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    Tony Blair’s Stand-Up Number

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    Is there any reason to pay attention to what Tony Blair, the British prime minister between 1997 and 2007, has to say after the Afghan debacle? The former member of the comedy duo, composed of George W. Bush (the inarticulate gaffer) and Blair (the sanctimonious moralizer), that performed prominently on the world stage in the first decade of this century, no longer has any serious connection to political power. Still, Blair manages to make occasional appearances in the news cycle, thanks principally to the inertia that so relentlessly drives the media’s choices.

    Now that the war the Bush and Blair team enthusiastically launched in 2001 has been officially lost, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) was curious to hear what the former leader might have to say. Would Blair offer some insider perspective on an episode of history now judged to have been a vainglorious attempt to punish a spectacular criminal act by mounting a military campaign that turned out to be more spectacular, equally criminal, much more costly and far more self-destructive of the civilization that was presumably defending itself? Would he apologize for his own mistakes? Would he coldly analyze the political and ideological sources of those mistakes?

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    Blair did admit that “maybe my generation of leaders were naive in thinking countries could be remade.” That was neither a confession nor an apology, especially as he immediately followed up by implicitly critiquing President Joe Biden’s precipitated withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, adding that “maybe the remaking needed to last longer.” He then used the now obligatory example of the plight of Afghan women to assert that “we mustn’t forget … that our values are still those which free people choose.”

    Instead of confessing and clarifying, the monologue he delivered resembled a self-parody of the reasoning that drove his error-ridden decision-making in 2001. “Islamism,” he proclaimed, “both the ideology and the violence, is a first order security threat… COVID-19 has taught us about deadly pathogens. Bio-terror possibilities may seem like the realm of science fiction, but we would be wise now to prepare for their potential use by non-state actors.” In short, once again, we need to be afraid, very afraid.

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Potential use:

    A term used by politicians to describe an unlikely event that usefully inspires fear in the public’s mind to justify aggressive efforts labeled “defense,” but which objectively appear to take the form of offensive assault against other nations and peoples

    Contextual Note

    In such moments, Blair can appear as if he is vying to become a stand-up comedian, a kind of one-man Monty Python, satirizing his nation’s historical institutions. Unfortunately, despite Blair’s notoriety, they are not in the same league. The Flying Circus boys came together initially as irreverent university wits, who targeted post-colonial British culture and the pompous establishment’s status quo. As the former living symbol of that pompous establishment, Blair’s comic ambition is fraught with insurmountable obstacles. Even when his discourse manages to sound as surreally unhinged as that of any of the characters invented by the Python, Blair will never break free from his former identity as the real-life representative of the establishment’s fake wisdom and pseudo-sanity.

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    In the later years of his reign as the young and glamorous prime minister, even before the devastating findings of the Chilcot report on the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War, many politically aware Brits were already tempted to change the spelling of his name from Blair to Bliar, to highlight his habit of solemnly lying his way into disastrous wars, alongside his buddy, President Bush. Together, those two men led an enterprise that some observers assess as a complex and long-enduring war crime.

    That both of those men should still be welcomed on the world stage, treated as sages and counted on to deliver wise commentary on current events should shock only those who are unaware of how today’s media works. It systematically honors those who have been the boldest in committing crimes, so long as such crimes are committed in the name of national security. That rationale has become so fundamental and so obsessively inculcated by those who exercise any form of political or economic power that committing extreme violence in the name of “national security” will always be lauded in the media as proof of a politician’s courage to go beyond the call of duty. 

    Historical Note

    Tony Blair’s comedy appears to be based on a simple premise. His onstage character assumes the stance of taking seriously the startling idea formulated in 1989 by Francis Fukuyama, as the Cold War was ending. According to the young political scientist, a golden age governed by the principles of Western liberalism was dawning. Fukuyama claimed that “we are witnessing… the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

    Fukuyama himself eventually abandoned that thesis or at least corrected our understanding of what he meant by it. Blair thinks we can return to 1992, a year in which the book, “The End of History and the Last Man” was published and the Soviet Union only existed in the past tense. In his secular preaching, Blair maintains the faith in the triumph of liberal values. “Recovering confidence in our values and in their universal application,” he affirmed, “is a necessary part of ensuring we stand up for them and are prepared to defend them.”

    Blair’s forward-looking aims at new battlegrounds. “Britain should work more closely with European countries on how best to develop capacity to tackle the threat in areas such as Africa’s Sahel region,” he said. This stands as a scintillating demonstration of how the neocolonialist mind works. It seeks a region of interest and then invents the threat. 

    Why is Blair singling out the Sahel? The answer should be obvious. It is the logic used by 19th-century European colonialist powers, who opportunistically looked for occasions to exploit the weakness of their rivals to dominate a particular part of the world. France is currently retreating from its futile engagement in the Sahel, an area it dominated to a large extent as a colonial power and in which it has been active as a neocolonial defender in the “global war on terror.”

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    Blair’s plan reads like a comic book version of traditional British imperialism. “We need some boots on the ground,” he said. “Naturally our preference is for the boots to be local, but that will not always be possible.” Let the natives die as we secure our rule. It is already laughable to suggest that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit Britain might “work more closely with European countries” on its relations with the African continent.

    Blair is obviously thinking of a tandem with France, whose citizens have lost all patience with their nation’s inept military operation across the Sahel region. He imagines France and Britain together renewing the glory formerly achieved by the US-UK duo in the Middle East. Together they will ensure that the “remaking” lasts longer. France’s Jupiterian president, Emmanuel Macron, humiliated by the current pressure to withdraw troops, would clearly welcome the chance of participating in such an alliance, even if the French people are reticent.

    For Blair, it isn’t about power and money, though he is clearly attracted to both, especially the latter, which he has shown a talent for accumulating. No, it’s about universal values, Blair’s own singularly enlightened values. That’s a language dear to the president of the French Republic, a nation that has tirelessly sought to exercise its “mission civilisatrice” across the globe for the last three centuries. Blair, the stand-up comedian, will “stand up for” those values and be “prepared to defend them.”

    “Be prepared” is the Boy Scouts’ motto. In the final act of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” the young prince of Denmark declared to his friend Horatio that “the readiness is all.” Unlike Blair, however, Hamlet wasn’t interested in magnifying real or imaginary threats to his well-being. Instead, he was affirming a certain equanimity and trust in his own capacities. No need to invest in his training before what turned out to be a rigged fencing match. Hamlet refused to let fear be his guide.

    From the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, Denmark was in a state of war, feverishly building its armaments to defend itself from a “hot and full” Norwegian prince, Fortinbras. But it was Denmark’s own criminal king who brought the country down, leaving bodies strewn across the stage just as the young Fortinbras is about to arrive, survey the damage and take control of the state.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Who's to blame for the Afghanistan chaos? Remember the war's cheerleaders | George Monbiot

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      OpinionAfghanistanWho’s to blame for the Afghanistan chaos? Remember the war’s cheerleadersGeorge MonbiotToday the media are looking for scapegoats, but 20 years ago they helped facilitate the disastrous intervention Wed 25 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 25 Aug 2021 05.53 EDTEveryone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people. But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame is attached to those who began this open-ended war without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: the then US president, George W Bush, the British prime minister Tony Blair and their entourages.Indeed, Blair’s self-exoneration and transfer of blame to Biden last weekend was front-page news, while those who opposed his disastrous war 20 years ago remain cancelled across most of the media. Why? Because to acknowledge the mistakes of the men who prosecuted this war would be to expose the media’s role in facilitating it.The main lesson from Afghanistan is that the ‘war on terror” does not work | Mary KaldorRead moreAny fair reckoning of what went wrong in Afghanistan, Iraq and the other nations swept up in the “war on terror” should include the disastrous performance of the media. Cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan was almost universal, and dissent was treated as intolerable. After the Northern Alliance stormed into Kabul, torturing and castrating its prisoners, raping women and children, the Telegraph urged us to “just rejoice, rejoice”, while the Sun ran a two-page editorial entitled “Shame of the traitors: wrong, wrong, wrong … the fools who said Allies faced disaster”. In the Guardian, Christopher Hitchens, a convert to US hegemony and war, marked the solemnity of the occasion with the words: “Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo. It was … obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history.” The few journalists and public figures who dissented were added to the Telegraph’s daily list of “Osama bin Laden’s useful idiots”, accused of being “anti-American” and “pro-terrorism”, mocked, vilified and de-platformed almost everywhere. In the Independent, David Aaronovitch claimed that if you opposed the ongoing war, you were “indulging yourself in a cosmic whinge”. Everyone I know in the US and the UK who was attacked in the media for opposing the war received death threats. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress who voted against granting the Bush government an open licence to use military force, needed round-the-clock bodyguards. Amid this McCarthyite fervour, peace campaigners such as Women in Black were listed as “potential terrorists” by the FBI. The then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, sought to persuade the emir of Qatar to censor Al Jazeera, one of the few outlets that consistently challenged the rush to war. After he failed, the US bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul. The broadcast media were almost exclusively reserved for those who supported the adventure. The same thing happened before and during the invasion of Iraq, when the war’s opponents received only 2% of BBC airtime on the subject. Attempts to challenge the lies that justified the invasion – such as Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and his supposed refusal to negotiate – were drowned in a surge of patriotic excitement.So why is so much of the media so bloodthirsty? Why do they love bombs and bullets so much, and diplomacy so little? Why do they take such evident delight in striking a pose atop a heap of bodies, before quietly shuffling away when things go wrong?An obvious answer is the old adage that “if it bleeds it leads”, so there’s an inbuilt demand for blood. I remember as if it were yesterday the moment I began to hate the industry I work for. In 1987, I was producing a current affairs programme for the BBC World Service. It was a slow news day, and none of the stories gave us a strong lead for the programme. Ten minutes before transmission, the studio door flew open and the editor strode in. He clapped his hands and shouted: “Great! 110 dead in Sri Lanka!” News is spectacle, and nothing delivers spectacle like war.Another factor in the UK is a continued failure to come to terms with our colonial history. For centuries the interests of the nation have been conflated with the interests of the rich, while the interests of the rich depended to a remarkable degree on colonial loot and the military adventures that supplied it. Supporting overseas wars, however disastrous, became a patriotic duty.For all the current breastbeating about the catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan, nothing has been learned. The media still regale us with comforting lies about the war and occupation. They airbrush the drone strikes in which civilians were massacred and the corruption permitted and encouraged by the occupying forces. They seek to retrofit justifications to the decision to go to war, chief among them securing the rights of women.But this issue, crucial as it was and remains, didn’t feature among the original war aims. Nor, for that matter, did overthrowing the Taliban. Bush’s presidency was secured, and his wars promoted, by American ultra-conservative religious fundamentalists who had more in common with the Taliban than with the brave women seeking liberation. In 2001, the newspapers now backcasting themselves as champions of human rights mocked and impeded women at every opportunity. The Sun was running photos of topless teenagers on Page 3; the Daily Mail ruined women’s lives with its Sidebar of Shame; extreme sexism, body shaming and attacks on feminism were endemic.Those of us who argued against the war possessed no prophetic powers. I asked the following questions in the Guardian not because I had any special information or insight, but because they were bleeding obvious. “At what point do we stop fighting? At what point does withdrawal become either honourable or responsible? Having once engaged its forces, are we then obliged to reduce Afghanistan to a permanent protectorate? Or will we jettison responsibility as soon as military power becomes impossible to sustain?” But even asking such things puts you beyond the pale of acceptable opinion.You can get away with a lot in the media, but not, in most outlets, with opposing a war waged by your own nation – unless your reasons are solely practical. If your motives are humanitarian, you are marked from that point on as a fanatic. Those who make their arguments with bombs and missiles are “moderates” and “centrists”; those who oppose them with words are “extremists”. The inconvenient fact that the “extremists” were right and the “centrists” were wrong is today being strenuously forgotten.
      George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsAfghanistanOpinionSouth and Central AsiaUS politicsTony BlairGeorge BushcommentReuse this content More

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      Bill Clinton fancied an Indian rather than tea with the Queen

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      Bill ClintonBill Clinton fancied an Indian rather than tea with the QueenThen US leader also turned down Chequers dinner because he wanted to ‘be a tourist’, archives show Caroline DaviesMon 19 Jul 2021 19.01 EDTLast modified on Tue 20 Jul 2021 00.09 EDTBill Clinton turned down tea with the Queen and dinner at Chequers because he wanted to “be a tourist” and try out an Indian restaurant during his first official visit to the UK with Tony Blair as prime minister, formerly classified documents reveal.Downing Street wanted to pull out all the stops for a visit seen as crucial to “establishing a good working relationship” between the new prime minister and the then US president. Buckingham Palace contacted No 10 to say “HM the Queen would be very pleased” to invite the Clintons to tea at 5pm on their brief one-day detour from summits in Paris and The Hague.But, though “very grateful for HM the Queen’s invitation”, the Clintons would “wish to decline politely”, recorded Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, nor was the White House “attracted to our suggestion of a dinner at Chequers”.Instead, Clinton wanted time to go shopping – “he has said that he wants to be a tourist” – and had “expressed an interest in trying Indian food”, according to a Downing Street briefing note released by the National Archives.A lot was riding on the visit, with the British and Americans agreeing it needed to “show the president and the prime minister to the wider world as young, dynamic and serious leaders”.The Americans were keen for a “fun” and “photogenic” outside event. Foreign Office suggestions – which all went nowhere – included a lunchtime jamming session “for the president (saxophone) and the prime minister (guitar) to play together briefly (with or without other musicians who might be at the lunch)”. Another was a “look in a pub (the Americans like them)”.No 10’s suggestions for a “stroll in Trafalgar Square” before visiting the Sports Cafe in Haymarket, where both men “could be shown how to play various sophisticated computer games by a group of children” were “firmly” rejected by the White House as “not serious enough”.In the event, the Clintons ended up with free time between a joint press conference and dinner. Rather than an Indian restaurant, dinner for the Blairs and Clintons was at the French restaurant Le Pont de la Tour near Tower Bridge, where the £298.86 invoice shows the two couples dined on grilled sole, halibut, wild salmon and rabbit.Ahead of the visit, there were concerns at the White House that the Clintons had recently sojourned in Barbados at a house belonging to Sir Anthony Bamford, “a well-known Conservative supporter”. There were fears “this might be misunderstood or misinterpreted in London”, the documents reveal. The White House said the president did not know Bamford at all. “But the property he owns happens to be particularly well situated from a security and other points of view.”During the 29 May 1997 visit, Clinton was to be shown around the Cabinet Room, prompting the then cabinet secretary, Robin Butler, to remind Blair’s principal private secretary, John Holmes, of the former US president Richard Nixon’s inauspicious visit to the cabinet room in 1969.As later recounted by Roy Jenkins, the chancellor at the time, as Nixon reached for milk for his coffee, he “mysteriously succeeded in picking up a crystal inkwell and pouring its contents over his hands, his papers and some part of the table”. As “horror” broke out on the British side, Sir Burke Trend – the then cabinet secretary – poured cream over his own trousers, “although it was not clear whether this was because he was so shocked or because he felt the president would feel less embarrassed if carelessness verging on slapstick appeared to be a Downing Street habit”, Jenkins later wrote. Nixon was led out to “nailbrushes and pumice stones”, which were “unavailing” and returned with hands still stained, “a real Lady Macbeth scene”, and his concentration “completely ruined”. In a handwritten note, Butler wrote: “I hope I will not be asked to emulate the sacrifice of my predecessor.”TopicsBill ClintonNational ArchivesTony BlairPolitics pastUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      What led to Trump and what will follow Biden | Letters

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      George Monbiot (The US was lucky to get Trump – Biden may pave the way for a more competent autocrat, 11 November) is probably right about Barack Obama paving the way for Donald Trump, because the former failed to tackle big business. I would go even further and say that Tony Blair, another “breath of fresh air” at the time with his Tory-lite policies, more or less paved the way for our Trump – in the form of Brexit.Both politicians had a clear electoral mandate to bring about fundamental changes to their societies: in Blair’s case, to change our parliamentary institutions, as, when it came to corralling business, the UK was very much, and still is, a bit-part player. In the end, his successor handed over a poisoned chalice to the Tory/Lib Dem coalition to attempt to clean up the mess and, after its failure, to face the consequences. Joe Biden, besides confronting neoliberalism, needs to do to his country’s political system what Blair failed to do to his. John MarriottNorth Hykeham, Lincolnshire• George Monbiot paints a bleak prospect for the US and, by implication, the rest of the free world. He writes at length about the failure of Barack Obama to change the basic course of social and economic conditions during his eight years in office. He also comments on how important it is that Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia to avoid a Republican-led upper house. Surely it was exactly this that stopped Obama at every turn – the fact that during his presidency he was cursed with a hostile and belligerent Senate.The 2008 global financial crisis was one of his darkest moments, and I believe it was Gordon Brown who took charge of the initial recovery worldwide. Most politicians realised that it was senior bank staff who were responsible for the disaster. But as the old adage says, “If you owe the bank £100 then you have a problem, but if you owe the bank £10,000,000 then the bank has a problem.” They were just too big and important to be allowed to fail. What didn’t happen, but should have, was that no bankers were exposed and prosecuted. Both Obama and Brown must bear some of the criticism. Richard YoellBromham, Bedfordshire• I am appalled by the advocation of “tub-thumping left populism” as a way forward for the US. We have seen enough of tub-thumping populism (whether of the left or right) in the world during the last 100 years to know where it leads – to mass civil unrest, police brutality, military intervention, civil war, governments shutting down parliaments and locking up (or kidnapping and murdering) political opponents. In short, to unbridled anarchy, tyranny and mayhem. So thanks, but no thanks! For all its faults and weaknesses, I’ll stick with democracy based on free and fair elections, even if it doesn’t always lead us to the ideal society that we may yearn to see realised.Philip StenningEccleshall, Staffordshire• George Monbiot overlooks the way in which the neoliberal doctrine of “making wealth before welfare” has been massively overturned by the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the primacy of health over economics has been forced on even the most ardent neoliberal regimes, not least in the UK. This will certainly leave an indelible mark on the post-pandemic era. Unlike the disastrous neoliberal response to the 2008 crash, this time we are seeing the start of a possible end of its dominance as the prevailing ideology of our times, for the first time since the Thatcher-Reagan years.Adam HartGorran Haven, Cornwall More

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      A political populism far removed from Donald Trump | Letters

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      Andy Beckett presents an entirely negative picture of populism (This is a moment of truth for rightwing populists – but don’t celebrate yet, 23 October). There are many unfortunate examples in our present age of how destructive populist movements can be. However, he appears unaware of earlier and more positive episodes of populism, in particular the founding of the People’s party in 1891 in the US. This became a significant political party, gaining 8% of the popular vote when it fielded a candidate in the 1892 presidential election.The origins of the People’s party, also known as the Populist party, lay in the exploitation of sharecroppers and tenant farmers by business monopolies and the banking elite. These agrarian workers had been plunged into debt, after taking on loans to fund investments in new farming equipment, when they were hit by droughts and falling crop prices, together with extortionate loan terms and interest rates.The Populist party agitated for massive political reforms, which included the recognition of unions, regulation of the railway industry, the direct election of senators, progressive income tax, and women’s suffrage. These ideas were considered radical at the time, and still are!The current problem with populism is that most of it is not genuine, but is either generated by cynical groups with a hidden interest, or is hijacked by unscrupulous politicians for ulterior purposes. However, there still are populist movements that serve a higher purpose. Be careful not to diss populism per se, as it has a distinguished pedigree. It is the pseudo-populists who need to be challenged and brought to heel.Dr Stephen BlomfieldSheffield• Andy Beckett’s piece on populism was a brilliant discussion of one of the most pressing questions of our time. I only have one small quibble. He says we should remember that populists do sometimes “get re-elected”.But that’s not the point. Populism is democracy’s ugly sister. It flourishes when the primordial democratic promise of political equality is negated by a dysfunctional political system. The answer is the maximum possible diffusion of power. It’s not an accident that federal systems are less likely to be infected by the populist virus than centralised ones. A radical overhaul of our dysfunctional political system is the only way out of the populist trap.David MarquandPenarth, South Glamorgan• I disagree that the “predictable and cautious politics” of the 1990s and 2000s provoked an outburst of populism. It was because these political periods were unstable that there was a backlash. The administrations of John Major and Tony Blair produced boom and bust, two massive recessions with widespread unemployment and widening inequality.The Blair government was still essentially Thatcherite even though it tried to fiddle around the edges to make things a bit better for the least affluent. The inevitable crunch came in 2007 precisely because banking and housing remained unreformed. Then came David Cameron, George Osborne and austerity. Populism is the muddled reaction against 40 years of Thatcherism.David RedshawGravesend, Kent• David Runciman highlights the need for politicians with experience and judgment when faced with a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic (Boris Johnson is learning that in politics you cannot simply ‘follow the science’, 24 October). The problem is that our pluralist democratic system is not designed to produce politicians with the wisdom and practical experience to use facts in a relevant way, but only ones that can gain resonance at the ballot box. Both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump exemplify the deficiency.Derek HeptinstallWestgate-on-Sea, Kent More

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      Tony Blair: nominating Bernie Sanders would be ‘an enormous gamble’

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      Former PM doubts ‘appetite for socialist revolution’ Debate: ‘Sledgehammer on Trump, scalpel on Sanders’ Tony Blair has warned Democrats in the US that nominating Bernie Sanders to face Donald Trump for the presidency would be “an enormous gamble”, risking defeat on a similar scale to that suffered by the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. Related: […] More