You took us into an illegal, immoral, disgusting, chaotic, disastrous war in Iraq against the will of the people of the UK, that has killed an estimated 600,000 people and opened the door to a terrifying, evil extremism that may never be tempered or defeated.
Never mind the sleaze, corruption, abandonment of your party’s soul, and even your achievements in office. Iraq, above all, is your outstanding legacy. I hope one day you admit your mistake, apologise, and seek forgiveness from the God you profess to worship.
Sadly, I doubt you ever will.
I wonder how you sleep at nights.
That is a very ugly post, Simon. Whilst it’s difficult to argue (although we all know that it wasn’t his personal war anyway) that Iraq will taint his legacy due to the sheer folly and terrible fall-out from a senseless war, I honestly think that most of the decisions he made were pure of mind and spirit. Whether one agrees with his politics or not, I feel that it is grossly unfair on the man to attack him on such a personal level and make (sorry for the pun) holier-than-thou comments about his religion.
I, for one, think that he has had a positive impact on the United Kingdom. Would Britain be a better place had we had Prime Ministers Major, Hague, Duncan-Smith or Howard in the last decade? I don’t think so, somehow.
Aye but the point I was making was more about the negative impact he’s made on Iraq outweighing any positives (and I don’t deny them) in this country.
Ugly post, ugly war.
Thanks for the edit: I need to sort out my HTML skillz…
I take your point, but felt that you were being a little personal with your attack. Many of the decisions regarding Iraq were awful and have led to many, many deaths (although laying all of them at Blair’s feet is also very harsh). I didn’t agree with the invasion at the time, and I don’t think we should still be there now; I also think that it is arrogant of us to thrust our ideals on other countries (let he who is without sin…). Despite all this, I believe that Blair made decisions that he felt were right, and that he believed his actions to be correct. Many of these choices turned out to be flawed, but to answer your question he probably does not sleep well at night. He’ll be feeling it every time he is woken to be told of a soldier dying on his behalf. To imply that he is Godless for making some bad decisions strikes me as very un-Christian.
And about abandoning his party’s soul, he did what he had to do to govern. I for one would rather a Labour party that moved to the centre or centre-right than a Conservative party in the centre. I’m sure that our national politics will take a turn to the left when our grandparents and their generation are no longer with us.
I see where you’re coming from, but I still think it’s a cataclysmic mistake for which the excuse “I thought I was doing the right thing” barely stands given all the political, legal and diplomatic advice that was around at the time – he should have been one of the most accurately-advised politicians of the day on that issue. And I wasn’t accusing him of godlessness, just doubting that he’d ever ask for forgiveness for his mistakes (something all Christians are guilty of). I may be proved wrong, and I hope so. But as I say, I doubt it.
Being disappointed in someone is partly due to naivety regarding human nature and also our own.
When Tony said ‘I did what I thought was right for this country’ what he was saying was he thought it was right for this country that we should throw our lot in with America whether America is right or wrong.
We may want to hear a leader saying -‘I did what I thought was right for this Earth and for this Humanity’ but I doubt if we’ll ever hear that. Who is more partisan than a politician or more nationalistic than a leader.
He did have a difficult start to his premiership he was no sooner PM and Diana, Dodi and Henry Paul were killed.