Tony Blair .....

[Keef]

I was interested

As was I.

I have no intention of falling out with anyone on here DJKQ, but I think Quids was well within his rights to be a bit p!ssed off at the way you misrepresented his post.

PS. Quids, I was told the day after the budget that my contract was being finished, and it ends next Friday. I have something else to go to, so won't be on the streets, but the new contract is not something I want to be doing for long. Still, you gotta eat.

Edited because I left out a "no" that rather changed the context of what I was saying.

[Brendan]

You are being uncharacteristically generous with the degree of naivety you are granting Mr Blair there Chuck.

By virtue of their positions, few high powered politicians (and no conservatively motivated ones like Big Tone) have moral objection to causing the deaths of innocent people as a means to an end.

History and current events are very clear on this point.

When I say innocent people I don?t mean soldiers either but the ordinary men women and children who have been killed and continue to be killed because of conflict cause by the political and financial motivations of people half way across the world.

He knew full well what the human cost would be but he went ahead anyway.

If the lives he was playing with were closer to home he would not have done it but that?s only because the political damage to him would have been far too great.

EDIT: Because if you're going to point out the intrinsic evil of a person?s motivations you should do them the courtesy of spelling their name correctly.

[Huguenot]

reggie, I would prefer to see a massive change in behaviour that would dramatically decrease the need for oil, alongside investments in alternative sources of energy and transport etc.

The result would be a change in the strategic importance of the region, and a consequent decrease in conflict.

I despise the hypocrisy of the British public who refuse to recognise that they feel it more politically acceptable to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people than give up their car. I don't hate the people, I hate the hypocrisy.

It's the nimby's who don't want a windfarm on their hill, or a blue cycle lane that eats into personal car space, that are murdering Iraqis - not Blair

That these people have the nerve to get on their high horse and start marching around town is almost intolerable.

I'm sufficiently aware of my insignificant position in society not to feel guilty about this, but I'm most definitely disappointed.

[Jeremy]

Huguenot Wrote:

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> It's the nimby's who don't want a windfarm on

> their hill, or a blue cycle lane that eats into

> personal car space, that are murdering Iraqis

Staggering - even by your standards!

[Huguenot]

That's the challenge Jeremy, we're just not willing to join the dots!

[HAL9000]

There's a vociferous faction out there (i.e. on the web: see here) who believe that Bush et al were manipulated into invading Iraq on behalf of Zionist interests.

Unfortunately, any discussion involving Zionism tends to attract hoards of religious conspiracy theorists that makes it difficult to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

[mockney piers]

In a wider sense i actually agree with Huguenot. I think pretty much everyone in the world outside of the upper echelons of african oil kleptocracies and Saudi princes, agrees that our dependence on oil is a loser on every level. Very few of us do very much about it all though. That said, it's news to nobody is it, but the wind farm nimbys are awful hypocrites though aren't they.

So back to the subject in hand, i really don't believe Iraq was a war for oil in the sense that Huguenot is making out. The oil fields may have been well off maximum capacity, but plenty was flowing and the majority was going to the US, so no problems there. Saddam was no longer a strategic threat to anyone, so no problems there then.

As for the Zionism thing, i think there were a few senators mad enough to believe the nonsense enough to give it their support but to suggest it's what shaped policy is ludicrous.

So in the end it was really just about putting into practice a new foreign policy theory about the use of US military superiority to actively shape the world in an image that is beneficial to them, and to court strategically important countries such as ex soviet republics with terrible human rights records and get an even more widespread net of airbases to attempt to effectively maintain US hegemony in the face of new (and old) strategic threats.

In other words it was all about staying number one. It's what empires do, so in that sense the only people to blame were the US policy makers, or specifically the coterie who formulated the theories as rising stats on Reagan's staff and honed them out in the cold watching what they perceived to be the total failure of the application of power in the Clinton era.

You can't even blame Joe American because it sure as hell wasn't stipulated in the election manifesto of 1999.

We can blame Bush and Blair, because though the policies weren't theirs of the making, they surely were the executives of their respective countries and the buck stops there. It was sold to them as good vs evil and they lapped it as it fuelled their self-righteous missionary egos, Caligula springs to mind thinking about it, but that mig be a stretch too far.

Blair was the worst though as in the uk where no one wanted the war, not even in his own government, though they were all far too cowardly and self-interested to say anything bar Robin Cook, and so long after it mattered, Clare Short.

And of course they have reshaped the middle east, though I'm guessing that making Iran the premier strategic power in the area and putting an Iraqi government in place that will look towards Iran rather than the US, probably wasn't what they had in mind. That's the problem when your policy says "let's change the regime, show everyone how scary we are, and, err....get McDonalds and Starbucks in there, and err....the rest will follow". Whoops. should have asked those experts ...oh....wait....

Ooh and I'm always interested in what Quids has to say too.

[steveo]

1. The US bases in the ME are there to safeguard the House of Saud and keep an eye on Iran. If the family falls, the Islamists ride in and Israel + Islamic Saudi + Iran with a bomb = war, big war then very big war. That's why we fight Al Qaeda and prop up the Saudis

2. We are in Afghanistan to stop the Islamics getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons pure and simple

3. The west needs a client state (or at least the bases within it) next to Iran to contain it = Iraq

4. We are protecting oil supplies

So far so hawkish but I suspect a lot of people would come to the conclusion that on balance and in the absence of viable alternatives all these things are worth doing. The hypocrisy lies with politicians who disguise their real motives because they think we are too stupid to understand them

[Mick Mac]

Mick Mac Wrote:

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> I personally am not interested in discussing Irag

> in too much detail. It is a difficult subject, but

> it is still far too early to decide whether this

> was a good long term decision interms of that part

> of the world.

>

As I said in the first page, we will not know the value of the Iraq decision for some time to come. Tough decisions have to be made and there are many casualties, but the long term security of the country is likely to be proven to be the motivating factor behind the Iraq decision and it will be interesting to see the full text of UK/US discussions when the secrecy is finally lifted in how many years time.

Too many liberal Neville Chamberlains in ED, would sell the country's relationship with the US down the river and with it the long term security of the country.

[mockney piers]

I'm unclear. Are these our intentions, our current policies or long term goals?

1. Totally agree, i think Iraq was not so much about safeguarding the Saudis, but ensuring there were US bases in the middle east should Saudi Arabia do an Iran so to speak.

2. I think we're in Afghanistan because we toppled the regime then didn't really think about what happened next. Islamism in Pakistan (i believe the islamics already have it) wasn't a significant problem until the Taliban fled into Pakistan and the Pakistani government joined the so called war on terror. I'm not sure how our presence in afghans tan can do much about preventing Pakistan from imploding other than the drip feed of predator dropped bombs keeping the Taliban leadership unsettled and disparate.

3. I think the idea was to create a client state, this has failed; though it is currently pliant and friendly but that could change quickly making the bases there untenable without a coup or splitting Iraq into 3 which may be an option should a future gov't head down that path.

Containing Iran is poppycock. I don't think Iran has shown any signs of expansionist tendencies at all, the most it has done is to fund, train and arm paramilitaries in Lebanon and Palestine with an eye to their grasping power and having friendly regimes there eventually, a tactic the US is certainly most familiar with in examples ad nauseum.

Containment is rhetoric that sells weapons as i believe I've already said on this thread.

4. Protecting? From what? Not from islamists, history has shown they will happily sell resources for profit when in power. So I'm guessing that you might be thinking that the ultimate goal was regime change in Iran, as they are cosying up to China who are equally keen to keep their wheels of industry and modernisation turning and are making moves in the oil and other resource rich countries the world over to ensure that they may be preferred to the US as a trading partner.

Overall strategic geopolitical manoeuvres we are beginning to see manifest are between the US, China and a resurgent Russia. Europe so far is quiet and biding it's time with a transatlantic alliance but can't afford to be if spheres of influence and neo imperialism is to be the way of the 21st century.

I of course naively believe we could achieve a world of multilateral cooperation, of interests subsumed to the truly greater good, and that scientific advances might allay the need for or all this grubby fighting for burning stuff.

What an idiot!!!!

[mockney piers]

Oh MM. I completely and utterly fail to see what this country's long term security has anything to do with invading Iraq in any way shape or form, and have yet to hear a single decent justification (all of them post-rationalised of course) for this. Even long-term energy security which is morally unconscionable is dubious to say the least. I await with baited fingers.

As for "Too many liberal Neville Chamberlains in ED, would sell the country's relationship with the US down the river and with it the long term security of the country" there is sooooooooo much wrong with this statement I wouldn't even know where to begin.

[Mick Mac]

Oh MP. the US is our big brother, live with it.

[mockney piers]

I can accept that, and if the justification for going into Iraq was 'because the US said so' then I wish all these so cAlled analysts, pundits and most of all politicians, would just bloody well say so.

I doubt France or Germany's long term security is in any way impacted from not having done so mind, though i can fully see why Poland was so keen to get in with the US gang.

[Mick Mac]

I was in New York a few years ago, post 9/11 and we had the misfortune of listening to a former Navy Seal rant about the French and how the US were going to watch them fry if ever France was victim of a 9/11 type attack.

The EU has an alliance that we are not very comfortable being part of - our alligience lies elsewhere although we are beginning to hedge our bets with our european friends.

[mockney piers]

I'd say we're pretty comfortable as part of the alliance called the European Union. We have common interests and culture, visit each others countries in our hundreds of millions and are each others foremost trading partners. Plus avoiding European rivalry and conflagration is far and away our primary security issue.

Our last two cost us an empire, all our money and a million and a half dead, all other security concerns pale into insignificance against this; let's not risk another huh?

The transatlantic alliance was a hedge against the catastrophic failure of the European project as much as it was a safeguard against communism. With both of these gone I can see many reasons why we should remain close to them, culturally and in trade but i can't see that we've benefited a great deal strategically other than involvement in some expensive brush fire wars we couldnt afford and that it has helped us to have an inflated, misguided and ultimately expensive sense of our own importance in the scheme of things, money much better spending on our increasingly broken society rather than expensive floaty and flyey things as well as things that make REALLY big bangs that we'll never use and that someone else ultimately controls anyway. Taking that last one into account freakily the French have got it rather better than us, err taking Vietnam out of the equation, and Algeria and Rwanda and ... Ok strike that.

[katie1997]

Keef Wrote:

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> I was interested

>

> As was I.

same here.

I agree about the interests in oil and natural resources, also what Mockney Piers said about China's acquisition and buying power in this is spot on.

Edit: obviously oil IS a natural resource. Oh and agree with ???? here too (very interesting).

[DJKillaQueen]

Yeah I'm with Mockney on this one too.

[Mr. Tea]

Shown up to be the shallow, manic ever-smiling chancer he is on Jon Stewart's Daily Show tonight. Slick, after-a-fashion, but ultimately unconvincing when he's not allowed to set the agenda.

Anyway - 3 contortionists walk into a mini bar ...

[Mick Mac]

mockney piers Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I'd say we're pretty comfortable as part of the

> alliance called the European Union. We have common

> interests and culture, visit each others countries

> in our hundreds of millions and are each others

> foremost trading partners. Plus avoiding European

> rivalry and conflagration is far and away our

> primary security issue.

> Our last two cost us an empire, all our money and

> a million and a half dead, all other security

> concerns pale into insignificance against this;

> let's not risk another huh?

>

> The transatlantic alliance was a hedge against the

> catastrophic failure of the European project as

> much as it was a safeguard against communism. With

> both of these gone I can see many reasons why we

> should remain close to them, culturally and in

> trade but i can't see that we've benefited a great

> deal strategically other than involvement in some

> expensive brush fire wars we couldnt afford and

> that it has helped us to have an inflated,

> misguided and ultimately expensive sense of our

> own importance in the scheme of things, money much

> better spending on our increasingly broken society

> rather than expensive floaty and flyey things as

> well as things that make REALLY big bangs that

> we'll never use and that someone else ultimately

> controls anyway. Taking that last one into account

> freakily the French have got it rather better than

> us, err taking Vietnam out of the equation, and

> Algeria and Rwanda and ... Ok strike that.

1) The French have made their own mistakes.

2) But I don't agree that we are "comfortable" with the alliance with the european union - I think we are hedging our bets there - we have historically been at war with the French and the Germans, both of whom have invaded - the comfort of the alligence with the US is that it is comforting in that there is no risk of invasion, we suit each other and have done for some time.

[mockney piers]

1) I think that was rather my point wasn't it.

2) really when did they invade?

As a matter of fact weve also been at war with the US in 1812 who attempted to annex Canada, we did our best to aid the chaos of their civil war to keep our upstart ex colony off balance and have competed with them colonially in the Caribbean, China, Central and South America.

WW2 was a tough sell by Roosevelt to the ameican public to fight with us against the Germans as sympathy for Britain was not great and in fact names of a Germanic origin made up the largest proportion of the boys fighting for the US believe it or not.

In fact i don't recall anyone of any european nation funding bombing campaigns against British citizens or has that been conveniently forgotten?

We aren't even vaguely hedging our bets with Europe, we've gone wholesale into a huge agreement where we hold mutual interest above that of self interest and that judicial paths will henceforth resolve all national struggles. Brilliant.

Some are uncomfortable with how far we've gone but it would be a head in the sand xenophobic nutter who wouldn't admit that we are European, that our greatest trade is with Europe, that our closest cultural counterparts are European and that

this one will last.

The fact is the transatlantic alliance as liberal democracies with mutual economic interests and closely tied financial systems, will last and has much to go for it. It doesn't have to be either or. I'm not sure where you're going with this hedging nonsense though.

[Mick Mac]

mockney piers Wrote:

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> 1) I think that was rather my point wasn't it.

> 2) really when did they invade?

>

1) No - You were making the point that England was comfortable with the EU alligience.

2) French - 1066

Germans - intention....??

[mockney piers]

Normans 1066, not the French, they'd only just nicked Normandy (Neustria?) off the French 100 years before they then nicked England, Sicily, bits in the middle east, troublesome lot. We invaded France countless times however, perhaps it's they that need the hedging?

I think the Germans have learnt their lesson. Amazing how total destruction, slaughter and rape of your country makes you less inclined to repeat those mistakes. They're a lovely bunch now as many people have attested to on the people inlike thread, I like them too as it goes. Great place to holiday.

If England were really uncomfortable then how comes UKIP do sooooooooo badly?