The liberal interventionist
By Michael J.W. Stickings
Tony Blair, that is.
See this revealing piece on the soon-to-be ex-PM in The Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash.
Being something of a liberal interventionist myself, I've always been sympathetic to Blair -- I've even considered him one of the world's leading and most credible statesmen -- even if he'll largely be remembered for his unflinching support for the Iraq War. Which is what he deserves, perhaps, but which is also rather unfair. Consider his -- and Britain's -- leadership on such issues as Kosovo, Darfur, global warming, and poverty.
There has certainly been much more to him and his premiership than "froth and miasma".
Tony Blair, that is.
See this revealing piece on the soon-to-be ex-PM in The Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash.
Being something of a liberal interventionist myself, I've always been sympathetic to Blair -- I've even considered him one of the world's leading and most credible statesmen -- even if he'll largely be remembered for his unflinching support for the Iraq War. Which is what he deserves, perhaps, but which is also rather unfair. Consider his -- and Britain's -- leadership on such issues as Kosovo, Darfur, global warming, and poverty.
There has certainly been much more to him and his premiership than "froth and miasma".
Labels: Iraq, Tony Blair, United Kingdom
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
1:38 AM
2 Comments:
You will always be remembered for your unflinching support of the war on Iraq.
By
Anonymous, at 9:16 AM
Yes, yes, yes, Anonymous -- and I assume you're the anonymous one who's made the same comment here before (how nice to hide behind anonymity, eh?) -- but I've never hidden that. But if you remember I held off supporting the war until just before the war started, when it was all but inevitable that it was about to start. And one of my arguments was always the Blairite liberal interventionist one, not the neoconservative American hegemony and regime change one. And all along I argued that it would all depend on how the post-war reconstruction went and that a failure to rebuild Iraq properly would prove the war a failure. Is this too nuanced for you?
Needless to say, my one major mistake was given Bush any credit and trust at all, but, again, it was widely assumed that Iraq had WMDs -- he'd used them against his own people, after all -- and I for one was not opposed to an effort to remove such a brutal dictator from power.
By
Michael J.W. Stickings, at 9:38 AM
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