat to their neighbors either, why would they attack them now when they would surely be condemned by the rest of the Arab world?

There is also the issue of making new terrorist. Do I really need to explain this? Saudi's were responsible for 9/11 and we havn't done anything to them (that is if you don't consider having a foreign military force set up camp on what they consider to be holy land). Imagine how far some people will be willing to go if we are responsible for harming their families. I hope you guys don't just assume that Iraqi's will be ok with everything, "thanks for getting rid of our brutal oppressor and putting us under military rule. Sure, I miss my family, but it was all worth it."

Speaking of holy land, why haven't we tried to find another place for our military? Are you guys not bothered by the fact that many muslims feel that Saudi Arabia is a holy place according to their religion and that having a foreign army there really upsets them? Of course you're not bothered, you don't respect them or their "fake" religion, so you don't give a rat's ass. I wouldn't want an army base in the Vatican, so I can relate. I know many of you right wingers probably can't understand the anger that this causes Muslims, so I've come up with a good analogy. Imagine if you will, a "big" govt beaurcrat camped out in your backyard. I sincerely hope that I didn't give you any nightmares with that.

Ok, it's late, or early depending on how you see things and I need to sum everything up.

Seeing the big picture depends on what you want to look at. So don't accuse people of making things up because they see the world differently. I'm all for getting rid of Saddam because I hate tyrants. That's why we also need to handle some business in Africa and Burma. Since this administration has already made up their mindas and will probably go into Iraq without the full support of the UN or NATO, I'd rather we do everything possible to avoid, not minimalize, avoid civillian deaths. We don't need to go in guns blazing when we could go in, start with the smaller towns and cities. Helping the people, shutting off the borders, looking for WMDs, all the while we slowly enclose Saddam. Let him have bahgdad. He can stay there as long as he wants, but as soon as we've set things straight in the rest of the country, all we need to do is put out a reward for Saddam and let people know about it constantly. He'll turn up.

 

Did you ever think for a moment that it is some peoples jobs to keep both sides fighting? To make sure that evil is present in our everyday lives?

See, that keeps the military industrial complex chugging along. It helps the economy. Remember, power is key.

Isn't money and power great! I love it!

Humanity? Fu*k it! Bomb Iraq!

Whos next? North Korea! Yeah...!!!! This time we should use nukes!

God, I love being a Republican!

*sarcasm*

 

What a bunch of dribble from Blair!!!

He is concerned about the million people Saddam has killed in his wars yet seems unfazed about the half million children under the age of five that the US/UK sponsered sanctions have killed. Using this broken logic, after the US/UK bomb Iraq into the Stone Age they should turn the bombs on themselves.

Still no concrete answer to why Saddam is now an immiment threat and to why a preemptive doctorine based on shody intell needs to be deployed now (or ever).

I suspect that the CIA has photos of Blair in some comprosing position or two

 

I'm not going to deal with the war issue right now, as I am undecided, but I do take issue with the above statement. Making an association between having a base in all of Saudi Arabia and the Vatican is a bit extreme, and an incorrect one at that. Do you see a military base in Mecca or Medina? No, you sure don't. Most of the rest of Saudi Arabia is irrelevant from the discussion because it is simply a modern nation-state. It is not based on sacred borders that were in existence at the time of the Prophet, or anything else having to do with Islam. All of Saudi Arabia, as a modern nation-state, is not considered holy by Muslims. This hatred of having troops there is arguably more the result of recent pan-Arabism and nationalism spreading across the Muslim world than actual violations of holy land. If I were to take your logic, then there shouldn't be any bases in all of Italy because of the Vatican and Rome. Now having said all this, I understand that people are unhappy with the US for having bases there and their concerns are justified. I just wish more Muslims would admit that their qualms with the bases have nothing to do with the holy land, and have everything to do with nationalism.

 

Good article about Blair's "moral" case for his war. The author argues that Blair has had problems with proving his earlier reasons for war he has to resort to claiming that he has morality on his side. He fails to mention of course that most religions think that this war is not moral or just.
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Blair's 'moral' case for war in Iraq is shot full of holes

As public opposition mounts, the PM is forced to play his last card

Simon Tisdall
Monday February 17, 2003
The Guardian

Downing Street is at panic stations as the full implications of Hans Blix's inspections report sink in. The two main US-British arguments in favour of launching a war on Iraq next month - that Saddam currently possesses deployable weapons of mass destruction and poses an immediate or near-term threat to the region and to us - already had few takers before Friday's UN meeting. In his peculiarly dispassionate, persuasive way, Blix further undermined and, for many, destroyed the credibility of the Anglo-American case for an early, pre-emptive attack.
A third core argument, favoured by George Bush and blithely reiterated by him in Florida last week - that Saddam is in cahoots with al-Qaida and is somehow linked or even to blame for 9/11 - is not seen as convincing even by those who have espoused it. Downing Street now knows this argument, too, is a definitive non-runner.

Assailed on all sides by unprecedented popular protest, at odds with Europe, outnumbered in the security council, with the Pentagon's clock inexorably ticking, and rightly worried that an impatient Bush may reject the "UN route", dish his British ally and press on regardless, Tony Blair has now reached his bottom line: morality.

With his back against the wall, belatedly aware of the depth of his difficulty, and surrounded by the empty shell casings of a defeated polemic, Blair played his last card in Glasgow at the weekend. Action was a moral imperative, he declared. If Saddam remains in power, he warned emotively, there will be "consequences paid in blood". The moral case for intervention was overwhelming. Those who opposed it, he implied, were themselves acting immorally.

In many respects, this is an outrageous statement. It reeks of condescension. In his wisdom, it seems, the prime minister is suggesting that millions of weekend marchers and all those in the European, Arab and Muslim spheres who disagree have failed to think through the ethical ramifications of their stand. But since Blair can be sure to repeat his moral message in the two or three weeks that remain before Bush is expected to press the button, it must be answered.

How moral is it, to take one aspect, to wreck an inspections process unanimously agreed by the UN? Blair and Jack Straw endlessly stress the exact terms of resolution 1441. But this document sets no time limit on inspections. It makes no mention of the regime change that Blair now advocates. Nor does 1441's text authorise the conquest, indefinite occupation and forcible remaking of Iraq under US military auspices.

Exactly how moral is it, as is now the US-British plan in the next fortnight, to gerrymander UN backing for war by buying votes with US financial largesse? Blair's new concept of the "unreasonable veto" and the quaint idea of claiming a "moral mandate" from a simple majority UN vote has no base in international law. Nor, for that matter, does the concept of an offensive war, as opposed to collective, defensive action. The US and Britain have no moral right to try to reinterpret and thus subvert the UN charter in this way.

The onus is surely on Blair, not his opponents, to explain the morality of rejecting Blix's provisional conclusion that his inspections are beginning to work. It is not "moral" to turn to the "last resort" of violence when Iraq has conceded many of the UN's demands and when South Africa, for example, is offering its good offices and experience in assuring nuclear disarmament.

The onus is surely also on Blair to show the Vatican and, say, Britain's Anglican and Muslim leaders, why and on what grounds his moral authority exceeds theirs.

Having made his bid for the high ground, the prime minister has many other dilemmas to clarify. The Iraq crisis has entrenched the Israel-Palestine stalemate. War will bring further delays to the peace process. But Palestinian children are suffering malnutrition right now. For many, international intervention to secure the occupied territories is a more pressing priority.

Or consider the Kurds. In the event of war, their hard-won autonomy will be under direct threat from a US-sanctioned, Turkish military incursion. Kurds were among the biggest victims of (deeply immoral) US-British military assistance to Saddam in the 1980s. They were victims again in 1991, with hundreds of thousands displaced. Now it seems they must suffer once more - but this time, for a Blair-defined moral good.

Such questions must all be weighed in the overall balance of good and bad. Likewise, too, the central prop of the Blair case: that intervention is morally justified on humanitarian grounds. There is no doubt, after all, of Saddam's tyranny, no argument that the Iraqi people are oppressed. It is pointless to dispute the sincerity of Iraqi exiles who insist his overthrow is more important than anything else.

The moral dimension of the Iraq crisis is plain to all. Unfortunately, for a man now mawkishly keen to demonstrate poll-defying "conviction" leadership, there are no absolutely right answers.

A gainst those who have suffered under Saddam in the past must be set the humanitarian catastrophe that the UN says may leave up to 10 million hungry. The World Health Organisation estimates that 100,000 Iraqis could be casualties and another 400,000 affected by disease and displacement.

Expert NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty utter similar warnings - concerns candidly shared by Clare Short. From within Iraq itself, meanwhile, come first-hand accounts of the terror and anger that the prospect of attack elicits. Yet from the US, at least, comes little but vague promises of minimised civilian casualties and "post-liberation" nation-building. To gauge the value of such pledges, one need only look at Afghanistan

Again, if humanitarian con cern is now the prime motivating factor in international intervention, there are many more urgent candidates, such as Congo, or North Korea, or southern Africa where millions are starving (and misgoverned) right now. On the other hand, it is clear that Iraq is not a Kosovo, where ethnic cleansing was an immediate, urgent horror or a fledgling East Timor, crying out for external assistance.

In truth, perhaps the principal measure of Iraq's jeopardy is not to be found in present-day humanitarian abuses, but in the depth of Bush's personal enmity towards Saddam. A prime Blair interest, meanwhile, is maintaining the transatlantic alliance. That is strategically important. But it is hardly a moral necessity.

With so many possible or likely negative consequences, and with US motives and follow-through in doubt, it cannot be reasonably or objectively concluded that war against Iraq is morally preferable to the alternatives.

Nobody advocates doing "nothing" about Iraq, as No 10's panic-station chief, John Reid, fatuously suggested yesterday. An intensified, permanent UN-led disarmament process, containment and sustained diplomatic pressure to remove Saddam is hardly nothing. Rather, it is the consensual, common sense and proper way forward. For sure, Bush may scorn such arguments. But others have a moral duty not to aid and abet his irresponsibility. Like his other arguments, Blair's "moral" case for war does not convince. It is but another excuse for the inexcusable.

blair & morality

 

If Blair is dribbling, you just dribbled off your foot... again. Don't try to pin the deaths of the Iraqui children on anyone but Saddams's regime, please. Get him Mango!

<b>Oski2005</b>: How would you propose to help the Iraqui people get rid of Saddam? I don't think anyone is fearful of Saddam launching a nuke at the US. The fear is that he will be a willing and capable supplier to some rogue who would. If I may use an analogy-- the Drug War. Saddam is a major dealer and Al-Qaeda et al are his distribution network. YOU ALWAYS WANT TO CUT OFF THE HEAD TO KILL THE BODY.

I don't mean to be capricious, but if we cause 3000 collateral deaths in the Saddam Takedown, how many lives will that save in <b>just the coming year</b> from his ravages?

 

This is <B>exactly</B> the kind of argument that needs to made loud, often, and to people all over the world.

 

His poll numbers and his party's poll numbers are drastically falling.

 

good...don't lead by polls. i don't think churchill's poll numbers would have looked real swell either.

 

I don't think it's necessarily good that his poll numbers have dropped, but I do agree that you shouldn't lead by polls in most situations. However, I think there are some, especially in times of war, where you should be wary of drastic shifts in public opinion.

 

i understand that concern, no doubt. someone posted something recently about poll numbers leading into military action, saying a majority rarely supports military action, though after the fact a majority certainly supports it.

 

Excellent article! Where would we be without Blair's leadership?

 

The last time Britain colonized Mesopotamia they artificially manufactured a country out of 3 oil-rich regions and named it Iraq w/ a puppet government to ensure a cheap and stable oil supply. But history doesn't repeat itself, cuz this time it's for the morals

 

<b>pip</b>: With the whole world watching, do you really think this is a transparent attempt to colonize Iraq? Sheesh.

 

Why War is the Right Choice for Tony Blair
by George W. Bush

...news at 11...

 

An alternative view from one of Blair's constituents...
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Published on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 by the Times/UK
The United States of America Has Gone Mad
by John le Carré

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?

Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

“But will we win, Daddy?”

“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”

“But will people be killed, Daddy?”

“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”

“Can I watch it on television?”

“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”

“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”

“Hush child, and go to sleep.”

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.