In order to understand the present and future, you have to examine the past and what brought you to this point, in order to avoid making the same mistakes that got you here again and again. America has not learned from it's mistakes, and keeps doing the same dumb things, no matter the President. Intervene, Interfere, rinse repeat.
No, he's saying, and quite accurately, that ISIS wouldn't exist, and further, Iraq would still likely be a stable Country, albeit led by a dictator, and a strong counter force in the Middle East to Iran, instead of a satellite of Iran and the breeding ground for terrorism that Bush's War turned it into.
I understand your point, I just disagree with it. In order to defeat this enemy, and help prevent them springing up continuously, it certainly helps to understand their origins, why they came to be, what you can do to avoid it again and again. ISIS was created by our reckless War in Iraq. ISIS will not be defeated by bombing them into submission. You can't bomb ideas away.
Former Prime Minister Mr Blair insisted the current crisis was not the brutal consequence of the British and American invasion in 2003.
He said: “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t.
“Even if you had left Saddam in place in 2003, then when the Arab revolutions in 2011, you would have still had a major problem in Iraq.”
Blair continued that if the 2003 invasion of Iraq did not go ahead, it is likely that the Iraqi people would have staged an Arab Spring uprising against Saddam Hussein.
He added that “Saddam Hussein’s response would have been more like that of Bashar al-Assad in Syria .
“Whatever decision had been taken in 2003, in 2014 we would be facing a major challenge,” Blair claimed.
“That is the point I am making. I am not seeking to persuade people about the decision in 2003. I am trying to convince them that the fundamental challenge is not the product of that decision or indeed the decision in Syria. It is a challenge of immense complexity that has not originated in anything we have done since this challenge burst fully on to our consciousness after the attacks of September 11 2001,” he said.
Tony Blair: Syria conflict is to blame for current Iraq crisis
Tony Blair last night accused critics of the war in Iraq of trying to "wilfully" claim the current crisis in the country is a result of the original invasion.
In a 3,000-word essay, Mr Blair rejected claims that he was to blame, saying that if the West had not rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, the crisis in the Middle East would be worse.
"We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it," he wrote. Mr Blair added that it is a "bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis".
He wrote: "Because some of the commentary has gone immediately to claim that but for that decision, Iraq would not be facing this challenge; or even more extraordinary, implying that but for the decision, the Middle East would be at peace right now; it is necessary that certain points are made forcefully before putting forward a solution to what is happening now.
"Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?
"Easily the most likely scenario is that Iraq would have been engulfed by precisely the same convulsion … The risk would have been of a full blown sectarian war across the region, with states not fighting by proxy, but with national armies."
Mr Blair, who said he was not calling for allied troops to return to Iraq but all measures short of that, including air strikes, said the major cause of the current conflict was the civil war in Syria, together with the "sectarianism of the Maliki Government" which had "led to the alienation of the Sunni community"
Tony Blair last night accused critics of the war in Iraq of trying to "wilfully" claim the current crisis in the country is a result of the original invasion.
In a 3,000-word essay, Mr Blair rejected claims that he was to blame, saying that if the West had not rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, the crisis in the Middle East would be worse.
"We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it," he wrote. Mr Blair added that it is a "bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis".
He wrote: "Because some of the commentary has gone immediately to claim that but for that decision, Iraq would not be facing this challenge; or even more extraordinary, implying that but for the decision, the Middle East would be at peace right now; it is necessary that certain points are made forcefully before putting forward a solution to what is happening now.
"Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?
"Easily the most likely scenario is that Iraq would have been engulfed by precisely the same convulsion … The risk would have been of a full blown sectarian war across the region, with states not fighting by proxy, but with national armies."
Mr Blair, who said he was not calling for allied troops to return to Iraq but all measures short of that, including air strikes, said the major cause of the current conflict was the civil war in Syria, together with the "sectarianism of the Maliki Government" which had "led to the alienation of the Sunni community"
Tony Blair Iraq essay full text: We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' caused this crisis. We haven't
The former Prime Minister that led Britain in the 2003 invasion says it is 'a bizarre reading to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis.
The civil war in Syria with its attendant disintegration is having its predictable and malign effect. Iraq is now in mortal danger. The whole of the Middle East is under threat.
We will have to re-think our strategy towards Syria; support the Iraqi Government in beating back the insurgency; whilst making it clear that Iraq’s politics will have to change for any resolution of the current crisis to be sustained. Then we need a comprehensive plan for the Middle East that correctly learns the lessons of the past decade. In doing so, we should listen to and work closely with our allies across the region, whose understanding of these issues is crucial and who are prepared to work with us in fighting the root causes of this extremism which goes far beyond the crisis in Iraq or Syria.
It is inevitable that events in Mosul have led to a re-run of the arguments over the decision to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003. The key question obviously is what to do now. But because some of the commentary has gone immediately to claim that but for that decision, Iraq would not be facing this challenge; or even more extraordinary, implying that but for the decision, the Middle East would be at peace right now; it is necessary that certain points are made forcefully before putting forward a solution to what is happening now.
READ MORE: 'IT WOULD BE WORSE IF WE HADN'T INVADED IRAQ,' CLAIMS BLAIR
Three or four years ago al-Qa'ida in Iraq was a beaten force. The country had massive challenges but had a prospect, at least, of overcoming them. It did not pose a threat to its neighbours. Indeed, since the removal of Saddam, and despite the bloodshed, Iraq had contained its own instability mostly within its own borders.
Though the challenge of terrorism was and is very real, the sectarianism of the Maliki Government snuffed out what was a genuine opportunity to build a cohesive Iraq. This, combined with the failure to use the oil money to re-build the country, and the inadequacy of the Iraqi forces have led to the alienation of the Sunni community and the inability of the Iraqi army to repulse the attack on Mosul and the earlier loss of Fallujah. And there will be debate about whether the withdrawal of US forces happened too soon.
However there is also no doubt that a major proximate cause of the takeover of Mosul by Isis is the situation in Syria. To argue otherwise is wilful. The operation in Mosul was planned and organised from Raqqa across the Syria border. The fighters were trained and battle-hardened in the Syrian war. It is true that they originate in Iraq and have shifted focus to Iraq over the past months. But, Islamist extremism in all its different manifestations as a group, rebuilt refinanced and re-armed mainly as a result of its ability to grow and gain experience through the war in Syria.
As for how these events reflect on the original decision to remove Saddam, if we want to have this debate, we have to do something that is rarely done: put the counterfactual ie suppose in 2003, Saddam had been left running Iraq. Now take each of the arguments against the decision in turn.
The first is there was no WMD risk from Saddam and therefore the casus belli was wrong. What we now know from Syria is that Assad, without any detection from the West, was manufacturing chemical weapons. We only discovered this when he used them. We also know, from the final weapons inspectors reports, that though it is true that Saddam got rid of the physical weapons, he retained the expertise and capability to manufacture them. Is it likely that, knowing what we now know about Assad, Saddam, who had used chemical weapons against both the Iranians in the 1980s war that resulted in over one million casualties and against his own people, would have refrained from returning to his old ways? Surely it is at least as likely that he would have gone back to them.
The second argument is that but for the invasion of 2003, Iraq would be a stable country today. Leave aside the treatment Saddam meted out to the majority of his people whether Kurds, Shia or marsh Arabs, whose position of ‘stability’ was that of appalling oppression. Consider the post 2011 Arab uprisings. Put into the equation the counterfactual – that Saddam and his two sons would be running Iraq in 2011 when the uprisings began. Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?
Easily the most likely scenario is that Iraq would have been engulfed by precisely the same convulsion. Take the hypothesis further. The most likely response of Saddam would have been to fight to stay in power. Here we would have a Sunni leader trying to retain power in the face of a Shia revolt. Imagine the consequences. Next door in Syria a Shia backed minority would be clinging to power trying to stop a Sunni majority insurgency. In Iraq the opposite would be the case. The risk would have been of a full blown sectarian war across the region, with States not fighting by proxy, but with national armies.
So it is a bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis.
And it is here that if we want the right policy for the future, we have to learn properly the lessons not just of Iraq in 2003 but of the Arab uprisings from 2011 onwards.
The reality is that the whole of the Middle East and beyond is going through a huge, agonising and protracted transition. We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.
The problems of the Middle East are the product of bad systems of politics mixed with a bad abuse of religion going back over a long time. Poor governance, weak institutions, oppressive rule and a failure within parts of Islam to work out a sensible relationship between religion and Government have combined to create countries which are simply unprepared for the modern world. Put into that mix, young populations with no effective job opportunities and education systems that do not correspond to the requirements of the future economy, and you have a toxic, inherently unstable matrix of factors that was always – repeat always - going to lead to a revolution.
But because of the way these factors interrelate, the revolution was never going to be straightforward. This is the true lesson of Iraq. But it is also the lesson from the whole of the so-called Arab Spring. The fact is that as a result of the way these societies have developed and because Islamism of various descriptions became the focal point of opposition to oppression, the removal of the dictatorship is only the beginning not the end of the challenge. Once the regime changes, then out come pouring all the tensions – tribal, ethnic and of course above all religious; and the rebuilding of the country, with functioning institutions and systems of Government, becomes incredibly hard. The extremism de-stabilises the country, hinders the attempts at development, the sectarian divisions become even more acute and the result is the mess we see all over the region. And beyond it. Look at Pakistan or Afghanistan and the same elements are present.
Understanding this and analysing properly what has happened, is absolutely vital to the severe challenge of working out what we can do about it. So rather than continuing to re-run the debate over Iraq from over 11 years ago, realise that whatever we had done or not done, we would be facing a big challenge today.
Indeed we now have three examples of Western policy towards regime change in the region. In Iraq, we called for the regime to change, removed it and put in troops to try to rebuild the country. But intervention proved very tough and today the country is at risk again. In Libya, we called for the regime to change, we removed it by airpower, but refused to put in troops and now Libya is racked by instability, violence and has exported vast amounts of trouble and weapons across North Africa and down into sub- Saharan Africa. In Syria we called for the regime to change, took no action and it is in the worst state of all.
And when we do act, it is often difficult to discern the governing principles of action. Gaddafi, who in 2003 had given up his WMD and cooperated with us in the fight against terrorism, is removed by us on the basis he threatens to kill his people but Assad, who actually kills his people on a vast scale including with chemical weapons, is left in power.
So what does all this mean? How do we make sense of it? I speak with humility on this issue because I went through the post 9/11 world and know how tough the decisions are in respect of it. But I have also, since leaving office, spent a great deal of time in the region and have studied its dynamics carefully.
The beginning of understanding is to appreciate that resolving this situation is immensely complex. This is a generation long struggle. It is not a ‘war’ which you win or lose in some clear and clean-cut way. There is no easy or painless solution. Intervention is hard. Partial intervention is hard. Non-intervention is hard.
Ok, so if it is that hard, why not stay out of it all, the current default position of the West? The answer is because the outcome of this long transition impacts us profoundly. At its simplest, the jihadist groups are never going to leave us alone. 9/11 happened for a reason. That reason and the ideology behind it have not disappeared.
However more than that, in this struggle will be decided many things: the fate of individual countries, the future of the Middle East, and the direction of the relationship between politics and the religion of Islam. This last point will affect us in a large number of ways. It will affect the radicalism within our own societies which now have significant Muslim populations. And it will affect how Islam develops across the world. If the extremism is defeated in the Middle East it will eventually be defeated the world over, because this region is its spiritual home and from this region has been spread the extremist message.
There is no sensible policy for the West based on indifference. This is, in part, our struggle, whether we like it or not.
Already the security agencies of Europe believe our biggest future threat will come from returning fighters from Syria. There is a real risk that Syria becomes a haven for terrorism worse than Afghanistan in the 1990s. But think also of the effect that Syria is having on the Lebanon and Jordan. There is no way this conflagration was ever going to stay confined to Syria. I understand all the reasons following Afghanistan and Iraq why public opinion was so hostile to involvement. Action in Syria did not and need not be as in those military engagements. But every time we put off action, the action we will be forced to take will ultimately be greater.
On the immediate challenge President Obama is right to put all options on the table in respect of Iraq, including military strikes on the extremists; and right also to insist on a change in the way the Iraqi Government takes responsibility for the politics of the country.
The moderate and sensible elements of the Syria Opposition should be given the support they need; Assad should know he cannot win an outright victory; and the extremist groups, whether in Syria or Iraq, should be targeted, in coordination and with the agreement of the Arab countries. However unpalatable this may seem, the alternative is worse.
But acting in Syria alone or Iraq, will not solve the challenge across the region or the wider world. We need a plan for the Middle East and for dealing with the extremism world-wide that comes out of it.
The starting point is to identify the nature of the battle. It is against Islamist extremism. That is the fight. People shy away from the starkness of that statement. But it is because we are constantly looking for ways of avoiding facing up to this issue, that we can't make progress in the battle.
Of course in every case, there are reasons of history and tribe and territory which add layers of complexity. Of course, too, as I said at the outset, bad governance has played a baleful role in exacerbating the challenges. But all those problems become infinitely tougher to resolve, when religious extremism overlays everything. Then unity in a nation is impossible. Stability is impossible. Therefore progress is impossible. Government ceases to build for the future and manages each day as it can. Division tears apart cohesion. Hatred replaces hope.
We have to unite with those in the Muslim world, who agree with this analysis to fight the extremism. Parts of the Western media are missing a critical new element in the Middle East today. There are people – many of them – in the region who now understand this is the battle and are prepared to wage it. We have to stand with them.
Repressive systems of Government have played their part in the breeding of the extremism. A return to the past for the Middle East is neither right nor feasible. On the contrary there has to be change and there will be. However, we have to have a more graduated approach, which tries to help change happen without the chaos.
We were naïve about the Arab uprisings which began in 2011. Evolution is preferable to revolution. I said this at the time, precisely because of what we learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sometimes evolution is not possible. But where we can, we should be helping countries make steady progress towards change. We should be actively trying to encourage and help the reform process and using the full weight of the international community to do so.
Where there has been revolution, we have to be clear we will not support systems or Governments based on sectarian religious politics.
Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force. This does not mean Western troops as in Iraq. There are masses of responses we can make short of that. But they need to know that wherever they're engaged in terror, we will be hitting them.
Longer term, we have to make a concerted effort to reform the education systems, formal and informal which are giving rise to the extremism. It should be part of our dialogue and partnership with all nations that we expect education to be open-minded and respectful of difference whether of faith culture or race. We should make sure our systems reflect these values; they should do the same. This is the very reason why, after I left office I established a Foundation now active in the education systems of over 20 different countries, including in the Middle East, promoting a programme of religious and cultural co-existence.
We should make this a focal point of cooperation between East and West. China, Russia, Europe and the USA all have the same challenge of extremism. For the avoidance of doubt, I am neither minimising our differences especially over issues like Ukraine, nor suggesting a weakening of our position there; simply that on this issue of extremism, we can and should work together.
We should acknowledge that the challenge goes far further afield than the Middle East. Africa faces it as the ghastly events in Nigeria show. The Far East faces it. Central Asia too.
The point is that we won't win the fight until we accept the nature of it.
Iraq is part of a much bigger picture. By all means argue about the wisdom of earlier decisions. But it is the decisions now that will matter. The choices are all pretty ugly, it is true. But for 3 years we have watched Syria descend into the abyss and as it is going down, it is slowly but surely wrapping its cords around us pulling us down with it. We have to put aside the differences of the past and act now to save the future.
The former Prime Minister that led Britain in the 2003 invasion says it is 'a bizarre reading to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis.
The civil war in Syria with its attendant disintegration is having its predictable and malign effect. Iraq is now in mortal danger. The whole of the Middle East is under threat.
We will have to re-think our strategy towards Syria; support the Iraqi Government in beating back the insurgency; whilst making it clear that Iraq’s politics will have to change for any resolution of the current crisis to be sustained. Then we need a comprehensive plan for the Middle East that correctly learns the lessons of the past decade. In doing so, we should listen to and work closely with our allies across the region, whose understanding of these issues is crucial and who are prepared to work with us in fighting the root causes of this extremism which goes far beyond the crisis in Iraq or Syria.
It is inevitable that events in Mosul have led to a re-run of the arguments over the decision to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003. The key question obviously is what to do now. But because some of the commentary has gone immediately to claim that but for that decision, Iraq would not be facing this challenge; or even more extraordinary, implying that but for the decision, the Middle East would be at peace right now; it is necessary that certain points are made forcefully before putting forward a solution to what is happening now.
READ MORE: 'IT WOULD BE WORSE IF WE HADN'T INVADED IRAQ,' CLAIMS BLAIR
Three or four years ago al-Qa'ida in Iraq was a beaten force. The country had massive challenges but had a prospect, at least, of overcoming them. It did not pose a threat to its neighbours. Indeed, since the removal of Saddam, and despite the bloodshed, Iraq had contained its own instability mostly within its own borders.
Though the challenge of terrorism was and is very real, the sectarianism of the Maliki Government snuffed out what was a genuine opportunity to build a cohesive Iraq. This, combined with the failure to use the oil money to re-build the country, and the inadequacy of the Iraqi forces have led to the alienation of the Sunni community and the inability of the Iraqi army to repulse the attack on Mosul and the earlier loss of Fallujah. And there will be debate about whether the withdrawal of US forces happened too soon.
However there is also no doubt that a major proximate cause of the takeover of Mosul by Isis is the situation in Syria. To argue otherwise is wilful. The operation in Mosul was planned and organised from Raqqa across the Syria border. The fighters were trained and battle-hardened in the Syrian war. It is true that they originate in Iraq and have shifted focus to Iraq over the past months. But, Islamist extremism in all its different manifestations as a group, rebuilt refinanced and re-armed mainly as a result of its ability to grow and gain experience through the war in Syria.
As for how these events reflect on the original decision to remove Saddam, if we want to have this debate, we have to do something that is rarely done: put the counterfactual ie suppose in 2003, Saddam had been left running Iraq. Now take each of the arguments against the decision in turn.
The first is there was no WMD risk from Saddam and therefore the casus belli was wrong. What we now know from Syria is that Assad, without any detection from the West, was manufacturing chemical weapons. We only discovered this when he used them. We also know, from the final weapons inspectors reports, that though it is true that Saddam got rid of the physical weapons, he retained the expertise and capability to manufacture them. Is it likely that, knowing what we now know about Assad, Saddam, who had used chemical weapons against both the Iranians in the 1980s war that resulted in over one million casualties and against his own people, would have refrained from returning to his old ways? Surely it is at least as likely that he would have gone back to them.
The second argument is that but for the invasion of 2003, Iraq would be a stable country today. Leave aside the treatment Saddam meted out to the majority of his people whether Kurds, Shia or marsh Arabs, whose position of ‘stability’ was that of appalling oppression. Consider the post 2011 Arab uprisings. Put into the equation the counterfactual – that Saddam and his two sons would be running Iraq in 2011 when the uprisings began. Is it seriously being said that the revolution sweeping the Arab world would have hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, to say nothing of the smaller upheavals all over the region, but miraculously Iraq, under the most brutal and tyrannical of all the regimes, would have been an oasis of calm?
Easily the most likely scenario is that Iraq would have been engulfed by precisely the same convulsion. Take the hypothesis further. The most likely response of Saddam would have been to fight to stay in power. Here we would have a Sunni leader trying to retain power in the face of a Shia revolt. Imagine the consequences. Next door in Syria a Shia backed minority would be clinging to power trying to stop a Sunni majority insurgency. In Iraq the opposite would be the case. The risk would have been of a full blown sectarian war across the region, with States not fighting by proxy, but with national armies.
So it is a bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis.
And it is here that if we want the right policy for the future, we have to learn properly the lessons not just of Iraq in 2003 but of the Arab uprisings from 2011 onwards.
The reality is that the whole of the Middle East and beyond is going through a huge, agonising and protracted transition. We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.
The problems of the Middle East are the product of bad systems of politics mixed with a bad abuse of religion going back over a long time. Poor governance, weak institutions, oppressive rule and a failure within parts of Islam to work out a sensible relationship between religion and Government have combined to create countries which are simply unprepared for the modern world. Put into that mix, young populations with no effective job opportunities and education systems that do not correspond to the requirements of the future economy, and you have a toxic, inherently unstable matrix of factors that was always – repeat always - going to lead to a revolution.
But because of the way these factors interrelate, the revolution was never going to be straightforward. This is the true lesson of Iraq. But it is also the lesson from the whole of the so-called Arab Spring. The fact is that as a result of the way these societies have developed and because Islamism of various descriptions became the focal point of opposition to oppression, the removal of the dictatorship is only the beginning not the end of the challenge. Once the regime changes, then out come pouring all the tensions – tribal, ethnic and of course above all religious; and the rebuilding of the country, with functioning institutions and systems of Government, becomes incredibly hard. The extremism de-stabilises the country, hinders the attempts at development, the sectarian divisions become even more acute and the result is the mess we see all over the region. And beyond it. Look at Pakistan or Afghanistan and the same elements are present.
Understanding this and analysing properly what has happened, is absolutely vital to the severe challenge of working out what we can do about it. So rather than continuing to re-run the debate over Iraq from over 11 years ago, realise that whatever we had done or not done, we would be facing a big challenge today.
Indeed we now have three examples of Western policy towards regime change in the region. In Iraq, we called for the regime to change, removed it and put in troops to try to rebuild the country. But intervention proved very tough and today the country is at risk again. In Libya, we called for the regime to change, we removed it by airpower, but refused to put in troops and now Libya is racked by instability, violence and has exported vast amounts of trouble and weapons across North Africa and down into sub- Saharan Africa. In Syria we called for the regime to change, took no action and it is in the worst state of all.
And when we do act, it is often difficult to discern the governing principles of action. Gaddafi, who in 2003 had given up his WMD and cooperated with us in the fight against terrorism, is removed by us on the basis he threatens to kill his people but Assad, who actually kills his people on a vast scale including with chemical weapons, is left in power.
So what does all this mean? How do we make sense of it? I speak with humility on this issue because I went through the post 9/11 world and know how tough the decisions are in respect of it. But I have also, since leaving office, spent a great deal of time in the region and have studied its dynamics carefully.
The beginning of understanding is to appreciate that resolving this situation is immensely complex. This is a generation long struggle. It is not a ‘war’ which you win or lose in some clear and clean-cut way. There is no easy or painless solution. Intervention is hard. Partial intervention is hard. Non-intervention is hard.
Ok, so if it is that hard, why not stay out of it all, the current default position of the West? The answer is because the outcome of this long transition impacts us profoundly. At its simplest, the jihadist groups are never going to leave us alone. 9/11 happened for a reason. That reason and the ideology behind it have not disappeared.
However more than that, in this struggle will be decided many things: the fate of individual countries, the future of the Middle East, and the direction of the relationship between politics and the religion of Islam. This last point will affect us in a large number of ways. It will affect the radicalism within our own societies which now have significant Muslim populations. And it will affect how Islam develops across the world. If the extremism is defeated in the Middle East it will eventually be defeated the world over, because this region is its spiritual home and from this region has been spread the extremist message.
There is no sensible policy for the West based on indifference. This is, in part, our struggle, whether we like it or not.
Already the security agencies of Europe believe our biggest future threat will come from returning fighters from Syria. There is a real risk that Syria becomes a haven for terrorism worse than Afghanistan in the 1990s. But think also of the effect that Syria is having on the Lebanon and Jordan. There is no way this conflagration was ever going to stay confined to Syria. I understand all the reasons following Afghanistan and Iraq why public opinion was so hostile to involvement. Action in Syria did not and need not be as in those military engagements. But every time we put off action, the action we will be forced to take will ultimately be greater.
On the immediate challenge President Obama is right to put all options on the table in respect of Iraq, including military strikes on the extremists; and right also to insist on a change in the way the Iraqi Government takes responsibility for the politics of the country.
The moderate and sensible elements of the Syria Opposition should be given the support they need; Assad should know he cannot win an outright victory; and the extremist groups, whether in Syria or Iraq, should be targeted, in coordination and with the agreement of the Arab countries. However unpalatable this may seem, the alternative is worse.
But acting in Syria alone or Iraq, will not solve the challenge across the region or the wider world. We need a plan for the Middle East and for dealing with the extremism world-wide that comes out of it.
The starting point is to identify the nature of the battle. It is against Islamist extremism. That is the fight. People shy away from the starkness of that statement. But it is because we are constantly looking for ways of avoiding facing up to this issue, that we can't make progress in the battle.
Of course in every case, there are reasons of history and tribe and territory which add layers of complexity. Of course, too, as I said at the outset, bad governance has played a baleful role in exacerbating the challenges. But all those problems become infinitely tougher to resolve, when religious extremism overlays everything. Then unity in a nation is impossible. Stability is impossible. Therefore progress is impossible. Government ceases to build for the future and manages each day as it can. Division tears apart cohesion. Hatred replaces hope.
We have to unite with those in the Muslim world, who agree with this analysis to fight the extremism. Parts of the Western media are missing a critical new element in the Middle East today. There are people – many of them – in the region who now understand this is the battle and are prepared to wage it. We have to stand with them.
Repressive systems of Government have played their part in the breeding of the extremism. A return to the past for the Middle East is neither right nor feasible. On the contrary there has to be change and there will be. However, we have to have a more graduated approach, which tries to help change happen without the chaos.
We were naïve about the Arab uprisings which began in 2011. Evolution is preferable to revolution. I said this at the time, precisely because of what we learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sometimes evolution is not possible. But where we can, we should be helping countries make steady progress towards change. We should be actively trying to encourage and help the reform process and using the full weight of the international community to do so.
Where there has been revolution, we have to be clear we will not support systems or Governments based on sectarian religious politics.
Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force. This does not mean Western troops as in Iraq. There are masses of responses we can make short of that. But they need to know that wherever they're engaged in terror, we will be hitting them.
Longer term, we have to make a concerted effort to reform the education systems, formal and informal which are giving rise to the extremism. It should be part of our dialogue and partnership with all nations that we expect education to be open-minded and respectful of difference whether of faith culture or race. We should make sure our systems reflect these values; they should do the same. This is the very reason why, after I left office I established a Foundation now active in the education systems of over 20 different countries, including in the Middle East, promoting a programme of religious and cultural co-existence.
We should make this a focal point of cooperation between East and West. China, Russia, Europe and the USA all have the same challenge of extremism. For the avoidance of doubt, I am neither minimising our differences especially over issues like Ukraine, nor suggesting a weakening of our position there; simply that on this issue of extremism, we can and should work together.
We should acknowledge that the challenge goes far further afield than the Middle East. Africa faces it as the ghastly events in Nigeria show. The Far East faces it. Central Asia too.
The point is that we won't win the fight until we accept the nature of it.
Iraq is part of a much bigger picture. By all means argue about the wisdom of earlier decisions. But it is the decisions now that will matter. The choices are all pretty ugly, it is true. But for 3 years we have watched Syria descend into the abyss and as it is going down, it is slowly but surely wrapping its cords around us pulling us down with it. We have to put aside the differences of the past and act now to save the future.
[h=1]Iraq invasion 2003: The bloody warnings six wise men gave to Tony Blair as he prepared to launch poorly planned campaign[/h]
Tony Blair had a cough. He looked sick, pale and exhausted. “Don’t tell me it is going to be bad,” he said to the six men he had summoned to see him in Downing Street as war loomed. “Tell me how bad it will be.”
Those “six wise men” were all academics, expert in Iraq, the Middle East and international affairs. They had been called to the Cabinet Room to outline the worst that could happen if Britain and the United States launched an invasion.
This was a meeting that could have changed the course of history and, with better planning for the aftermath, saved countless lives – if only the Prime Minister and his advisers had listened and acted on the bloody warnings on that day in November 2002.
As we continue to wait for Lord Chilcot’s long-delayed report into Britain’s part in the war, four of those six men have agreed to talk to The Independent on Sunday about how and why things turned out even worse than they predicted. If anybody knows, they do.
“They were expecting a short, sharp, easy campaign and that the Iraqis would be grateful,” says Dr Toby Dodge, then of Queen Mary University of London, and the first to speak that morning.
He warned of a possible disaster: that Iraqis would fight for their country against the invaders rather than just celebrate the fall of their leader. A long and nasty civil war could follow. “My aim that day was to tell them as much as I could, so that there would be no excuses and nobody saying, ‘I didn’t know.’”
Blair has been defending himself in advance against the kicking he is expected to get from Lord Chilcot and the panel helping his investigation. There has been outrage at the news that the report will not be published until after the election, but Dr Dodge believes this is partly because members of the panel want to get their draft of history absolutely right – and that they will not pull punches.
“They fought like cats and dogs to get the transcripts of the conversations between Blair and George W Bush,” says the political scientist, who gave evidence to the inquiry’s first gathering back in 2009.
“This is not going to be written in high mandarin. It will be clear and direct. It is going to be damning.”
Professor George Joffe of Cambridge University, who also spoke that morning, and to the panel in 2009, agrees. “I think it is bound to be damning. The errors of judgement were so blatant, there is no way they can whitewash this.”
The six men were assembled around the Cabinet table in 2002 by Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King’s College London and an adviser to Blair. “I simply felt it was important that such decisions should be taken with eyes open about the possible longer-term implications,” he told The Independent on Sunday in 2004. He is now on the Chilcot panel.
Dr Dodge believes the report will criticise Blair’s so-called sofa government, which was “highly informal and backed up with no institutional depth whatsoever. There was no extensive research in terms of risk assessment.”
He expects the panel to attack the chiefs of staff, civil servants and other advisers at the time. “They will damn the diplomats and the top military brass for not doing their job, which was to say, ‘No, minister.’ If Blair was the poodle of Bush then people like Jeremy Heywood [his principal private secretary] served a very poor policy very poorly.”
Others have criticised the Chilcot panel for not pushing witnesses hard enough, but Dr Dodge disagrees. “My reading of the questions was that they were giving them enough rope to hang themselves.”
So what did happen? And could lives had been saved if the Prime Minister’s response to that meeting on the morning of Tuesday 19 November 2002 had been different?
“We were heavily briefed,” says Dr Dodge, who is now at the London School of Economics. “They said, ‘Don’t tell him not to do it. He has already made up his mind.’”
So there was no chance of stopping the invasion, or the UK joining it, but what was at stake that morning was the aftermath. What would happen on the day after victory was declared?
“They had no plan for what would happen after the invasion,” says George Joffe. “The approach was, ‘The Americans are heading this up. They will have a detailed plan. We need to follow them.’”
Unfortunately, he says, that was not true. “The State Department had spent a year preparing a detailed briefing about how the after-invasion scenario should be handled. All that was junked. They were making up policy on the hoof.”
The six wise men brought their expertise to Downing Street the day after UN inspectors had arrived in Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was also at No 10, explaining details to the Prime Minister and pointing out places on a number of maps. In other news, the tanker Prestige was spilling 76,000 tons of crude oil into the Atlantic off the Spanish coast.
The meeting began with five-minute presentations by Dr Dodge, Professor Joffe and Professor Charles Tripp of the School for Oriental and Asian Studies, an expert in the Middle East. Professor Joffe emphasised the rigid power structures in Iraq that defined Saddam Hussein as much as he defined them, but became frustrated when the Prime Minister responded by personalising the problem again, saying: “But the man is evil, isn’t he?”
Another expert present was Steven Simon, then deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He was also a US diplomat who had been seconded from the State Department; it is unclear whether Blair was aware of this.
Mr Simon now believes that even with greater forward planning the invasion would have had the same catastrophic results, as it was absurd for the White House to think it could bring democracy to Iraq with a war. “If everything had been done differently, there might have been some small shot at avoiding disaster. But only a small shot.”
Professor Joffe disagrees, and believes there could have been a more positive and peaceful outcome if Blair had taken on board what was said that day and used his influence with George W Bush to push for a detailed post-invasion plan that kept stability in the country. “The people who were put in charge in Iraq had very little knowledge or experience of the Middle East,” he says. “There was nobody in leadership with any practical experience of how to handle a transition to democracy like that. They were quite childish in somehow believing that democracy would bloom. This showed ignorance, not only of the region but also of the way politics works.”
The Pentagon and the White House took the decision to remove those at the top of the Iraqi army and the ruling Ba’ath Party, he says, but Paul Bremer took it much further in his role as Governor of Iraq and demolished both entirely. This opened Pandora’s box, says Professor Joffe, by removing the lid that had been in place under Saddam. “Islamic State is a direct consequence of the decision to invade.”
The civil war and violent chaos that followed the war created the right conditions for Islamic State to grow, says Professor Joffe. The movement picked up strength on the ground by forming alliances with the former Ba’ath party leaders who served under Saddam and who still had extensive networks, he says. “Given their sense of alienation from the Shia-led government, their organisation and the reputation of the Ba’ath Party for bringing order in the past, whatever their methods, you can see why Sunni tribes have said, ‘These are the guys we have got to support.’”
The sixth wise man was Professor Michael Clarke, then at King’s College London and now the director general of the Royal United Services Institute. He was neither a hawk nor a dove that day, but “agnostic” about what might happen after an invasion. “Blair knew this was going to be serious,” he says. “He was not blasé about it at all.”
The Prime Minister arrived that day looking ill, he says. “He looked like a man who should not have been working full time, a man who was just getting over a virus that had left him worn out.”
Did he look like a man who should not have been making big decisions? “There is no let-up in leadership. The poor guy had to carry on.”
Professor Clarke does believe that the way Tony Blair was already attempting to justify the invasion to the public was a mistake. “We knew there was no nuclear stuff in Iraq,” he says. “We genuinely believed there were battlefield chemical weapons in the country.” Could they be described as weapons of mass destruction? “Yes, because of the indiscriminate effect they could have on the civilian population.”
The irony was that Saddam himself thought he had chemical WMDs, says Professor Clarke, because his own generals had not dared admit to him that they had not built as many as he thought. “Everyone believed the weapons existed but they didn’t because they had deteriorated and Iraq had not built as many as we thought.” Those that were in existence had deteriorated. Each general thought the others had the weapons, but they too were bluffing: “Nobody would tell Saddam the truth.”
What about the public claim that Iraq could launch a chemical strike against British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes? “That was always absurd,” says Professor Clarke. “Tony Blair fell into the trap of bringing intelligence material into the public debate, which is a very foolish thing to do. Even the best intelligence is always messy.”
He believes Blair did not actually decide to go to war on the basis of intelligence, but made it look as if he had with his two “dodgy” dossiers. “He presented the case to the public as if they had incontrovertible evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. That was rubbish. They were ridiculous documents, both those documents.”
He does not believe Chilcot’s findings will come as a shock. “We all know the basic picture. The Americans committed a strategic blunder. Tony Blair never gave any real thought to not supporting them.”
Like Steven Simon, Professor Clarke believes that it barely occurred to the Prime Minister not to support the invasion, as his first concern had to be about the long-standing relationship between Britain andthe US. “He has been knocked about, but I think history will judge him more kindly than his contemporaries.”
Back in that meeting in 2002, it was Michael Clarke who showed sympathy for the ailing Tony Blair. He was the last to leave the room, and as he did so he placed a hand on the leader’s shoulder, saying, “Good luck, Prime Minister.” What was the reaction? “He gave me a knowing smile and said, ‘Yeah. Thank you.’”
He could probably do with such sympathy now.
Tony Blair had a cough. He looked sick, pale and exhausted. “Don’t tell me it is going to be bad,” he said to the six men he had summoned to see him in Downing Street as war loomed. “Tell me how bad it will be.”
Those “six wise men” were all academics, expert in Iraq, the Middle East and international affairs. They had been called to the Cabinet Room to outline the worst that could happen if Britain and the United States launched an invasion.
This was a meeting that could have changed the course of history and, with better planning for the aftermath, saved countless lives – if only the Prime Minister and his advisers had listened and acted on the bloody warnings on that day in November 2002.
As we continue to wait for Lord Chilcot’s long-delayed report into Britain’s part in the war, four of those six men have agreed to talk to The Independent on Sunday about how and why things turned out even worse than they predicted. If anybody knows, they do.
“They were expecting a short, sharp, easy campaign and that the Iraqis would be grateful,” says Dr Toby Dodge, then of Queen Mary University of London, and the first to speak that morning.
He warned of a possible disaster: that Iraqis would fight for their country against the invaders rather than just celebrate the fall of their leader. A long and nasty civil war could follow. “My aim that day was to tell them as much as I could, so that there would be no excuses and nobody saying, ‘I didn’t know.’”
Blair has been defending himself in advance against the kicking he is expected to get from Lord Chilcot and the panel helping his investigation. There has been outrage at the news that the report will not be published until after the election, but Dr Dodge believes this is partly because members of the panel want to get their draft of history absolutely right – and that they will not pull punches.
“They fought like cats and dogs to get the transcripts of the conversations between Blair and George W Bush,” says the political scientist, who gave evidence to the inquiry’s first gathering back in 2009.
“This is not going to be written in high mandarin. It will be clear and direct. It is going to be damning.”
Professor George Joffe of Cambridge University, who also spoke that morning, and to the panel in 2009, agrees. “I think it is bound to be damning. The errors of judgement were so blatant, there is no way they can whitewash this.”
The six men were assembled around the Cabinet table in 2002 by Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King’s College London and an adviser to Blair. “I simply felt it was important that such decisions should be taken with eyes open about the possible longer-term implications,” he told The Independent on Sunday in 2004. He is now on the Chilcot panel.
Dr Dodge believes the report will criticise Blair’s so-called sofa government, which was “highly informal and backed up with no institutional depth whatsoever. There was no extensive research in terms of risk assessment.”
He expects the panel to attack the chiefs of staff, civil servants and other advisers at the time. “They will damn the diplomats and the top military brass for not doing their job, which was to say, ‘No, minister.’ If Blair was the poodle of Bush then people like Jeremy Heywood [his principal private secretary] served a very poor policy very poorly.”
Others have criticised the Chilcot panel for not pushing witnesses hard enough, but Dr Dodge disagrees. “My reading of the questions was that they were giving them enough rope to hang themselves.”
So what did happen? And could lives had been saved if the Prime Minister’s response to that meeting on the morning of Tuesday 19 November 2002 had been different?
“We were heavily briefed,” says Dr Dodge, who is now at the London School of Economics. “They said, ‘Don’t tell him not to do it. He has already made up his mind.’”
So there was no chance of stopping the invasion, or the UK joining it, but what was at stake that morning was the aftermath. What would happen on the day after victory was declared?
“They had no plan for what would happen after the invasion,” says George Joffe. “The approach was, ‘The Americans are heading this up. They will have a detailed plan. We need to follow them.’”
Unfortunately, he says, that was not true. “The State Department had spent a year preparing a detailed briefing about how the after-invasion scenario should be handled. All that was junked. They were making up policy on the hoof.”
The six wise men brought their expertise to Downing Street the day after UN inspectors had arrived in Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, was also at No 10, explaining details to the Prime Minister and pointing out places on a number of maps. In other news, the tanker Prestige was spilling 76,000 tons of crude oil into the Atlantic off the Spanish coast.
The meeting began with five-minute presentations by Dr Dodge, Professor Joffe and Professor Charles Tripp of the School for Oriental and Asian Studies, an expert in the Middle East. Professor Joffe emphasised the rigid power structures in Iraq that defined Saddam Hussein as much as he defined them, but became frustrated when the Prime Minister responded by personalising the problem again, saying: “But the man is evil, isn’t he?”
Another expert present was Steven Simon, then deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He was also a US diplomat who had been seconded from the State Department; it is unclear whether Blair was aware of this.
Mr Simon now believes that even with greater forward planning the invasion would have had the same catastrophic results, as it was absurd for the White House to think it could bring democracy to Iraq with a war. “If everything had been done differently, there might have been some small shot at avoiding disaster. But only a small shot.”
Professor Joffe disagrees, and believes there could have been a more positive and peaceful outcome if Blair had taken on board what was said that day and used his influence with George W Bush to push for a detailed post-invasion plan that kept stability in the country. “The people who were put in charge in Iraq had very little knowledge or experience of the Middle East,” he says. “There was nobody in leadership with any practical experience of how to handle a transition to democracy like that. They were quite childish in somehow believing that democracy would bloom. This showed ignorance, not only of the region but also of the way politics works.”
The Pentagon and the White House took the decision to remove those at the top of the Iraqi army and the ruling Ba’ath Party, he says, but Paul Bremer took it much further in his role as Governor of Iraq and demolished both entirely. This opened Pandora’s box, says Professor Joffe, by removing the lid that had been in place under Saddam. “Islamic State is a direct consequence of the decision to invade.”
The civil war and violent chaos that followed the war created the right conditions for Islamic State to grow, says Professor Joffe. The movement picked up strength on the ground by forming alliances with the former Ba’ath party leaders who served under Saddam and who still had extensive networks, he says. “Given their sense of alienation from the Shia-led government, their organisation and the reputation of the Ba’ath Party for bringing order in the past, whatever their methods, you can see why Sunni tribes have said, ‘These are the guys we have got to support.’”
The sixth wise man was Professor Michael Clarke, then at King’s College London and now the director general of the Royal United Services Institute. He was neither a hawk nor a dove that day, but “agnostic” about what might happen after an invasion. “Blair knew this was going to be serious,” he says. “He was not blasé about it at all.”
The Prime Minister arrived that day looking ill, he says. “He looked like a man who should not have been working full time, a man who was just getting over a virus that had left him worn out.”
Did he look like a man who should not have been making big decisions? “There is no let-up in leadership. The poor guy had to carry on.”
Professor Clarke does believe that the way Tony Blair was already attempting to justify the invasion to the public was a mistake. “We knew there was no nuclear stuff in Iraq,” he says. “We genuinely believed there were battlefield chemical weapons in the country.” Could they be described as weapons of mass destruction? “Yes, because of the indiscriminate effect they could have on the civilian population.”
The irony was that Saddam himself thought he had chemical WMDs, says Professor Clarke, because his own generals had not dared admit to him that they had not built as many as he thought. “Everyone believed the weapons existed but they didn’t because they had deteriorated and Iraq had not built as many as we thought.” Those that were in existence had deteriorated. Each general thought the others had the weapons, but they too were bluffing: “Nobody would tell Saddam the truth.”
What about the public claim that Iraq could launch a chemical strike against British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes? “That was always absurd,” says Professor Clarke. “Tony Blair fell into the trap of bringing intelligence material into the public debate, which is a very foolish thing to do. Even the best intelligence is always messy.”
He believes Blair did not actually decide to go to war on the basis of intelligence, but made it look as if he had with his two “dodgy” dossiers. “He presented the case to the public as if they had incontrovertible evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. That was rubbish. They were ridiculous documents, both those documents.”
He does not believe Chilcot’s findings will come as a shock. “We all know the basic picture. The Americans committed a strategic blunder. Tony Blair never gave any real thought to not supporting them.”
Like Steven Simon, Professor Clarke believes that it barely occurred to the Prime Minister not to support the invasion, as his first concern had to be about the long-standing relationship between Britain andthe US. “He has been knocked about, but I think history will judge him more kindly than his contemporaries.”
Back in that meeting in 2002, it was Michael Clarke who showed sympathy for the ailing Tony Blair. He was the last to leave the room, and as he did so he placed a hand on the leader’s shoulder, saying, “Good luck, Prime Minister.” What was the reaction? “He gave me a knowing smile and said, ‘Yeah. Thank you.’”
He could probably do with such sympathy now.
.[h=1]Blair said we should be proud of the war[/h]
Asked by the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, whether he had any regrets, he replied: "Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think that he was a monster. I believe he threatened not just the region but the world. And in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office."
He added: "I had to take this decision as Prime Minister. It was a huge responsibility and there is not a single day that passes by that I don't reflect and think about that responsibility." He insisted that the war, which cost the lives of 179 British soldiers, was justified despite the failure to uncover any weapons of mass destruction
Asked by the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, whether he had any regrets, he replied: "Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think that he was a monster. I believe he threatened not just the region but the world. And in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office."
He added: "I had to take this decision as Prime Minister. It was a huge responsibility and there is not a single day that passes by that I don't reflect and think about that responsibility." He insisted that the war, which cost the lives of 179 British soldiers, was justified despite the failure to uncover any weapons of mass destruction
.
Mr Blair admitted making mistakes in preparing for the aftermath of the invasion and in presenting the case for war. But he was otherwise unrepentant about joining the US-led military action in March 2003, making plain he was preparing to send British troops into Iraq long before the invasion began. Although weapons of mass destruction were never uncovered in Iraq, Mr Blair argued that Saddam "retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme". He repeatedly singled out Iran as he warned the current generation of world leaders that they face a similar dilemma today, adding that his fears at the time – that failed or highly repressive states with WMD "become porous, they construct all sorts of different alliances with people" – were even stronger now "as a result of what Iran particularly is doing"
Mr Blair admitted making mistakes in preparing for the aftermath of the invasion and in presenting the case for war. But he was otherwise unrepentant about joining the US-led military action in March 2003, making plain he was preparing to send British troops into Iraq long before the invasion began. Although weapons of mass destruction were never uncovered in Iraq, Mr Blair argued that Saddam "retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme". He repeatedly singled out Iran as he warned the current generation of world leaders that they face a similar dilemma today, adding that his fears at the time – that failed or highly repressive states with WMD "become porous, they construct all sorts of different alliances with people" – were even stronger now "as a result of what Iran particularly is doing"
Mr Blair told the inquiry he believed the "calculus of risk" posed by rogue states changed completely following the attacks of 11 September 2001.
Before then the international community had relied on a "hoping for the best" strategy of containing Saddam Hussein through targeted sanctions and enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq.
But he admitted that it was the "risk calculation" that had altered since 9/11, rather than the intelligence about WMDs.
Apparently contradicting assertions at the time about the "growing" threat from Saddam, Mr Blair said: "It wasn't that objectively [Saddam] had done more ... It was that our perception of the risk had shifted."
