Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: How the British Empire is Striking Back
I did try to sit through the Blair show. An unfortunate combination of Asiatic high emotion and feminine fragility made me feeble. I had to walk away, knocking over a large goblet of dark red wine, the colour of blood. It stained the beautiful wooden floor. From TB, then, the final words. I Did It My Way and Je ne regrette rien. So long folks. The Tory poster of Blair as the devil man now seems prescient....
The Chilcot panel could have included a dispassionate Muslim academic or one of the impressive experts on international affairs at Chatham House. But no. They chose instead Baroness Prashar, an Asian of Hindu background, someone I know and admire, but who, in this case, might be seen as an establishment insider and so lack credibility....
Blair has always been an imperialist and one reason he fell in so readily with the neo-cons was that they promised to fly him on winged horses back to those glory days again. In his victory speech to the Labour party conference in 1997 he expressed unseemly pride and undisguised longing for the British empire "that covered the world", an echo of his godmother Margaret Thatcher's intimations of colonial greatness in Bruges in 1992. And from his testimony he is still is profoundly a Western supremacist.
That he says there was "no humanitarian disaster" means it doesn't matter how many dusky natives – men, women and children – have been killed, maimed, reduced to destitution or ended up as refugees. They do not matter any more than did those Bengal famine victims under the Raj when they were denied food for sound economic reasons. When he says the "calculus" changed – he reduces these humans to a number. He and Bush, white masters of the universe, decide who lives and who dies.
The only "humans" in Blair's story are the Americans whose safety and sovereignty was violated on 9/11. We know all that – more clearly than ever before. Blair for sure would not accept China and India using his example to launch an attack on Iraq. That privilege is open only to white power....
They should also have had in some of those exiled Kurds and Iraqis who backed Blair and Bush (some for personal gain) and questioned them on the backroom advice they were giving and why. We needed to know just who has benefited in material terms from this "freedom" mission. Who wantonly looted historical treasures? Who got oil and reconstruction contracts? What do we know of the Iraqis now in power who thank Blair for his generous intervention? As ever, brown sahibs are always on hand to serve the interests of Empire makers and they too, like their masters, get away with it because they must....
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The Chilcot panel could have included a dispassionate Muslim academic or one of the impressive experts on international affairs at Chatham House. But no. They chose instead Baroness Prashar, an Asian of Hindu background, someone I know and admire, but who, in this case, might be seen as an establishment insider and so lack credibility....
Blair has always been an imperialist and one reason he fell in so readily with the neo-cons was that they promised to fly him on winged horses back to those glory days again. In his victory speech to the Labour party conference in 1997 he expressed unseemly pride and undisguised longing for the British empire "that covered the world", an echo of his godmother Margaret Thatcher's intimations of colonial greatness in Bruges in 1992. And from his testimony he is still is profoundly a Western supremacist.
That he says there was "no humanitarian disaster" means it doesn't matter how many dusky natives – men, women and children – have been killed, maimed, reduced to destitution or ended up as refugees. They do not matter any more than did those Bengal famine victims under the Raj when they were denied food for sound economic reasons. When he says the "calculus" changed – he reduces these humans to a number. He and Bush, white masters of the universe, decide who lives and who dies.
The only "humans" in Blair's story are the Americans whose safety and sovereignty was violated on 9/11. We know all that – more clearly than ever before. Blair for sure would not accept China and India using his example to launch an attack on Iraq. That privilege is open only to white power....
They should also have had in some of those exiled Kurds and Iraqis who backed Blair and Bush (some for personal gain) and questioned them on the backroom advice they were giving and why. We needed to know just who has benefited in material terms from this "freedom" mission. Who wantonly looted historical treasures? Who got oil and reconstruction contracts? What do we know of the Iraqis now in power who thank Blair for his generous intervention? As ever, brown sahibs are always on hand to serve the interests of Empire makers and they too, like their masters, get away with it because they must....