Thread: yet more penetrating insights by Blair

'Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today.'

BBC News - Radical Islam is world's greatest threat - Tony Blair

er, partly thanks to YOU tone. cheers for that. no, really.

'Mr Blair, who led Britain into war in Afghanistan and Iraq, denied that his own policies had fuelled radicalism.'

so definitely not your fault for following that halfwit Bush on his little escapade in the middle east, eh?

does his political acumen have no beginning??

I think 'maguire' has summed it up with his or her post above.

Blair has caused more trouble than any politician I can think of since Hitler - maybe he is edged out of first place by G W Bush.

If instead of Great Britain, if Blair had been prime minister of say: 'Bongobongoland', and had authorised the invasion of a sovereign nation and intervention into a second sovereign nation; these actions subsequently causing hundreds of thousands of deaths of civilians let alone military casualties; then he would by now have been sentenced, ideally to death, by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

What damage and destruction Blair caused to international security is only matched by the sour and surly oaf who succeeded him and that fool's near total destruction of the economy of this country.

Does he have an explanation for why he encouraged mass migration into the UK then?
The bit where he created a multi-cultural utopia where radical Islam thrives within our own country

"What damage and destruction Blair caused to international security is only matched by the sour and surly oaf who succeeded him and that fool's near total destruction of the economy of this country".

.... The surly one who succeeded him.......

Absolutlement, mes Cher Amis........ It's strange, if our Most Loved and Missed Dear Leader Mon cher, Monsewer Tony knew all these alleged facts about Mr Gordon, The Surely One, then why didn't he sack him when he sold off the UKs Gold Reserves when he did.... may the One Eyed Man has 'something on Mr Tony'. Maybe Mr Tony wasn't quite what he would like the adoring UK's public to think he was, when he was a Student......!!!

Blair was/is a Social Climber..... use any means to achieve his goals. As incompetent Brown was as an 'Economist' when he was Chancellor (as some adoring supporter called him), he was probably a tad more "honest" than the Grinning Spiv was/is........ (all alleged of course)

...
"There is the most enormous threat from the combination of this radical extreme movement and the fact that, if they could, they would use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"You can't take a risk with that happening."
...

The old fools still clinging to the Cheney's One Percent Doctrine.

If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.

This is of course an idiotic position taken in panic by an able old man with a dodgy ticker. Strategy is properly about assessing and balancing risks, exaggerating threats leads to actions that multiply them, but Dick at least gets the targeting right above.

And our response was to funk out of actually addressing the nub of the problem: Pindi.

It's ironic that the vaguely stated risk Tony still focuses on is one we spectacularly failed to manage. We pushed the talibans into the haven of FATA and the embrace of the ISI further destabilizing Pakistan. We then left that witches brew to fester and chose to follow the last QDR's vision of the likely next war, a rerun of Desert Storm. We destroyed the secular Sunni Arab power that balanced revolutionary Iran. Qom as a result is now within a whisker of becoming a nuclear power.

We've peshed away the "unipolar moment" and with it DC's capability to intimidate. Left unmanaged other larger predators are rapidly emerging. The only excuse provided for this trillion dollar calamity is essentially a few rag heads with box cutters threw a trouser soling scare into leaders like Mr Tony. He's no more sense than a good sheepdog.

Tony Blair's moral clarity: West should have the confidence to fight evil killers. (YouTube)

1st September 2010. The BBC broadcasts Tony Blair interviewed by Andrew Marr.

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

After 9/11 you thought there was a sort of world war between Islamism and the West. however we define it?

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

Well this extremist strain within Islamism, yeah

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

Yes.

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

This is a global phenomenon and the sooner we understand that and deal with it and recognise and this is the big choice ..

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

And has the West got what it takes?

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

Well I hope so - but it's got to recover its confidence in itself and its got to realise

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

Partly so badly knocked over Iraq of course.

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

Well but it shouldn't lose its confidence over that. The fact is the reason it has been tough in Iraq is that people are driving car bombs into crowded markets and trying to kill the first 20, 30, 40, 50 people they see. That is evil and wrong and we should be standing up against it and fighting it. We shouldn't be sitting there and saying 'Well maybe these people are just like that and therefore we should let them got on with it.'

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

And similarly in Afghanistan where there are attacks going on during the elections people who are trying to get female candidates elected in Afghanistan and the same thing going on. We have to finish the job. The West has to finish that job before we pull out or disaster?

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

Well we have to finish the job, yeah, for sure. Look what did the Taliban, just a few days back, they're going to stone a couple to death 'cause they are in love! !!! You can't compromise with that. You've got to take it on!

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

So we have a moral obligation in our part of the world to change that society, to ensure that society ..

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

We actually have a reason of self interest. I mean there is a, obviously you can't see some of the things they do like executing teachers for teaching girls and not feel a sense of moral compulsion but that's not actually the principle reason - it is a self-interested reason.
This movement is still there. It is, I'm afraid, still strong. It has a narrative that reaches into a far larger part of the population that is to do with the West and Islam and so on.

Originally Posted by Andrew Marr

But isn't it partly so strong because of the nature of our response because we went in so heavy, we went in so hard?

Originally Posted by Tony Blair

That's the debate Andrew. That is absolutely the heart of the debate and the West's got to resolve this debate. Is the reason why they are like that because of us or is it actually because of them?
Now, my view in the end is we should stop being in a situation where we think we've caused this. We haven't caused this. If you're a Muslim in this country in Britain you've got greater freedom than many Muslims in Muslim countries. I mean it's nonsense!

I know it is difficult. It will take a long time but if we in Europe decide the pain is too great to stand alongside America that's fine but we'll find in the end we're obliged to deal with it at a later time and in an even more difficult and acute way and if Iran ends up with a nuclear weapon do not be under any doubt at all that will change the entire balance of power in the most troubled region of the world.

I often think our Righteous Indignation over Blair, at times, has less to do with his poor decision making but primarily our consternation at a man seemingly 'without ultimate concern'; and rising to the country's no. 1 job. We have somehow stood by and allowed our political system to reward poisonality-darling, the silver tongue over the heart concern.

We rock up to pour out our adoration over the sacrificial artist and their art, from Matisse to Emin, who appear authentic (yes Emin appears authentic in my book) and live with their presence. Any of us without Ultimate Concern for the Ultimate Good are vacuous are we not? That is the undertone of all our angst is the lack of authenticity throughout our culture, wherever we look.


Ian Jack writes today, in the Harsnal!... dian:

"During the 1997 campaign, Joe Klein, writing in the New Yorker, described him [Blair] as Britain's first post-imperial prime minister; and yet in Manchester a week before the election Blair told an audience in Manchester, "We are a leader of nations or we are nothing. That has been Britain's destiny for centuries and must be again." (And, as we now know, meant it.) Another, mainly Tory version of him was as an affable Trojan horse out of which the left would pour. The most popular view, however, was of a politician who believed in nothing very much at all other than winning power. A "magisterial vacuity" as Klein put it. Blair was well aware this opinion was held particularly by his then closest colleague. "The root of the problem [with Brown] was that he thought I could be an empty vessel into which the liquid that was poured was manufactured and processed by him. I was never totally sure, and still am not, whether he really did buy the illusion."

Magisterial Vacuity I think may be the proverbial Trébuchet to the awaiting gonad.