The Observer | Politics | Blair: we cannot change course
The Observer | Politics | Blair: we cannot change course
Tony Blair is still proclaiming that foreign policy has no relation to the London bombings, and is not at all responsible for terrorism in general. The argument that Blair uses is as usual fundementally flawed, but as usual he dresses up his own belief as fact, making vague statements appear uequivocal.
The Prime Minister hit back at suggestions that the London atrocities were linked to injustices in the Middle East, saying it was the ‘almost-devilish logic’ of extremists to play on western guilt.
Their propaganda was clever and sophisticated, he told an audience of Labour party delegates in London: ‘It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world - as if it is our behaviour that should change, that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs.
‘Their cause is not founded on injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it can’t be moderated. It can’t be remedied. It has to be stood up to.’
So, it is clever propaganda and tricks from the terrorists that has linked the London bombings to Iraq? Have I missed something perhaps? Have I missed a series of television adverts from the bombers intimating a link between the bombings in London and British foreign policy in the Middle East? I was under the impression that the London bombings - and terrorism in general - were linked to Iraq (and British foreign policy over the last 50 years) by British people with a modicum of intelligence who are prepared to face the reality of why terrorists exist. Perhaps Blair is dismissing anyone making the link between British state terrorism - reffered to in our genteel, developed, civilised nation as ‘foreign policy’ - and terrorism of the Al Qaeda type, as being brainwashed by sympathies for the injustice that such people have collectively suffered.
It is interesting that although he is dismissing the idea that the terrorists were inspired by the oppression of Palestine, it is a kind of admission that their is oppression in Palestine, and British foreign policy is complicit in it. So by denying links, he is effectively pointing out how they could have greviances against British foreign policy - protesting too much as it were.
I wonder how anybody can take what Tony Blair says at face value, for he has become someone so removed from reality that his rantings are nothing more than lies repeated to remove any notion that he is responsible for - or perpetrator of - terrorism. That he cannot change is irresponsible and follows the classical role of a dictator, someone who chooses a path and will not deviate from it whatever the cost simply because they only value their own beliefs and willpower. Blair shows this by dismissing any logical arguments as ridiculous, anything that does not meet his narrow and blinkered view of reality is simply ignored, and his citizens are left to pay the price.