The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

[caddyman]

Walking from Westminster, past the Abbey, toward Victoria this morning, we were crossing The Sanctuary and trying to fathom out why there were loads of police on patrol, several police vans with reserves, a demonstration (very quiet) outside Methodist Central Hall and a huge media scrum outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.

What could possibly be going on to warrant all this attention? Could we think of anything happening right now that might account for it? We could not.

Now I like to think this is simply because we had been dozing on the tube on the way into work and that apart from a quick coffee at around 7.15 this morning, we were caffeine deprived, but really.

It is, of course, today that Tony Blair goes back to the interminable Chilcot Enquiry on the Iraq War.

I do not like the man, but this is beginning to feel like one of those times when the only answer that will do is the answer that the enquiry and the public wants. I could be, probably am wrong, but it really does seem as though he will just get called back, quizzed and interrogated on ever finer points of detail until, through shaving everything away, there arrives an answer sufficiently unambiguous, on a point of infinitesimal detail, that someone will feel justified in extrapolating events back from that point and rebuilding history in their preferred image.

Once they have done that, no one will ask for Tony’s input any more, ever, and his version of events will be consigned to history and the public’s preferred version will become gospel.

Regardless of the truth. Goodfacts versus Realfacts.

Comments

[petrusplancius.livejournal.com]

I think about 95% of us have reached the conclusion (a) that in retrospect the decision to get involved in the Iraq War was one of the worst foreign policy blunders of the last 50 years and (b), that the justifications that were offered beforehand were grossly misleading to say the very least. Blair can of course never admit either point, but it makes no difference at all, and the fact that he honestly thinks that everything he did was right just makes him look a bit cracked. He really is much weirder than he seems. Personally I think it is much safer to be ruled by cynical politicians than ones who think they are Jesus.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Qualified:
Did we go in at the right time for the right reasons? No.

Should we have gone in earlier, when genocide and ecological disaster was happening, under a UN mandate & force. Yes.

Or should we have just "finished the job properly" after Kuwait?

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

I think you are one of those "rebuilding history in their preferred image". Getting rid of Saddam was the best thing after getting rid of Hitler. Period.

[pauln.livejournal.com]

I think that's overstating it a little (Pol Pot anyone, to name but one).

Be that as it may, if Tony and George had said "We want to go into Iraq to get rid of Saddam, because we think that's the right thing to do" there would have been a very different debate to the one we had where they said "Saddam has WMD and we must stop him using them". I'm with fractalgeek on the intervention front - earlier, with UN mandate. As a preference, not holding off in Gulf War I.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was our foreign policy to intervene to get rid of Pol Pot. I always felt, along with Mrs Thatcher, that it was a missed golden opportunity not to have got rid of Saddam post-Kuwait. People are re-writing history about the whole WMD scare. We believed that there were WMDs at the time - not in retrospect. Very easy to say otherwise with the benefit of hindsight.

[pauln.livejournal.com]

The Pol Pot point was to illustrate that there are worse than Saddam on the Hitler comparison scale (I could have cited various African or South American dictators). I didn't intend to suggest that removing him was or should have been British policy.

The WMD issue remains unclear. It's true that a number of MPs "believed there were". But the evidence suggests that Blair either knew there weren't or deliberately played up scant indications that there might be which meant that those MPs voted in favour of going to war on the basis of misleading information.

I fully agree that Bush Sr and Major should have finished the job first time around.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

Well Pol Pot arguably was worse than Hitler.

You say "But the evidence suggests that Blair either knew .. etc." I don't know of any "evidence" that Blair "knew". You also imply that MPs are such a bunch of retards as to be seemingly so easily "mis-led". Maybe they are!

[pauln.livejournal.com]

"Or that he played up scant indications".

My opinion of many MPs is indeed that low.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'm trying to rebuild histiory.

The point I am trying to make is that people won't be happy until Blair gives them answers he is not inclined to give. To obtain such an answer, they will have to zero in in something in increasing detail until he concedes on that one point at which time that single concession will be seen as a general admission that he was wrong and someone, somewhere, will re write history on the back of it.

I was in favour of the war in 2004. I made the mistake of believing the official position, a position that has now been shown to be wrong and probably known to be wrong at the time.

As Paul says below, it would lie much better with people if they felt that the war had happened for erroneous reasons and that error had been acknowledged, rather than a war fought off the back of dubious evidence, poorer legailty and a dogmatic need to twist the evidence to fit the decision, rather than decide based upon the facts.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

Not accusing you of re-writing history.

One thing I hope the Chilcot Inquiry will demonstrate is that it wasn't a clear-cut black and white area of decision making in the run up to the war. It was a very messy, complicated scenario. If Blair is to be placed under such scrutiny, then as a key player and witness, any credible historian has to also try and see things from his perspective - which is what he is providing to this Inquiry. Given the general hostility to him and his decision to take us into the Iraq war, even reflected in the Chilcot Inquiry panel to some extent, I thought Blair gave a robust and credible defence of his government's decision. He also gave a detailed explanation of the procedures of arriving at that decision (warts and all, it would seem). I really don't get any sense that Blair is trying to "twist the evidence to fit the decision". He had to make the judgment call at the time, and now he is (rightly) being made to explain and even justify his decisions.

I really don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Blair knew beforehand that going into Iraq on grounds of WMDs was wrong, or even probably wrong, at the time. People against the war are trying desperately to clutch at straws - and even twisting the evidence! - to try and prove that. So far, no evidence has emerged to back up that theory. He had to deal with the situation, given the protracted run-up to the war (some 10 years!), not to mention 9/11 happening in the meantime, as well as the small detail of UN Resolution 1441.

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Very fair points on the messiness and the need to be even-handed.

I think Blair would do much better to frankly come out and admit that the evidence *was* wrong. To my knowlege, he's never done so.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

I suspect they are building up for the Grand Eviction of Parliment Square.

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

"Well possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war."

- 'Goodbyeee'

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