Is Tony Blair Bonkers ?

[modeller]

So Blair is advocating we get involved in Iraq again ! Is he mad ?
I suggest we parachute him into Baghdad . He can talk them to death . That's the only thing he excels at. With any luck we wouldn't see him again .
Maybe he wants to be their president since no one wants him in Europe.

[chilli]

100% agree, cant stand him

[DaisyNonna]

Bonkers, loathsome and rich. Excellent example for MPs.

[craft1948]

This guy won 3 elections so somebody must have voted for him............

[ichkeria]

No he's not mad.
Plainly few people have thought very hard about this,
You can argue the toss about whether it's right to intervene in these conflicts and to what extent, but it should be obvious to anyone that these events to affect us. And therefore you draw your conclusions and plan your strategy accordingly. Or you should.
Doesn't necessarily mean another invasion of Iraq
In any case, the current situation is largely the result of us doing nothing about Syria. And guess who was primarily responsible for nothing being done there? Stand up, again, Herr Putin ..

[boxtops]

He's supposed to be our special envoy to the Middle East, whatever that is, so I guess he ought to know what he's talking about - but I for one don't believe a word he says any more. He believes it, that's what's scary.

[jim360]

Why, thanks, Naomi!

[sandyRoe]

These ISIS people, they control swathes of Syria. Could they have got their hands on some of Assad's WMD?

[Hopkirk]

How he can think that adding more violence to the situation can cure it, God only knows.

[kvalidir]

Sometimes the only way to deal with violent people is to be equally or more violent Hopkirk. I personally don't think we should have toppled Saddam / Gaddafi without something tangible and realistic to fill the power vacuum it created, but we did and now we have a duty to tidy up the mess we made. I loathe Tony Blair and he's to blame for a huge amount of this, but he is right that we can't now just ignore it.

[saintpeter48]

I voted for the Blair government in '97 and supported Labour in the following general elections, but I didn't support the invasion of Iraq and do not support getting involved in any conflict in other countries, we are NOT the worlds police, we simply cannot cure the world of all its ills! Would Blair feel the same if his sons were deployed in these conflicts, of course not because they never will be, its fine saying we should go in all guns blazing, but Mr Blair, would you feel the same if it were your sons coming home in a body bag!!!

[jim360]

I think that's a fairly tasteless comment, really -- historically it would probably be wrong, anyway, and I don't think that most world leaders in the past, including Tony Blair, would be discouraged from doing what they thought was the right thing if that would put their family at risk. Indeed wouldn't it just be another way to criticise him? "Oh, you only care about your own family and not about anyone else"?

I also struggle to understand the "we aren't the world's police" remark, if it comes to that. Granted we can't cure all the world's ills. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. The problem in the past was that we went into Irag and Afghanistan and then apparently had a seriously bad plan to rebuild the country after toppling the ruling regimes. That could end up making things worse, if that's even possible. On the other hand, ignoring the mess in the region is unlikely to lead to much better. As I said earlier, the situation will not stay confined to the region for long.

[zoe76]

royfromus link states that ISIS took over towns and cities north and west of Baghdad, one of those cities north of Baghdad is Mosul so its not officially Iraq and the peshmerga went in over the last week to get them out as Iraq army was nowhere to be seen, is there anywhere it states which Iraq cities have been taken does anyone know?

[naomi24]

He's not mad. He's finally recognised a genuine weapon of mass destruction - ISIS.

[ichkeria]

"one of those cities north of Baghdad is Mosul so its not officially Iraq and the peshmerga went in over the last week to get them out as Iraq army was nowhere to be seen, is there anywhere it states which Iraq cities have been taken does anyone know? "

Mosul is in Iraq, unless something dramatic has happened recently. Peshmerga have come from KAR to take advantage of a power vacuum in some places after the Iraqi army fled. Isis may be fanatics but there aren't all that many of them. Our local WI could probably have seen off the Iraqqi army - nonetheless they plainly need to be removed if possible.

[mikey4444]

I think we should have let Saddam Hussein, the blood-stained dictator, stay in power and continue to murder 100,000's of his own people, including the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.

[kvalidir]

Rather than us do it for him Mikey?

[youngmafbog]

Not often I defend Blair but I think a few people need to listen to the whole of what he said. A lot of the comments are being bandied around out of context. No surprise there I guess.

Without doubt hindsight has shown we went into Iraq for the wrong reasons, I am not happy about that. I am also unhappy about the way we pile in with no exit strategy, not just into Iraq.

but to say none of this would have happened if Iraq had not been invaded is totally wrong. This part of the world has always been awash with tyranny and violence, that is why they end up with dictators since the iron fist is the only way to keep some sort of peace, something right-on liberals in the West just can't get their head around.

Blair is right when he says we need to get involved. Not with boots on the ground (except maybe some special forces) but with intellignce and working with others to crush the Islamic fundamentalists. And one of those groups we need to work with are normal, moderate Muslims that want the same as we do.

Enough of this liberalness, shouting racists or little Englander, this will be our problem in a big way when these Jahidists finally start coming home to Britain. Then watch the bloodbath.

Ignore Blair at your peril.

[Kromovaracun]

As I understand it, our decision not to involve ourselves in Syria was primarily because we did not know who the anti-government forces were. It now seems that was quite a prudent decision - as they included these fanatics.

Regarding a peacekeeping force, the only people in a position to do that would be the UN. And as ichkeria says, Russia would not allow it...

[anotheoldgit]

Seems strange in how it only took one year from D Day 6th June 1944 to VE day 5th May 1945, to drive the Nazis from Normandy back across Europe to Germany, and then to put it's leaders up for trial and then execution, yet it has took 13 years of war in Afghanistan and we still cannot proclaim victory.

Have we lost the knowledge in how to defeat our enemies?

These savages in Iraq who are carrying out widespread executions of their prisoners, should be rounded up by any means possible and put on trial for war crimes.

[jim360]

I don't think the two are so easily comparable. Al-Qaeda as an enemy is rather closer in nature to the Vietcong. Not really a nation state and its army -- lest we forget, the Iraqi army was rolled over in weeks -- but something closer to "cells" scattered across the region, in difficult terrain and in small groups. And behind it all, a philosophy that outlives those who follow it. Nazism, at least as a threat to the world, died with its leaders in that lonely bunker in May/ June 1945.