The United Nations is not an organisation that deserves respect. It is a left-over of another century's politics, power-relations, wars. Whether, or whether not, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did or did not have the go-ahead of the United Nations to attack Iraq is irrelevant. The United Nations is part of a Potemkin structure of international rights and wrongs, laws and courts, treaties and agreements, resolutions and condemnations that yield an undesirable obfuscation of responsibility for the use of force.
What Prime Minister Blair needed was our consent. And he obtained it - by telling lies: to Parliament, to the Opposition in government briefings, to his own Party, to the people via the media. And with that consent, obtained through falsehood, he attacked another country that presented no threat to us whatsoever.
And destroyed Iraq.
There is no World Order, no international justice that can be asked, or expected, or even justifiably bring him to answer, for what he has done. There are our own laws, our own courts and it is under these laws and in these courts that justice must be done - or left. Other countries may have offences for which to try him, Iraq certainly, but he is ours to own up to and to judge, first and always.
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7 comments:
until such time as the world reforms itself it is all we have and it has the added benefit of being able to do a job we will obviously never do ourselves namely holding blair to account.
I have read three of the four weighty, repetitive and painstakingly micro detailed volumes of Bob Woodward's account of events in the White house under G.W.Bush. I wouldn't recommend them until a decent editor takes them to a single volume.
However,it becomes increasingly clear that not only was there no concrete plan for reforming Iraq, or even occupying it, it also indicates there was precious little planning in how to fight Iraq.
But the most astounding discovery is there wasn't any real reason to attack Iraq at all. Just a desire to.
Its quite incredible. Bush wanted 9/11 pinned on Saddam. I never really believed that before, but the evidence is pretty compelling.
Chief, the International Criminal Court is a court of last resort. Individual states' legal resources and willingness to prosecute must be exhausted first. The cynical among us might think that all these Inquiries into the war on Iraq and who is responsible for what are a means of avoiding there being any role for the ICC, whose powers to investigate can only be operative if there has been no investigation in the state of the parties concerned. And as Iraq is not signed up to the ICC (as far as I know) any move couldn't come from there either.
I suspect it would be very hard to get a referral to the ICC through the UN Security Council - not with a UK veto available.
It's for us to do, after all, we were misled into letting him do it.
It was never clear either that Blair's purposes in being part of the attack were the same as Bush's, Mr Q. Or that his motivation was absolute fealty to the US.
Blair wanted a bigger stage and a return to an imperial role, (except he spoke of it in other terms: threats from failed states, democracy and modernisation, not standing idly by,interventionism. And thought he could get it piggy-backing on Bush's war.
The chatter in the coffee shops at the time was that young George wanted to finish what his daddy had started all those years before, and the Twin Towers episode gave him the excuse. The main focus of activity on 8/11 (as the Americans have it) was Afghanistan but, notwithstanding that most of the perpetrators appear to have been from Saudi Arabia, the focus from 9/11 immediately shifted to Iraq.
One also wonders what the ulterior motives of those in the offices behind Bush actually were.
follow the money ... Cheney ... oil & gas (there is one helluva lot in Iraq)
sounds trite but I think it really is as simple as that
& speaking of simple, exhibit 'A' is GW, who could easily be persuaded by the 'unfinished family business' line
I have spent a lot of time in Texas. There is no business dynamic quite as unstoppable as a sharp Texan who knows what he wants. For folk who want money, there will be money. For those who like legal arguments, there will be the smoothest, most urbane lawyers. You want liquor, or women ? there'll be good times aplenty. Need to know that it's OK with the Lord ? there will be a warm hug and a ready biblical quotation.
& for them who gets in the way ...
Subrosa thinks that St. Tony of the Bloody Hands won't be crossing the border into Scotland again...
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