Catherine Mayer: Unbowed on Iraq, Blair Makes the Case for Targeting Iran
[Catherine Mayer is London Bureau Chief for Time Magazine and former President of the Foreign Press Association in London.]
Anyone who came to the Jan. 29 session of Britain's Iraq Inquiry to watch Tony Blair crumble went home disappointed. When the nation's former Prime Minister returns to center stage, he seldom fails to remind even his sharpest critics of his prodigious political skills — the very same skills that had enabled him to cajole dubious colleagues and a skeptical parliament into reluctantly supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq. An inquiry panel of career diplomats and academics was never likely to dent his composure. ("They're sitting there like chickens," squawked an exasperated audience member during a break from proceedings.) Yet Blair's light grilling still produced a major eye-opener: As opponents of the Iraq conflict waited in vain for an apology or some gratifying symptom of inner regret, Blair instead used the platform to argue for opening a new battlefront — against Iran.
The inquiry was established to learn the lessons of Iraq. Chief among these lessons is that dangerous regimes that may have weapons of mass destruction must be confronted. This according to Blair, and he made sure the inquiry was in no doubt that Iran sits at the top of his personal Axis of Evil. "When I look at the way Iran today links up with terror groups ... a large part of the destabilization of the Middle East ... comes from Iran," he said. As for taking action to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, that's "for the leaders of today to decide. My judgment is you don't take any risks with this issue," Blair added.
This was vintage Blair, linking his unpopular — and for many Britons discredited — military adventure against a regime that proved as pathetic as it was pathological, to the specter of a very different regime, one that is widely reviled by a substantial number of the human rights activists and libertarians who most fiercely decry the Iraq war. And unlike Saddam Hussein, Iran does have a nuclear program, although no hard evidence has yet been produced that it is using that program to produce weapons.
An interviewer for a BBC religious affairs program broadcast last December asked Blair what he would have done if he had realized before the war that Saddam had no WMD. "I would still have thought it right to remove him," Blair replied. He refined that response — which could have been legally risky, since WMD, not regime change, provided the official justification for British action — during his testimony to the Iraq Inquiry. "Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question," he said. (Remember, the hallmark of a true politician is the ability to interview oneself.) "Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him in charge of Iraq. He had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people...
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Anyone who came to the Jan. 29 session of Britain's Iraq Inquiry to watch Tony Blair crumble went home disappointed. When the nation's former Prime Minister returns to center stage, he seldom fails to remind even his sharpest critics of his prodigious political skills — the very same skills that had enabled him to cajole dubious colleagues and a skeptical parliament into reluctantly supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq. An inquiry panel of career diplomats and academics was never likely to dent his composure. ("They're sitting there like chickens," squawked an exasperated audience member during a break from proceedings.) Yet Blair's light grilling still produced a major eye-opener: As opponents of the Iraq conflict waited in vain for an apology or some gratifying symptom of inner regret, Blair instead used the platform to argue for opening a new battlefront — against Iran.
The inquiry was established to learn the lessons of Iraq. Chief among these lessons is that dangerous regimes that may have weapons of mass destruction must be confronted. This according to Blair, and he made sure the inquiry was in no doubt that Iran sits at the top of his personal Axis of Evil. "When I look at the way Iran today links up with terror groups ... a large part of the destabilization of the Middle East ... comes from Iran," he said. As for taking action to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, that's "for the leaders of today to decide. My judgment is you don't take any risks with this issue," Blair added.
This was vintage Blair, linking his unpopular — and for many Britons discredited — military adventure against a regime that proved as pathetic as it was pathological, to the specter of a very different regime, one that is widely reviled by a substantial number of the human rights activists and libertarians who most fiercely decry the Iraq war. And unlike Saddam Hussein, Iran does have a nuclear program, although no hard evidence has yet been produced that it is using that program to produce weapons.
An interviewer for a BBC religious affairs program broadcast last December asked Blair what he would have done if he had realized before the war that Saddam had no WMD. "I would still have thought it right to remove him," Blair replied. He refined that response — which could have been legally risky, since WMD, not regime change, provided the official justification for British action — during his testimony to the Iraq Inquiry. "Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question, but to ask the 2010 question," he said. (Remember, the hallmark of a true politician is the ability to interview oneself.) "Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him in charge of Iraq. He had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people...