Gog.org.nz

Everyone admits that it was wrong-headed, except the powerful people who kicked it off

There are few sights uglier than that of a Scottish lawyer on the make, as Tony Blair showed during his six-hour defence of the indefensible before the Chilcott-led Iraq Inquiry. According to Wikipedia, Edinburgh-born Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is descended from the illegitimate son of two actors and the daughter of a butcher. Remarkably, this mediocre lawyer-turned-fake-Socialist and disgraceful ex-Premier now resides in a multi-million pound pad close to the US Embassy in London. How did he get away with it?

Arms expert Dr David Kelly: He allegedly committed suicide after Blair rejected his loudly publicised advice that Saddam Hussein could not attack the West within 45 minutes and had no weapons of mass destruction

Tony Blair is unusually loaded and universally loathed, and at the inquiry he defiantly stared down some of those who have lost relatives in the illegal Blair and Bush war, and called him a liar. Blair, who professes to be a Christian (if true, he probably falls into wife Cherie’s Roman Catholic category of Crusader), stuck to his guns, denied all the evidence and said he’d do it all over again. If ever there was a prisoner of his own history, Tony Blair is the epitome of an auto-biographer who needn’t be locked up.

Those of us who said from the very beginning that the 2003 invasion of Iraq broke international law were roundly condemned by the likes of Sir Max Hastings, the prominent historian and journalist. But after watching Blair’s braggadocio performance on Friday, a shocked and angry Sir Max finally admitted that Lady Hastings was right all the time, he had been misled and that Blair had perpetrated a monstrous parliamentary injustice on the British people and upon Max’s honourable intelligence.

Tony Blair, joint architect of the illegal Iraq invasion, and now the West's wealthy Middle East peace broker

Not to mention the incalculable damage Blair helped to inflict on the Iraqi people, of whom between 300,000 and 600,000 have died because of his involvement in “regime change” on the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction”. When it comes to WMD, Britain and the US are the global experts and compared to them, Saddam Hussein was a peacenik puppy.

Before you nod off, wondering “What has all this to do with lil’ol NZ?” please recall the dramatic photo of Kiwi VC-winner Corporal Willie Apiata, strolling through the rubble in Kabul like a real-life Terminator.

Helen Clark was in many ways a thoroughly rotten prime minister, but her enduring achievement was to do nothing by deciding that New Zealand would not help the USA to re-colonise Iraq. Her quaint belief in this nation’s independence may have led to some daft decisions (such as the abolition of resort to the UK’s Privy Council), but she had the good sense to distance New Zealand from an atrocity that broke international law.

Hard man Willie Apiata, VC. Picture from NZ Army

Apiata is our home-grown, heroic version of the Universal Soldier, and anyone familiar with the song written by Buffy Saint Marie will recall the universal truth that those who send people such as Willie into foreign conflicts also say they believe that God is on their side. The fact that they secretly don’t believe in God (like many a President, Pope, Prime Minister, Imam or Rabbi) is immaterial and always overlooked.

NZ Prime Minister John Key has sent Apiata and his colleagues to Afghanistan “to fight terrorism” and, rather importantly, he did not tell voters about this plan at the last election. Willie and the rest of his SAS cohort are obeying the orders of a government that is quietly cosying up to the US, to support a corrupt government in a civil war against an unbeatable (and abhorrent) bunch of Moslem fundamentalists who want their independence back and foreigners out.

We might not relish the prospect of a Taliban government in Kabul (and particularly what it might do to the women of Afghanistan), but the fact remains that New Zealand is propping up a corrupt and undemocratic administration. It’s little wonder that Taliban insurgents reject unreliable offers of money and jobs to come over to the other side. It didn’t work in Vietnam, and it won’t work in Afghanistan. We don’t like Robert Mugabe or Mahmoud Afterdinnermint, either, but there is no sign of Western eagerness to save Zimbabweans or Iranians from cruel dictatorship.

Dirt-poor Taliban fighters oil their weapons. Picture from scraptv.com

Invading and occupying other people’s sovereign territory and imposing your Aryan, Islamic, Marxist or so-called democratic ideology on the inhabitants is a seriously bad idea (to enjoy a long period of silence, ask the Chinese about Tibet). The next thing you know, your own innocent citizens can easily become targets in wider issues that may have more to do with Palestine than Pukekohe. The real strategic goals, such as access to the world’s largest oil reserves or a route from Russia to the Indian Ocean, or creating a buffer zone, may prove overly expensive.

That’s why brainier people than John Key, Tony Blair and George W Bush laid down laws intended to deter such invasions.

So wipe that macho grin off your face, lads. Say a little prayer that Willie and his warriors get home, alive, by next Christmas – and that their misguided mission won’t end in tears.

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/09/simon-hoggart-sketch-chilcott-inquiry

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