It is a common phenomenon that people who set traps for others end up by being caught into their own traps.
Now it is Tony Blair who is caught into the mesh of his own weaving.
The Americans wanted to attack Iraq as part of their new Foreign Policy Strategy based on the books and speeches of Benjamin Netanyahu. But it was Tony Blair who suggested that the proposed American war against Iraq be legitimized by referring it to the United Nations.
Tony Blair hoped that the UN would give the war an easy approval, and so did the Americans, and this is why they agreed to the Blair suggestion. They hoped that they would get the approval by the time the military preparations for the war are over.
So the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq was raised in the UN, and the UN inspections were resumed. But then it appeared that the universal support for the war did not materialize. Instead, there arose a world‐wide opposition to the war by the people. And some governments, rather than using the Iraq weapons inspections as a ploy to justify the war, called the Blair bluff, and accepted these inspections at their face value.
The UN inspections came to be seen as a way of elimination of weapons of mass destruction. And, as they proved to be workable, the war came to be seen as unjustified. Thus, Tony Blair's plan of justifying the war by using the UN has turned into an obstacle to the American war.
Having discovered that the Blair plan to justify the war by using the UN has failed, the Americans are saying that they will attack Iraq with or without the UN, and even with or without Blair himself.
Now Blair is desperately trying to save his position by proposing a new UN resolution that could be used to justify the war. But the more he twists and turns, the more he gets entangled into the mesh of his own inconsistent and unjustifiable arguments.
Tony Blair hoped that the “War on Terror” would allow him to capture a “high moral ground”, but he had failed to see that the initial support for that war was due to the 9/11 hysteria. As the time has passed and the mist has cleared, the American use of this hysteria to justify a series of wars which would establish their control of the Middle East came to be seen as a greater threat to the world than the Specter of Global Terrorism. Thus, the Americans came to be seen as a belligerent aggressive super‐power, and Tony Blair as a warmonger.
And, what is still worse for Tony Blair, is that, if the Iraq war is seen as a success by the Americans (low American casualties), they will want to go for another war to keep the momentum going. This is part of the US‐Israeli strategy anyway. And again Tony will be pushed to support the Americans, or admit his own failure.
This war rampage, driven by the adrenaline of easy “successes”, will continue, and there will be no easy way out of it, until the chain of “successes” ends in a disastrous failure. Just as it happened with all the other great military adventures in the past. And the higher one climbs, the harder will be the fall.
So, how can Tony get out of his self‐made trap?
By learning from his own past experience.
He could recall that once upon a time he was a full‐blooded Socialist who made his career by supporting the idea of the “public ownership of the means of production”.
It was popular at the time, but it was also nonsense. And once more and more people realized that it was nonsense, the idea of “public ownership” became a dead weight that made the Labour party unelectable. And, when Tony Blair understood that, he had scrapped the idea of “public ownership”, which enabled him to get elected.
The idea of “War on Terror” is similar to the idea of “public ownership” — it is based on emotional appeal and wishful thinking, and, just as the idea of “public ownership”, it is unworkable. And, just as pursuit of the “Socialist Ideal” has brought to Mankind much suffering, so will the “War on Terror”. And the further the American War on Terror Strategy advances, the more obvious it will become that it is doomed to failure.
Rejecting the “War on Terror” doctrine does not mean encouraging terrorism, or even “doing nothing about” terrorism. The ideas that terrorism can be eliminated by killing all the terrorists in the world, or by installing pro‐American puppet governments in all the Arab countries, are just as naive as the idea of creating an ideal society by nationalizing all private property. As long as governments can inflict injustice on some people, and there are no peaceful means of redressing this injustice, some people will be taking law into their own hands.
Resolving the Palestinian issue on the basis of justice would be a first major step towards elimination of terrorism. Establishing workable means of resolving and preventing similar conflicts in the future, will remove the causes of terrorism.
So, if Tony Blair rejects the War on Terror doctrine, just as he rejected the “public ownership” doctrine, and persuades the Washington yobos to do the same, just as he had persuaded his Socialist yobos in the past, he will do a great service to Mankind, and will even become popular. Attempts to become popular by embracing the American War on Terror are doomed to failure, just as sticking to the slogan of “public ownership” had proved to be in the past.
