AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

TONY BLAIR ATTEMPTS TO AVOID BLAME FOR IRAQ CRISIS

Former British Prime Minister and war criminal Tony Blair has written an essay attempting to deflect blame for the current crisis in both Iraq and Syria on the actions he and his fellow war criminals, former US president George W. Bush and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, committed themselves to when they lied their way to war against Iraq in March 2003. In his essay Blair says: “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ caused this crisis. We didn't.”

The fact is; ‘we’ did – or, at least, Blair, Bush and Howard and their neoconservative supporters around the world did.

Blair argues that: “Three or four years ago al-Qaeda in Iraq was a beaten force”. Blair’s wrong. Firstly, it wasn’t; it was subdued but it certainly wasn’t beaten. And secondly, why was ‘al-Qaeda’ in Iraq in the first place? It certainly wasn’t there before the invasion in March 2003. And Saddam Hussein had no more time for the Sunni extremists we see there today than the West has. The reality is that the Islamic jihadists that the West decided to put under the umbrella label of ‘al-Qaeda’ evolved as a jihadi movement in Iraq shortly after the invasion and they evolved because they saw an opportunity to do battle with the West who they saw as an enemy that had dared invade Islamic lands. They weren't there to protect Saddam Hussein’s regime, they were there to simply rid Islamic lands of foreigners in their lands.

During the allied occupation of Iraq, especially in the early days of the invasion and occupation, the allies treated the Iraqi people with the kind of disdain and brutality that became typified by the exposure of the horrific treatment of Iraqi prisoners in places like Abu Ghraib. As a result, young Iraqis became radicalised and joined the various jihadi and resistance groups that formed during this period. Money and religion became a toxic mix during this time as various groups changed sides behaving more as mercenaries rather than jihadists.

As time went on jihadists from other places in the Middle East moved to Iraq to join them. Later, when the allies eventually overwhelmed them, most of them simply melted away. Some quietly returned to their homes while others went off to fight in other jihad wars. Some went to Libya and elsewhere in North Africa while others later went to Syria.

Then along came the next generation of jihadi fighters as the civil war in Syria became a war between the Syrian government and their supporters and the international jihadists who flocked from all over the world to fight their holy war. Now the war has gone full circle in Iraq and that, contrary to Blair’s assertion otherwise, it most definitely was ‘we’ that caused the current crisis. Before the invasion there was no ‘al-Qaeda’ in Iraq. Today the jihadists that the allies wrongly label ‘al-Qaeda’ are stronger than ever in both Syria and Iraq.


Of course ‘we’ are to blame. 

3 comments:

Greg Bacon said...

All of those weapons and money that is being 'found' by ISIS was probably left there on purpose.

In the mid-1980s, the President Reagan and his band of criminals were supporting various thugs in C. America that the Congress had voted against giving any support, especially weapons to.

Reagan's band of psychos then had the Pentagon schedule training exercises for the US Army and Marines in those nations. When the troops left, they left behind their weaponry.

That worked until Congress found out and started raising hell.

Steve said...

Tony Blair may yet salvage his place in History. He is still widely admired in the US. If only Dr David Kelly could speak!

Damian Lataan said...

He'll have his place in history alright, Steve, but it's unlikely to be a story that covers him in any glory. Widely admired or not, history will expose Blair and the others for the criminals they are.