All in the name of God! Doesn’t matter which one!

I could not make up my mind: did he say this out of conviction or out of guilt wrapped up as faith? Whatever it was, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair once again jumped in to raise some eyebrows among international observers with his latest statement relating to the present sectarian chaos in Iraq.

“We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not: and whether action or inaction is the best policy. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it.”

The invasion of Iraq by the U.S., Britain, Australia, Poland and Spain, which started in March 2003, aimed “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.” Everybody involved in constructing the argument to go to war was “convinced” that Iraq posed a threat to the world with his WMDs stored in its territory. Blair was the most passionate, as for him they were there “beyond any doubt.” Saddam Hussein eventually was indeed put out of action. He was chased, found and killed. So were most of his close Baathist associates. As it turned out, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, as admitted by the CIA just two years after the invasion.

Blair eventually had to resign as a prime minister of a Labor government after the accumulating reaction caused among the public and among his own party over his pro-war policies concerning Iraq. British and international intellectuals accused him of “war crimes” regarding his policies in Iraq, but as late as January 2010, he insisted that the “world is safer as a result of the invasion.”

The British Labor Party is still trying to recover from the shadow of a war-triggering prime minister who talks like a modern crusader with “absolute faith” in his convictions. Among the prime defenders of the use of force in order to bring “democracy” to the autocratic regimes of the Middle East, the charismatic and passionate Blair never hid his Christian faith. In fact, he revealed that his faith in God led him to go to war in Iraq.   

Some 13 years after the invasion of Iraq and in the absence of any statement from Blair’s closest associate former president George W. Bush and even the most intransigent Washington hawks, Blair comes up with his favorite “absolutisms.”     

“We have to put aside the differences of the past and act now to save the future ... Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force.”

Most analysts are supporting the view that what we are witnessing at the moment in Iraq is the breaking up of a weak central state structure through an all-out sectarian war. They claim the present situation is the result of the unfinished job by the Americans. Unfortunately, the absolute faith in the justification of a western war has led to a crueler civil war over the absolute faith of religious principles.