Liberal Future Debate (3) – Is Tony Blair A War Criminal?
GORDON BROWN, former Labour leader and Prime Minister, has recently revealed – see here http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/gordon-brown-claims-knew-no-11469120 here http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/15641625.Gordon_Brown_says_UK___39_misled__39__over_WMDs_ahead_of_Iraq_war/ and here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gordon-brown-iraq-us-wmds-intelligence-blair-saddam-hussein-war-george-bush-rumsfeld-book-a8037686.html – that George W Bush misled Tony Blair over Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Indeed, as the above reports note, the US administration kept quiet about a top secret intelligence report which showed there was NO evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Brown argues that Britain would not have invaded Iraq had we known about it.
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Yet this seems to be contradicted by a previous report in the Daily Mail – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277402/Smoking-gun-emails-reveal-Blair-s-deal-blood-George-Bush-Iraq-war-forged-YEAR-invasion-started.html – which seems to suggest that Blair had effectively already committed Britain to war.
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Many people think that Tony Blair is a war criminal because of his part in the Iraq war. What do you think?
We know that the Daily Mail doesn’t have a very high opinion of Tony Blair (does anyone have a high opinion of Tony Blair these days?) but if Liberal Future is reading the runes correctly, we feel Blair would have gone to war no matter what.
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We get the impression that Tony Blair wanted to demonstrate how macho he was. Here was a real tough guy – and not some wimpy kid. It’s almost as if Tony Blair wanted to emulate Maggie Thatcher when she went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. We also feel that the Iraq war may may have triggered Blair’s almost messianic outlook on life.
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One thing is for sure, many people feel that Blair should be prosecuted for his part in the Iraq conflict. Here, hundreds of thousands of combatants and non-combatants have been killed or injured.
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We feel that the following article by Nora Johnson (from the 20 – 26 July issue of the Euro Weekly News) perfectly sums up the feelings of many people. Referring to a TV programme from earlier this year, she seems to imply that Blair should be doing serious jail time.
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We’d ask people to read the article below and answer the question posed by this Liberal Future debate – is Tony Blair a war criminal? To take part in the debate, simply look out it when it appears on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/706779429376233/ and have your say in the comments section.
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Chilcot accuses Blair of not being ‘straight with the nation’ over Iraq
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WARNING: the following contains strong language right from the start! What the *** … Well, I’d better tone it down a bit as it’s a family newspaper!
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I thought at first it was a belated April Fool’s joke but no. The BBC interview I just watched is only too true, and my blood pressure’s rising rapidly. And not in a good way.
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After weeks of depressing news about Brexit, Putin, Corbyn, Trump’s latest shenanigans, who unexpectedly emerges in the headlines? Yes. You guessed: Tony Blair.
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Tony Blair relied on emotional beliefs rather than facts in his decision to take Britain to was in Iraq, Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the seven-year inquiry into the legality of the conflict admitted in the interview.
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Right, so next time I’m caught out blatently lying, Ican claim I was “from my perspective and standpoint, emotionally truthful.” Thanks, Sir John, for clarifying that.
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Well, apart from the odd timing of Sir John’s admission (the inquiry was published a year ago), what’s also striking about the interview are the oddly evasive answers. Makes you wonder why he agreed to it all.
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And as for Blair’s decision-making process, what stands out most starkly is the fact that instead of providing a reasoned argument, he’d simply say: “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” ‘right’ having the smug tone of a vicor’s inner convictions. Is Sir John correct in describing that as ‘emotion’?
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Blair meddled in thongs he didn’t bother to analyse deeply and regularly mistook his own personal convictions for facts that they certainly weren’t. astonishgly, he still spins this into big bucks. Some people can, apparently, fool others (almost) all of the time.
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So, we’ve now entered the post-truth era where emotions, not facts, inform human behaviour and there is no doubt that Tony Blair acted with total ‘emotional’ integrity. Lawyers will be doubtless be pondering the extent to which this constitutes a plausible defence against other forms of criminality apart from war crimes. Crimes such as: I just killed my husband/wife/child/friend in an ‘emotional’ reaction to his/their behaviour? Heck!
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• CHECK OUT Liberal Future here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/706779429376233/
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• CHECK OUT previous Liberal Future debates here:
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Liberal Future Debate (1) – Should We Lower The Voting Age Throughout the UK? http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-debate-1-%e2%80%93-should-we-lower-the-voting-age-throughout-the-uk
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Liberal Future Debate (2) – Must The Earth Die Screaming? http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-debate-2-must-the-earth-die-screaming
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Liberal Future Debate (3) – Do Sport And Politics Mix? http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-debate-3-%E2%80%93-do-sport-and-politics-mix
Date: November 17, 2017
Categories: Articles