Tony Blair: Poodle or Bulldog?

Tony Blair: Poodle or Bulldog?

Watching Blair answering questions of the Iraq public inquiry commission was fascinating for the same reason it was frustrating. It's British.

Fascinating, because of the precise and disciplined way the five member commission probed the former prime minister about the way in which he arrived at the decision to go to war along side the United States and how he co-managed it with President Bush.
 
Frustrating, because the commission is an internal British inquiry with limited mandate - not an international court of justice - one that is commissioned to review and reconstruct the political process behind the war, or the politics behind the policy.
 
They stayed focused despite repeated attempts by Blair to turn the inquiry into passionate rhetoric about leadership, judgment and good intentions.
 
The commission kept steering the outspoken prime minister away from the macro-strategic to the micro-political.
 
In the process, Blair who clearly was conscious he was heard on live television to audiences within the UK and internationally, reiterated his convictions and arguments about post 9/11 threats and risks and about Iraq, Saddam and WMD.
 
Alas, the former prime minister spoke for so long, but said very little that is new. Worse, he made gross generalisations about Iraq before and after the war and about the international perception of the war.
 
But because the commission wasn't about to enter into a political discussion with the former PM, they, at times, interrupted his diatribes in order to steer him back to the particulars of their inquiry.
 
Revealing probe

Unlike Blair's answers, the commissioners' questions were quite telling. One can detect five main lines of questioning:

• Did the prime minister commit the UK to a US war of choice in Iraq a year earlier?
• Did he exploit the inconclusive (fabricated!) intelligence to advance the cause of the war.
• Did he initiate military cooperation with the US and later the deployment without a clear legal mandate?
• Did he poorly prepare for the aftermath of the invasion?
• Did prime minister's relationship with Washington allow the Bush administration to take the UK for granted especially when it took major decisions in Iraq such as disbanding its army?

At various junctures in the inquiry, it was clear that the well-prepared and patient commissioners have much doubt about the premier's motives, logic, and judgment.
 
One needs to wait for the final report to understand the dynamics leading to war and Blair's responsibility, but one can already detect scepticism about the unapologetic and unrepentant premier who has no regrets.
 
Tension in the inquiry

Throughout the long day of questioning, the Commission and Blair had two different strategies.
 
Blair tried to emphasize the soundness of the intelligence to go to war, the Commission questioned whether it was suspicious and wasn't sufficient for a UN inspection team or to go to war.
 
He underlined the strategic relationship with America, the commission questioned whether the UK had committed itself  too early and too hastily to war and subsequently ignored by Washington.
 
He stressed how he sincerely pursued a UNSC resolution before war, the commission wondered why he made serious military commitments very early in the process.

Blair claimed that he was going through the normal political and diplomatic process, and the commission questioned why the attorney General Peter Goldsmith changed his mind and why Blair went to war when all his government's international legal advisors believed the war decision was illegal.
 
Last but not least, Blair insisted that it was all about judgment not deception or conspiracy, and the commission highlighted the discrepancies and contradictions in the decision making process behind the judgment.
 
Blair was of course the prime minister of a country with long democratic tradition- not a totalitarian state - where judgment is  based on transparent, accountable and democratic process.
 
Risks and judgments

Tony Blair based most of his argument to go to war on post 9/11 strategic thinking where threats were harder to predict and risks harder to calculate.
 
But answering the commission's questions about the poor planning and preparation for the invasion's aftermath, the prime minister seemed oblivious to the very mindset he was underlining in the argument to go to war, the known unknowns.
 
It was clear that neither Iran nor al-Qaeda, nor most Arabs, for that matter, would look kindly or positively at the US/UK invasion. Turkey, the NATO member, and Syria were no less skeptical.
 
How could Blair think that the Islamic Republic would be helpful when the Bush administration invaded Iran's two neighbours Afghanistan and Iraq while threatening regime change in Tehran?
 
Blair lumped dangers from Iraq and al-Qaida, even though Iraq is a republic that had everything to lose from sanctions, chaos and invasion - all of which benefit al-Qaeda, despite the fact that there were no relations between the two.
 
Throughout the day, Blair tried to resell his stale justifications for fighting Bush's war in the public (world) platform provided by the Iraq inquiry, and the latter tried to make him answer some very important questions about the soundness of his leadership and judgment.
 
Although he got away with making bombastic and passionate statements and warn that Iran is no different from pre 2003 Iraq, the commission left the door wide open on whether Blair was indeed Bush's poodle.