If only he'd studied history

[Briar]

If only he'd studied history

Tony Blair's speech yesterday induced one more increment of despair, as he told us with perfect assurance what needs to be done in Iraq.

Edward Pearce


"The point about Blair is that he combines maximum assurance with maximum delusion." The comment, made privately by the leader of a Labour council, is the exact and perfect judgment. No other analyst need apply.

To hear Tony Blair calling for continuous war on Friday was instructive. Smooth, ingratiating, as always, and utterly natural, he sounded like a man saying that this was clearly the weather for a scarf and a woolly hat. The words induced one more increment of despair. Of course we must keep up the war on terror, of course we must go on killing and being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, if necessary, London, unlike cowardly not-pulling-their-weight Stockholm or Paris. Of course you must fill in these forms in full with a digital photo of your iris added, so that we have you, neat and wriggling on our database.

...

Blair once said that he wished he had read history rather than law at an Oxford now burdened with a terrible responsibility. Knowing no history, not knowing that the Middle East has been bossed and humiliated as imperial territory or company property by the British, French and/or Americans over a hundred or so years, he sees only a here-and-now, just-sprung-up evil, "terrorism", which must be fought in a war. He sees, no more than the 43rd president, anything beyond "bad guys" and knows no saving course other than the immiseration of continuing war and the death of other people.

History would have told him that bossed and humiliated people rebel. He would know about Deir es Yassin and Lydda, two early Israeli massacres and the three quarters of a million Palestinians, "ethnically cleansed" in the late 40s. He would know about the coup which replaced a democratic Iranian prime minister with the 25-year "pro-western" dictatorship of the Shah. He would know more generally that occupied countries take to the experience very badly. He would know that the cold war is over and that to replicate its anxieties, short cuts and tolerance of barbarous allies is as foolish as it is - forgive my innocence - wrong. He would know that General Vo Nguyen Giap who defeated the Americans, said of the Vietnamese people, affronted by Agent Orange and friendly fire, "They are the water; we are the fish." He would know that James Vincent Forrestal, US secretary for defence, rushed to and out of a third-floor Pentagon window, shouting "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming."

...

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/edward_pearce/2007/01/if_only_hed_studied_history.html

Edited to add link, since my first attempt to paste it in failed.

[Demeter]

1. Tony Blair Is Nobody's Fool

He has only himself to blame!

[Red Fox]

2. More on the topic

http://www.doublestandards.org/enemies.htm
Why do they hate US?
A guide to individual countries' possible motives

Just a tiny grab

On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy warship the Vincennes was operating within Iranian waters, providing military support for Iraq in the ongoing Iran/Iraq war. During a one-sided battle against a small number of lightly armed Iranian gunboats, the Vincennes fired two missiles at (an Iranian) Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilians onboard were killed.
This act of mass murder by the U.S. has never resulted in any court case. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were militarily decorated. Attempts by relatives of the victims to bring legal action against the American government were rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1993. Despite the fact that the vast majority of victims were Iranian, the US paid $2.9 million in compensation only to non-Iranian victims of the shooting.

"I will never apologize for the United States of America – I don't care what the facts are."
– President George Bush, Sr., referring to the mass-murder of Iranian civilian people by the U.S.S. Vincennes.

[sarge43]

3. Ah Tony, here's a radical concept.

When you want to get up to speed on a subject, read some books, listen to people who know something about the subject.

Jeebus

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Then again, his knowledge of the law ought to have made him think

about standards of evidence, and how unreliable paid informants can be, or witnesses who stand to gain from a decision that goes their way. He also knew how "taking the law into your own hands" is no basis for a civilisation.

[Briar]

5. This last

doesn't seem to have prevented him suggesting it be adopted as a central plank of British foreign policy in the future! In fact he seems to suggest that civilised country do just that - in the interests of spreading civilisation, of course.

[Ghost Dog]

7. ¿Civilisation? That's commie talk, surely?

Aren't we involved here in supporting the apparently defacto right of the already well-connected, relatively rich and powerful individuals to convert itself back into some kind of pre-twentieth-century, pre-Dickensian "Divine" right, FABULOUS wealth and IRRESISTABLE and btw imperial) power.

Roll over, Marie-Antoinette. Mme Defarge. After all, the Glory of Imperial and berfore that, indeed, Republican Rome, and other contemporary societies (so exemplary for some) was built on widespread poverty, invasion, exploitation, and slavery.

[Tanuki]

6. Are you sure Forrestal jumped? Some say he was pushed.

"History" is interesting indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Forrestal