News

Tony Blair’s Middle East speech: dangerous and anti-Muslim

Tony Blair
Tony Blair, in an earlier appearance

Tony Blair’s big speech on the Middle East yesterday shows he has learned nothing from his catastrophic foreign policy failures as British prime minister.  Blair’s arrogance and stupidity will be analyzed at length in the days to come, but here is a preliminary look.

Blair revives the thoroughly discredited “clash of civilizations” theory to argue that Islamic extremism “is spreading across the world,” and that it “represents the biggest threat to global security of the 21st century.”

He barely mentions Israel, and then only to portray it as an innocent, which he praises because it “has successfully stayed aloof from the storm around it.”

But the worst part of the speech — which borders on the criminal — is when he dishonestly insinuates that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was violent, and he justifies the anti-democratic coup that overthrew it last year.  “The revolt of 30 June 2013 was not an ordinary protest,” Blair said.  “It was the absolutely necessary rescue of a nation.”

Let us pause for a moment to consider the sinister implications of Blair’s statement.  The Financial Times just yesterday ran a long article under the headline “Egypt’s black holes,” which said, “Thousands of government opponents have disappeared into secret jails, which critics warn are radicalising a new generation of jihadis.”

This mass imprisonment follows the crackdown last year in which government forces killed hundreds of people, most of them nonviolent Brotherhood supporters. Human rights organizations have thoroughly documented these crimes — but the former prime minister of Britain just goes right ahead and tells the Egyptian military state to keep killing and jailing.

To list all of Blair’s stupidities would require more space than his actual speech. Here is just one quick example: Part of Blair’s indictment of Islamic extremism includes his assertion,

“For the last 40/50 years, there has been a steady stream of funding, proselytising, organising and promulgating coming out of the Middle East, pushing views of religion that are narrow minded and dangerous.”

Does Blair think we are as stupid as he is?  This ‘steady stream of proselytising’ has emanated from Saudi Arabia, the West’s biggest ally in the region; what’s more, Saudi Arabia hates the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, enthusiastically endorsed its overthrow, and is spending billions to prop up the military regime that replaced it. So much for the “clash of civilizations,” which posits a unified extremist, Islamic juggernaut.

Why did Blair make this speech?  One paragraph contains a clue. He mentions “the enormous commitment of Iraq and Afghanistan” — his euphemism for the full-scale invasions that he helped carry out — and he adds:

“It may well be that in time people come to view the impact of those engagements differently.”

Blair’s wooden language is a sly, roundabout effort to justify the Iraq disaster, and his responsibility for it.  If Islamic extremism is clearly “the biggest threat to global security” today, then maybe he and his friend George W. Bush were right to confront it back in 2003, (although he must hope we forget that “Islamic extremism” in Iraq actually grew after Saddam Hussein fell).  If he needs to endorse killing and mass imprisonment in Egypt today so he can rehabilitate his reputation, he has no more qualms than he did back when he lied so he could order British soldiers to invade Iraq.

 

32 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

This man is an idiot and hes part of the “quartet” what a joke!
Actually he praised Israel quite a bit, I read a comment somewhere saying Tony Blair wished he was a jew.

I wonder what type of book hes reading, authors like pamela geller?

The Iraq war, which started in 2003, has caused the deaths of between 100,000 and one million people, depending on whose estimate you believe. Two men were ultimately responsible for the decision to start it: George W Bush and Tony Blair.

Bush and Blair claim that they were provoked into starting the war by the imminent threat Iraq presented to world peace. They further maintain that the war was legal. A series of leaked documents shows not only that these contentions are untrue, but that Bush and Blair knew they were untrue.

http://www.arrestblair.org/blairs-crimes

Blair is definitely a nasty piece of work.

>> Blair … argue[s] that Islamic extremism … “represents the biggest threat to global security of the 21st century.”

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, recently said that Russia’s actions involving Ukraine pose “the greatest threat to world peace and security“.

Which donkey-fellater are you going to believe?

on the same day of Blair’s speech Huffington post printed

Iraq War Chilcot Report Should Be Published Immediately, Says Ex-Blair Attorney General Lord Morris

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/23/chilcot-report-must-be-published_n_5196223.html

Iraq War Chilcot Report when publish will hopefully see Blair get his just desserts.

Blair is sure which side of his bread is buttered. He doesn’t recognize that his position is doomed to fail, because his position is not assumed for UK’s sake, or for peace, or for decency, but only to keep that BIG-ZION money flowing to his coffers.

He is thus like so many retired USA pols who continue to merit their continuing receipt of $$$ by demonstrating, again and again, their fealty (a feudalistic term meaning loyalty to a feudal master) to one of the great Barons of our day, BIG-ZION.

American pols begin earning money from BIG-ZION when collecting campaign contributions. They continue, after they leave office, by collecting handsome speaking fees and such like. These after-office receipts are quite visible to all pols still in office and constitute a sort of guarantee that the bribe-like $$ that flowed to docile pols-in-office will continue to flow in retirement. Blair’s appointment as a $$$-paid member of Quartet (yes; what a joke!) is merely an extreme example of a large payout in return for loyalty to BIG-ZION.

And Mr. Blair is nothing if not loyal to the hand that feeds him.

Let the poor and oppressed of the world weep and gnash their teeth, Mr. Blair knows what side his bread is buttered on. And where his loyalty lies. As the UK version of the song goes, “With sun-shiny faces, we all know our places”, and Mr. Blair knows that his place is defending BIG-ZION — though the heavens fall.