Pretty much the only thing people have been talking about in the United Kingdom for the last week or so has been the recent publication of the memoirs of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In his book, Blair spills the details of his famously tense relationship with Gordon Brown and reveals a great deal of his thoughts and motivations regarding his most important actions during his time at 10 Downing Street.
There is much to admire about Tony Blair. His work on bringing peace to Northern Ireland deserves a place in the history books, and he has since devoted his time and energy to finding a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He demonstrated that there is indeed a "third way" between rigid conservatism and ideological liberalism. But the legacy of Tony Blair is certain to be a clouded one.
Rightly or wrongly, Blair will be best remembered for his decision to bring the United Kingdom on board as a staunch ally of the United States when the decision was made to invade Iraq. Everything that will taint the legacy of President Bush- the cynical manipulation of intelligence for political purposes, the subverting and then the sidelining of the United Nations, the failure to plan for the aftermath of the invasion, the thousands of young men who died to capture nonexistent weapons, the enormous numbers of civilian casualties- will fall on Blair no less than Bush. No surprise, then, that demonstrators in Ireland have just pelting him with eggs when he arrived for a book-signing.
As part of the publication of his memoirs, Blair has been giving a number of media interviews. He recently made the comment that radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the world today. This comment has garnered a large amount of attention, perhaps because of its inherent irony.
First of all, Blair is quite possibly correct. Al Qaeda, its allies, and those who share its general view of the world, are either the greatest threat to the world today, or very near the top of the list. Combining a medieval and fundamentalist view of the world with the suicidal terrorist tactics of the 21st Century, radical Islamists have slaughtered tens of thousands of people over the last decade (the majority of the victims being fellow Muslims) and have made it nearly impossible to resolve the ongoing conflicts between the Israelis and Palestinians or between the Indians and Pakistanis. While there are many threats to the modern world, both deliberate and unintentional, radical Islam is certainly one of the most dangerous.
The truth that Blair refuses to face, however, is that his own policies as Prime Minister increased, rather than decreased, the danger of radical Islam. Nothing could have fueled the fires of radical Islam more effectively than the invasion of Iraq, in which the British played a key role. The sight of the two most powerful Western nations attacking and occupying a Muslim state which had not attacked them undoubtedly turned thousands of young Muslim men, who might otherwise have remained ordinary people, into militant terrorists. And if British troops were not involved in the worst excesses of the invasion, such as the torture at Abu Grahib prison, this is not likely to mater much to radicalized young Muslim men.
Militant radical Islam cannot be defeated on the battlefield. It certainly cannot be defeated by hypocritically overthrowing one Arab dictator (despicable though he may have been) while embracing other Arab dictators as friends. Radical Islam can only be defeated in a contest of ideas, which means bringing the Muslim world into the globalized 21st Century and patently waiting for Islam to reform from within sufficiently to purge itself of its radical elements. This certainly won't happen overnight, and it will lack the sex appeal of raising the flag on Iwo Jima. But in the grand scheme of things, it's the only way.
In his heart of hearts, I suspect Tony Blair realizes this as well as anyone. He has been very forthcoming on many subjects in his memoirs, and it chould have been more forthcoming on this. History would have thanked him for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment