Scott Forbes Compares Blair, Bush
Here’s an interesting item from a few days ago: Why words matter. It compares Tony Blair and George Bush in terms of their respective justifications for the war on Iraq, a comparison that doesn’t reflect at all well on Bush.
June 10th, 2004 at 1:50 pm
You are having a larf! Vote for Blair? Most Brits wouldn’t give him the steam off their piss let alone a vote…he is supposed to be an educated man of high morals..but he is now exposed for saying one thing and doing another…as any UK student about Tution Fees…in George Bush snr style (you remember…”read my lips…no new taxes”) he promised no increases in tution fees in 2001…as part of his re-election campaign…these will rise 300% by 2006! Same goes for WMD…he took Britain to war on a falsehood. Here he is simple known as Bush’s poodle.
July 28th, 2004 at 3:57 pm
Most Brits aren’t worried about middle-class graduates paying more out of future income (not immediately) so that a greater number of poor, working-class children can go to university. It sounds as if Jim is worried about his wallet.
As for his crack that Blair is Bush’s poodle, i.e. he’s sending British soldiers to their death for something he doesn’t believe in just because Bush has told him too – I’m afraid it’s worse than that -Blair believes it’s the moral thing to do and would do it even if Bush wasn’t President. As evidence: (1) Blair sent British troops into Kosovo to protect the Muslim population even though there was no U.N. Resolution; (2) he sent troops into Sierra Leone to protect the democratic Government and end their civil war; and (3) his Govt is preparing contingency plans to send 5,000 troops into the Sudan to protect the African Muslim population there from genocide by the Arab Muslim population.
Blair has now been proved NOT to have been a liar, and if he was fooled over WMDs by Saddam then so also were the United Nations, France and Germany who all believed that they existed.
And which alternative would Jim and his friends have preferred? Apart from invasion there were only two as far as I can see.
(1) Do what in Britain is known as “the George Galloway strategy” – give Saddam a box of chocolates and kiss his arse, and end all sanctions relying on persuasion to stop him killing Iraqis and be a nicer, kinder guy in future.
(2) Continue the sanctions against Iraq – which the left were constantly demonstrating against – and hope that Saddam wouldn’t invade anyone, use his WMDs (which to repeat, everyone believed he had or was developing), would stop killing his fellow Iraqis, and would finally start obeying UN resolutions when he hadn’t done so so far.
Tough call. Blair may or may not have made the wrong decision but it wasn’t a capricious or dishonorable one. And when it comes down to it, an Iraq without Saddam and the beginnings of a federal democratic Government is the best hope for the Iraqi people than they have had in a lifetime.