Though President George W. Bush says he won’t “weigh in” on the current crisis on Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has no such qualms.
As The Guardian reports:
The former prime minister said there was a huge range of options available, including air strikes and drones as used in Libya.
Blair was speaking on UK morning TV shows after writing a lengthy essay setting out how to respond to the Iraq crisis, including his belief that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not the cause of the country’s implosion.
Both Blair and Bush are widely condemned as the two men most responsible for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq that claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and which many observers say led directly to the current catastrophe now taking place in the country and across the Middle East region.
Responding to Blair’s declaration, historian Juan Cole blasted both the former PM his continued defense launching what was clearly an “illegal” war:
[Blair] is complaining that he is unfairly blamed for causing the current mess in Iraq and that if Saddam had still been in power it would be just as unstable.
He is, perhaps deliberately, missing the point. His invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on deception and propaganda. That was what was wrong with it. A quagmire that is the fruit of illegality and fraud is the worst.
The UN Charter allows of only two legitimate grounds for war. One is self-defense. Blair was not defending Britain from Iraq when he invaded and captured Basra.[…]
The other grounds for war is a resolution of the UN Security Council designating a regime a threat to world peace. The UNSC declined to so vote with regard to Iraq.
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