Tony Blair’s last ride
We heard a final justification from Tony Blair, with George W Bush in the Rose Garden of the White House, for the Iraq War.
“I’ve taken a view that Britain should stand shoulder to shoulder with America after September the 11th. I have never deviated from that view, I do not regret that view,”
This seems a lot like the Politician’s Syllogism from Yes, Minister:
- Something must be done
- This is something
- Therefore we must do it
Whenever Tony Blair is asked on the Iraq war, he asks whether we would rather still have Saddam Hussein, implicitly accusing us of approving of Saddam’s regime. Sometimes, we have to wait for better circumstances; sometimes, the right action is no action (or no further action). It is perfectly acceptable to say that Saddam was bad, but what has happened is worse and that there was no obligation or right on our part to intervene as we did at the time that we did.
xD.
May 18th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Yes, it is interesting how WMD is never mentioned now as a reason for going to war - despite the fact that was the reason given at the time.
To divert the question onto whether people ’support’ the overthrow of Saddam as he is trying to do is to ignore the point that, if removing dictators is what he wants, there are plenty of more unsteady regimes in other parts of the world which could be overthrown and replaced with democratic ones with far less bloodshed than in iraq. he has failed to do so.