vhttp://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,896706,00.html This is an abridgement of a speech Tony Blair made in Glasgow yesterday. I haven't found a full version posted anywhere but this speech certainly made me more willling to listen to the pro war arguements. The key part is below: Yes, there are consequences of war. If we remove Saddam by force, people will die, and some will be innocent. And we must live with the consequences of our actions, even the unintended ones. But there are also consequences of 'stop the war'. There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which if he is left in power, will remain in being. I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process. But I ask the marchers to understand this. I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction. If there are 500,000 on the [Stop the War] march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for. If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started. So if the result of peace is Saddam staying in power, not disarmed, then I tell you there are consequences paid in blood for that decision too. But these victims will never be seen, never feature on our TV screens or inspire millions to take to the streets. But they will exist none the less. I found this speech almost inspiring and I hope that this means that the make up of a post invasion society will move up the agenda and it will beconfirmed that if we do invade Iraq a democratic, representative government will be formed and that Iraqi power structures will have all Baathist influence removed. If this is confirmed a lot of my scepticism will be removed. This speech has been overshadowed by the anti war marches which imho is a shame as this is a sincere speech giving the reasons why Britain will, reluctantly , go to war if Saddam does not change his behaviour dramatically.
http://www.labour.org.uk/tbglasgow/ I found the full link. There are some fascinating pieces in the speech where he quotes from mails he has from Iraqi exiles. I heard on the radio a fuller version of the first e-mail and the e-mail makes the point that whilst the US may not be the ideal invader, as it has previously supported Saddam & is biased against Palestinians, it is the only hope these people have. If I can find a full version of this I will post it.
Tony Blair has been very eloquent in his support for the pro-freedom forces. Blair, with public support in his country heavily against him, has much to lose and therefore has earned a great deal of respect from me. He is a man of courage and vision and will go down in history for his bravery in the face of tyranny. I wish I could same for most other liberals.
Is Blair taking a public opinion beating in the UK because of his views? Could it be that a modern leader is taking a position in spite of the fact it is not politically expedient? It would be nice if it were true. Will someone who is conversant on British politics chime in?
By the way, Ian, I wasn't doubting what you said in your post just previous to mine, just chiming in, bumping the thread, and looking for further input.
Blair is definitely under huge pressure because of this. His natural constituency (the centre left) tends towards anti war & a touch of anti americanism. The Liberals have come out as totally anti war & are obviously hoping to pick up some votes from Him. Let's face it there were between 750,000 to 2,000,000 people on the streets of London yesterday with an anti war message. No politician can afford to ignore that. Perhaps most worryingly for Blair there are Scottish elections in May. If the war is underway then that could become a virtual referendum on support for the war & the scots are traditionally more left wing & thus more anti war than the rest of the UK. I'm not certain if it will hurt him too much unless this becomes a bloody & long conflict. Otherwise he will look as if he knew what he was doing & also there is always a tendency once the troops are in action to stop complaining and to start supporting. Also, the conservatives are such a mess just now that people are unlikely to vote for them. All the above is just my opinion & I await others opinions with interest.
Raj, There was another British poster who argued that Tony Blair is not so much exercising political courage as he is simply picking the lesser of the two evils - that is, yes, he is taking a political risk by supporting an extremely unpopular war, though realists (with a lower-case R) in Britain realize that US is the strongest ally that Britain has and not siding with the Americans is just as risky politically (or something to that effect though I'm not sure on the details). Do you believe this to be the case? How vital is US-UK relationship for voters and politicians?
Thanks for posting this Raj. You have to admire Blair, he makes strong points and he certainly is doing what he believes is the "right thing" over what the polls say. If his message wasn't getting overshadowed by the ignorant bombast of the Bush administration I have no doubt that there would be more intelligent dialogue between the doves and hawks.
Thanks for posting this, Raj. This is the point I have tried to make in this thread when I said the following: Blair said basically the same things, just much, much more eloquently than I could have.
This is important to a UK politician but Blair, if he had wanted, could easily have steered a more middle ground to keep a reasonable relationship with the US and not been such a pro war force. I honestly believe that in this case, and in this case only, TB has gone against what is in his personal best interest as a politician to do what he believes to be best for the country as a whole & also for the Iraqi people. Having said that, he has clearly made compromises in the name of unity with the US; but then Bush probably woudn't have even gone to the UN were it not for Blair's influence.
I saw this posted on another site a short while ago. If you've seen this before then please accept my apologies. Sunday January 26, 2003 The Observer ------------------ I'm really excited by George Bush's latest reason for bombing Iraq: he's running out of patience. And so am I! For some time now I've been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what. I've been round to his place a few times to see what he's up to, but he's got everything well hidden. That's how devious he is. As for Mr Patel, don't ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by one. Some of my neighbours say, if I've got proof, why don't I go to the police? But that's simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours. They'll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights and wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will be secretly murdering people. Since I'm the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it's up to me to keep the peace. But until recently that's been a little difficult. Now, however, George W. Bush has made it clear that all I need to do is run out of patience, and then I can wade in and do whatever I want! And let's face it, Mr Bush's carefully thought-out policy towards Iraq is the only way to bring about international peace and security. The one certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the US or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened us. That's why I want to blow up Mr Johnson's garage and kill his wife and children. Strike first! That'll teach him a lesson. Then he'll leave us in peace and stop peering at me in that totally unacceptable way. Mr Bush makes it clear that all he needs to know before bombing Iraq is that Saddam is a really nasty man and that he has weapons of mass destruction - even if no one can find them. I'm certain I've just as much justification for killing Mr Johnson's wife and children as Mr Bush has for bombing Iraq. Mr Bush's long-term aim is to make the world a safer place by eliminating 'rogue states' and 'terrorism'. It's such a clever long-term aim because how can you ever know when you've achieved it? How will Mr Bush know when he's wiped out all terrorists? When every single terrorist is dead? But then a terrorist is only a terrorist once he's committed an act of terror. What about would-be terrorists? These are the ones you really want to eliminate, since most of the known terrorists, being suicide bombers, have already eliminated themselves. Perhaps Mr Bush needs to wipe out everyone who could possibly be a future terrorist? Maybe he can't be sure he's achieved his objective until every Muslim fundamentalist is dead? But then some moderate Muslims might convert to fundamentalism. Maybe the only really safe thing to do would be for Mr Bush to eliminate all Muslims? It's the same in my street. Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of other people in the street who I don't like and who - quite frankly - look at me in odd ways. No one will be really safe until I've wiped them all out. My wife says I might be going too far but I tell her I'm simply using the same logic as the President of the United States. That shuts her up. Like Mr Bush, I've run out of patience, and if that's a good enough reason for the President, it's good enough for me. I'm going to give the whole street two weeks - no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist masterminds, and if they don't hand them over nicely and say 'Thank you', I'm going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come. It's just as sane as what George W. Bush is proposing - and, in contrast to what he's intending, my policy will destroy only one street. Terry Jones
What a dumb-***. This is hardly an accurate comparison. You deport the ones one your block, and bomb the ones in the next neighborhood. And wrap your car in duct-tape stupid idiot. Leave the important decisions on city affairs to the professionals who know what they're doing.
full text of e-mail from irqi exile Here is the full text of the e-mail from the Iraqi exile that I mentioned earlier. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7218.asp In my opinion the key quotes are: and
So it's back to being a humanitarian effort. Before we debate whether invasion for humanitarian reasons is a valid option, let's do remember the many, many other reasons that have been floated and shot down. He helped with 9/11, he helps Al-Qaeda, he's about to invade, he's got nukes, he's gonna have nukes, he's got WMD, he didn't get rid of the WMD he already has, he's an imminent threat, he's flouting the UN, he tried to kill GHW Bush - all of these have been weighed and found wanting. There is no militarily or diplomatically defensible reason to invade. I believe that humanitarian reasons would be the most compelling reason to invade, short of an act of war on Saddam's part. The only problem with it, is that it would fail miserably. All-out war would make the conditions Blair describe in Iraq far, far worse, as far as the medical statistics he quoted. There's also the fact that the sort of war we're proposing would kill in a week as many as Saddam kills in a year. Since there's no resistance effort within Iraq, we'd be looking at a situation even worse than Vietnam, as far as support from the population is concerned. The only thing they can usefully do against Saddam is get killed, unfortunately. An EXTREMELY quick victory on our part makes this easier, but our strategy seems to be to achieve that quick victory by blasting the hell out of the place. I think it's hypocritical for us to write off six figures worth of the very same Iraqis we're now claiming to be fighting for. One minute they're innocent victims of a cruel regime, the next they're collateral damage? Especially when there's no existing internal uprising. No one in Iraq is exactly inviting us to invade, certainly no one in any position to actually help. Even De Gaulle actually had a few troops. As far as selling the war to the world, it won't take people very long to realize that the worst crimes Saddam has committed were under our watch, and with our permission. This isn't an argument against invasion - better late than never - but coming from an administration that has already had its share of hypocritical posturing, don't be surprised if the argument doesn't sway anyone. And, pardon me, but a million people have been killed by Saddam already? Where did that figure come from? I searched hrw.org and amnesty.org, and didn't get anywhere near that number. If people think that exaggerating the already ugly crimes Saddam has committed is going to help, then I've got a Kuwaiti incubator I'd like to see you. (I have a feeling we're including the Iran-Iraq war in that million count, as well the Kuwait invasion - more than partial responsibility for which can be laid at American administrations, and which are very unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future.)
Please don't let facts get in your way, Dan. Please General Loney, enlighten us. Huh. Really? I haven't had the privilege of sitting in on the strategic development meetings like you Dan, but maybe you could explain how Team USA is planning on setting Iraq on fire. That should be compelling, to say the least. Please, Dan. Lay out your plan for us. I'm fascinated. They're dead, Dan. No, it's not an argument against anything. It's pointless. Who is accountable for Saddam's actions? Saddam. End of story. What numbers did you get? Where are the hrw.org and amnesty.org booths in Iraq? I mean, the dead people have to check themselves in, don't they?
Okay, in the red letter part of your post, I was going through the list of arguments that had been made. It read as if you were asking me to prove arguments that I don't agree with. You might have been asking me to link that those arguments have been disproven. It's hard to tell. I'm going to assume you mean you want me to disprove the arguments. What you want to do, then, is click on my name, then search for all posts by user, and bask in the brilliance. You'll be a better person for it, believe me. So my bleeding heart stops at the American border, and I don't care about the MILLIONS of Iraqis Saddam plans to kill? Hey, Captain Hyperbole, if you care so much about them, why not let them live, hmm? The unreasoning appeal to emotion cuts both ways here, I'm sorry to inform you. The dead Iraqi civilians in this case are actually dead Kurd civilians. If you think the US should go in to redeem their deaths and establish a free Kurdistan, that's fine. It's not our policy, and it would drive Turkey to distraction, and most of the Kurds hate us for how we shafted them the last time, but if that's your reasoning, fine. Better get on the horn though, because right now that's not one of Bush's war aims. I seriously have to prove that he's not about to invade anyone? He's not gonna invade anyone. He hasn't got the army, he hasn't got the WMD, and if he did we'd go storming over the border. Common sense apparently isn't, around the Nutmeg house. If you re-read what I wrote - and frankly, you should commit everything I write to memory, it can only do you good - you'll say that I'm not disputing the facts of some of those arguments. I'm simply saying they don't justify invasion. Hurt feelings over 1441 won't cut it. Sorry to be the one to tell you. Same with trying to kill GHW Bush, unless your theory is that Clinton was wrong to not invade over it. Call me nutty, but I'd rather avenge 9/11 than avenge an ex-President who wasn't even killed. Apparently you missed all the strategy articles revolving around "Shock and Awe." Apparently you missed all the reports about 800 missiles hitting Iraqi cities in the first 48 hours. How that qualifies as a humanitarian effort is beyond me. And re-read something about burden of proof, while you're at it. If I read about how we're going to war over a million civilian deaths and Saddam's complicity in 9/11, let alone his possession of WMD, it's not up to me to disprove it. It's not up to you, Nutmeg in Portland, to prove it, but you might want to ask your boys Dubya and Colin and Co. why they haven't.