Archbishop Desmond Tutu deserves to be commended for his adamancy on a trial of Tony Blair and others. There is no question that Blair may have done some good as a British Prime minister. That he did does not detract from the fact that he and others caused unconscionable crimes to be committed against the Iraqi people in Iraq. Blair cannot be oblivious of that fact.
If only Blair would admit publicly that he and his co-actors in the Iraq tragedy were wrong and that he would not make the same mistake today knowing what he knows now, all might be forgiven Blair continues to justify the crimes committed in Iraq knowing fully well that the people of Iraq continue to suffer as a result of his and others’ intervention in Iraq. Blair knows that Iraq will remain a troubled country for a long time as a direct consequence of an intervention that he led- an intervention even if it was justified, should have been happened differently, better and less costly. Good intentions are great but they are never a sufficient justification for foreseeable and predictable enduring mindless violence that Iraq has known and continues to know. . Innocent Iraqi are owed a deserved apology for what has become of their country. General Colin Powell has led the way when he publicly stated that he was misled to make a case for the invasion of Iraq at the United Nations. He is a man, a grown, moral, and great man.
There may be some who have forgotten that Mandela and Pope John Paul II among others warned against the Iraq adventure. Tutu it should be said is not alone in his criticism of Blair. Tutu has a lot of company in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Tutu is a man of the cloth. He tries to be a moral leader and not a political leader. His criticism of the post Mandela governments of South Africa are justified. Past and recent events in South Africa are eloquent evidence. The governments have been unqualified failures that are not even near to meting even modest expectations of them. It is not clear to the unbiased that Tutu craves publicity . Let it be agreed that he does. What is wrong with that as a collateral benefit if the man speaks truth to power when few others will?
Blair must know deep in his heart that he and others like him sold the people of Iraq short for a “mess of por-ridge”. Thank goodness for people like Tutu. He and a few others like him continue to remind the world that accountability is not and need not be the burden of the lowly, poor, or weak only. The world is a better place because of people like Tutu.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tade Aina
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 2:39 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: trial of tony Blair
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Subject: trial of tony blair
dear all: here's my take on a recent spat between archbishop tutu and tony blair over iraq. best, adekeye
The Trial of Tony Blair
Adekeye Adebajo
The recent spat that erupted following Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s refusal to attend a leadership summit in Johannesburg on account of former British premier Tony Blair’s presence, was a fascinating clash between two establishment figures. Tutu withdrew from the conference charging that Blair had invaded Iraq in 2003 based on a “lie”; that he and United States (US) president George W. Bush had acted like “playground bullies”; and that since 110,000 innocent Iraqis had been killed following the invasion, Blair and Bush should be tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. Tutu decried the double standards in which only African and Asian actors continue to be tried in the Hague (all 29 people indicted so far by the ICC have, in fact, been African).
Such stinging criticisms have been levelled at Blair before, but none could have had the same devastating impact as Tutu who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his leadership during the anti-apartheid struggle, and has been revered since as a moral beacon. Tutu has, however, sometimes been accused of “shooting from the hip”. Last year, for example, he described the Jacob Zuma administration as worse than the apartheid regime after the Dalai Lama was denied a visa to enter South Africa. Tutu’s obsession with publicity is also curious, and Nelson Mandela’s graceful exit from public life continues to contrast starkly with his constant craving for the limelight. But was Tutu right to suggest Blair be tried at the Hague?
Tony Blair was in power between 1997 and 2007 and was the most successful contemporary leader of the Labour party, winning three general elections. He contributed to peacemaking in Northern Ireland and oversaw Scottish devolution. He, however, sometimes demonstrated a “muscular born-again Christianity” and sanctimonious self-righteousness. His obsession with poll-obsessed popularity lowered the tone of British politics, often descending into manipulative spin and empty sound-bites. The man who had at first been depicted as a wide-eyed cartoonish “Bambi” happily skipping around the forest would eventually earn the nickname “Bliar” from the British public, one million of whom protested his decision to go to war with Iraq. Many felt, like Tutu, that he had acted in bad faith and misled the British parliament and public. The largely plagiarised “dodgy dossier” and an earlier one that falsely claimed that Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, had the capacity to launch biological weapons within 45 minutes, were a particular nadir in this debacle.
The Iraq invasion had been undertaken by Bush and Blair with the justification that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). United Nations (UN) inspectors had warned that no evidence for such weapons existed. That the invasion had failed to uncover any weapons made Blair’s ex-post facto humanitarian justifications of the invasion appear absurd and dishonest. A war of aggression which many around the world considered to have been both illegal and illegitimate had been launched by two self-appointed sheriffs with a hurriedly gathered posse without the UN’s blessing. Some of Blair’s cabinet ministers and his attorney-general had cautioned him against waging the war without a UN mandate. Even Western allies, France and Germany, opposed this hare-brained fiasco, an anachronistic neo-imperial attempt at “gunboat diplomacy” aimed at imposing “democracy” on an Arab autocracy through the barrel of a gun. The British bulldog was widely portrayed as an American poodle, and it was clear that the key decisions had been taken in Washington, with London largely following Bush down a blind alley.
Both in his 2010 memoir A Journey and in his recent response to Tutu, Blair sought to justify the Iraq invasion on the grounds that Saddam’s egregious human rights abuses had justified the intervention. Quite aside from the difficulty of crusading Western governments going around the world deciding which morally deficient leaders to topple, what Blair has consistently failed to detail is the extent to which the West had armed and funded Saddam’s chemical weapon-fuelled war of aggression against Iran between 1980 and 1988, and condoned his gas-fuelled massacres against his own people. Neither elicited vocal condemnation from Saddam’s Western allies. He was the monstrous Frankenstein of cynical Western scientists, a “mad dog” fed and sustained by both America and Blair’s own country. This history greatly discredits Blair’s belated humanitarian justifications.
Blair can also be “tried” for often erroneously portraying himself as Africa’s best friend. Like a modern-day missionary, he condescendingly described the continent as a “scar on the world’s conscience” without any evident awareness of the offensiveness of such broad stereotyping. He paid a state visit to Africa only at the fag-end of his premiership; supported autocratic regimes in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda; and failed to fulfill promises on massively increasing aid to Africa. Even if Blair does not end up in the Hague, some 25 countries have laws on their books against wars of aggression. His trial may therefore not be as fanciful as it once seemed. He must wish – as King Henry II once did about Thomas Becket – that someone would rid him of South Africa’s troublesome priest.
Dr. Adekeye Adebajo is Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, and co-editor of The EU and Africa.
BusinesssDay (South Africa), 10 September 2012.
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