The British media this morning, including the Daily Telegraph is reporting that Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of a heightened terrorist threat in the event that we went to war in Iraq. And the coverage implies that somehow that it was a great scandal that he failed – allegedly – to make this warning public.
I don’t know. It should have been blindlingly obvious to all that by threatening to topple Saddam, terror groups with a vested interest in his staying in power would try to foil said effort by attacking us.
Of course it is a repeated refrain from the tin-foil hat brigade on the pacifist left pessimistc right and head-in-sand Raimondo libertarian sect that if we act, we will only make Islamic groups even angrier. Problem is with this argument is that it is a “heads I win, tails you lose” sort of position. If we act – such as topple Saddam – the Islamo-loons will get mad. If we do nothing, they will hold us in contempt and attack us again for being weak.
Personally, I can live with their hate. They hate us anyway, so we might as well give them something to actually hate us for, by trying to establish liberty and prosperity in the Middle East.
mm, i wondered what all the fuss was about too.
“prime minister was warned that going to war may make some people angry”
there’s no story in there as far as i’m concerned.
I imagine if he had issued the warning, and no attack occurred (as it didn’t), he’d be attacked for scaremongering.
Heads and tails, indeed.
Agreed, there are plenty of issues to jump on Blair about, but this ain’t one of them.
*Everyone* knew that military action in the ME was going to risk provocation – that’s part and parcel of the risk of going to war. We didn’t need Blair to spell out the bleedin’ obvious to us.
Let’s attack on the important issues rather than the red herrings, such as that goddamned CONstitution…
My understanding is that Blair justified British intervention with several arguments, one of which was that a war in Iraq would reduce a quantifiable and immediate threat to Great Britain and enhancing our security. Given the lack of public support for this action, and a countervailing intelligence warning, the view that Blair manipulated the presentation of information in order to provide a convincing case to go to war, is now firmly established.
Personal arguments on whether the war was justified or not are immaterial here. It is an argument on whether Blair was justified in misleading Parliament and the public in order to justify going to war. The Hutton inquiry appeared to be letting Blair off lightly (and remember this is a man who did not show any compassion for the deceased on the stand) because he was not implicated in the manipulation of intelligence in order to prove his case. This story suggests otherwise: that is the reason for its importance.
It is not an issue of security; it is an issue of trust. Of course, for some, it merely confirms their contempt for the most left-wing government Britain has faced since the 1970s, a govt. renowned for its incompetence and mendacity. Blair is the key and this issue is part and parcel of the whole. He will drive through the European Constitution just as he dismantles the checks and balances, developed conventions, that reined in his power.
Therefore any attack on Blair and on Labour, any mud that sticks, any development that increases public distrust of this party is a positive.
Hm. Hindsight is 20/20, but I it would have been apt for the PM to have said that “it’s hardly this office’s job to repeat the obvious.”
I personally think that a conflict with Islamist fundamentalism and funnymentalism in general is inevitable – but one should be wary of armed conflict as a means of doing that.
Not that I have any particular objection to blowing murdering idiots to bits, but unfortunately, it’s like trying to blowtorch cockroaches – one spectacularly disposes of one or two while the rest of the colony plots revenge.
I would dispose of 10th century Islamist funnymentalism pretty much as funnymentalism is being dealt with in the western world – with the pen instead of the sword.
It’s not their chosen battleground, and that’s the best reason for using it. Even when they try using modern media, it only serves to highlight the basic bloody-minded thuggery they try to mask.
I said it the day of 9/11 and I say it now; this is not a job for soldiers toting guns. This is warfare, indeed it is; but it is at heart a conflict over how we think and how we relate to other persons and other nations.
It’s Infowar. A war targeted at minds and on occasions, persons. Certainly not invasions and bombings.
What obscure chapter of history made anyone in the White House think that invading and “controlling” territory could or would “stamp out terrorism” in that area? To cite the obvious, it never did work in Northern Ireland, certainly not in Israel. Why is this such an ideological bone for the New Right, the idea that you can solve complicated socio-economic and diplomatic issues by Blowing Stuff Up? I’d be all for it if it worked as a means of transforming an unmanageable problem into an admittedly larger, but manageable one. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Ever. Not once.
Blowing up people we describe as “terrorists” simply makes more of what they call “martyrs.” That’s a mug’s game.
It didn’t work in N Ireland because the will wasn’t there – or, in the case of Thatcher, there were too many screaming lefties screaming “human rights!”. “A war targetted at minds”? How do you reason with a splodey guy? Besides, the West is hardly a secret. They’re familiar with it. Many live in it. They know we have a degree of liberty undreamt of in theocracies. They just don’t agree with it. Bin Liner and his friends went to university in England. He wore flared trousers, for god’s sake! He got down and boogied. If the battle is for what we refer to as his “mind”, for want of a more exact word, we lost it.
Verity, I don’t think graphictruth was implying we could convert Bin Laden! But how much would Bin Laden etc. amount to without support?
And fine… sod human rights… let’s forget all about due process & the presumption of innocence. Stupid ‘Lefties’, always banging on about that stuff… who cares if the Birmingham Six were innocent… let them rot! They might’ve been terrorists, eh?
It’s easy to support oppressive or unjust actions whilst you’re certain you & your friends aren’t going to be on the receiving end. Not usually a good way to placate angry populations though, punishing the innocent for crimes committed by others.
Somewhat belatedly, yes. That is what I’m saying. There will always be nutjobs (some might say, like YOU, Bob King); the exercises is NOT to prevent “splody guys” from detonating themselves, but to prevent essentially reasonable people from thinking that is a course that, under the circumstances, isn’t an entirely unreasonable thing to do.
If you read what the mullahs and ayatollahs and terrorists have to say, it turns out they fear neither death nor devastation, neither occupation nor oppression.
What they fear is western-style civil liberties, prosperity for individuals, freedom of information and most of all, freedom of religious expression, most especially the freedom to laugh at mullahs and ayatollahs.
I think it’s long past time we should kick them where it hurts. Instead, we are doing exactly what they most want us to do.
Stupidity such as this frustrates me beyond words….
…no, that would be wrong. 🙂
Regards;
Bob King