Blair returns to warn of the dangers of Iran

TrevorsDen

Yes he is stating the obvious, Iran is a danger and it has been blatantly a hindrance in Iraq and Afghanistan; killing British soldiers on the way.

We have not been putting enough soldiers in on the ground to counter that, because we have not been prepared to see the resulting number of soldiers killed.

This is why I criticize those who oppose our aid bill. We are not prepared to see our soldiers die to make the world a better safer place, therefore the only other alternative is to spend money. In the case of Afghanistan we spend money and let the Afghans do their own dying for us (and them).

There is opposition in Iran of course and the Syrian protests continue, thats why it was absolutely right to make sure the Libyan revolution did not fail. Iran still might go the way that Syria has gone so far.

exile on euro street

Why does anybody listen to this self-serving fraud? He was advised at the time how hard was likely to be to deal with the aftermath of military operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He chose to ignore that advice. To profess now that he didn't believe it would be so hard is utterly disingenuous. The responsibility for the mess is entirely his.

disenfranchised

not only that, he is even stating the bleedin' obvious. something so obvious that only a world statesman of his great stature would have the temerity to state to we morons.....

PayDirt

Just words will never achieve anything, if you want change something action is required. Another statement of the obvious. Blair was better at promises than actions, and when he did act it was the wrong thing to do.

Arthur

Part of the problem is that Blair and those around him honestly believe all the diversity, multi-culti rubbish they spout. They think that all people are really nice, and the differences between cultures are limited to language and how we drink out tea. for there to be a country where people won't go to work unless they're forced to (Iraq after the fall of Saddam), or where they just don't want what anything that we've got to offer (AFG) is so bizarre a concept that they just couldn't compute it.

Dennis Churchill

It was once said (I think it was about Mosley)that he suffered from the same weakness as most gifted speakers, once he had made a case for something he moved on and was neither interested in how it would be achieved or very good at the practicalities of achieving it.
It is a weakness you can see in most of our political class, probably due to their lack of experience in actually doing things.
With a lawyer like Blair he also has been trained to present the best possible case rather than need to believe in the case, which is probably how we got the: “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument to overcome the need for a UN resolution.

Sir Everard Digby

Remind us please exactly what 'nation building' the grinning Cheesemeister engaged in,for example in Iraq? Bugger all I suggest.

I would be surprised if the mighty control freak wanted to build an open and democratic nation - after all his track record here was exactly the opposite.

I suggest that cluster bombs,artillery barrages and depleted uranium ordinance would not indicate to those on the receiving end that an 'open and democratic' nation builder was arriving.

Blair remains a fantasist who ignores anything which does not fit his perception of the world.

TomTom

Right on cue Blair pops up. Even Zero Hedge was saying the Anti-Iran rhetoric would move up in tempo as we replay the WMD-Iraq scenario. It is obvious that Iran must be attacked and the War Machine unleashed to install new leaders there. NATO is on a roll and war is a splendid diversion before the bailiffs arrive, especially if Israel can be lost in a nuclear exchange, so many political possibilities will be available.

It makes history seem so much alive to watch the 1930s replayed, next we will have tariff walls and authoritarian governments to help us make the "right" decisions.

Fascism is the wave of the future; the groundwork has been laid, but it is the true Cult of State Power Serving Corporate Interests and we are travelling at rapid speed into its warm and firm embrace

Ricky

Well...at last, Tony Blair, Millionaire says something a rational conservative can agree with.

The Western Left Wing Commentariat have been bought off by Arab-BBC propaganda. The biggest threat to world peace since the collapse of the Soviet bloc is not the West & it's allies but the Syranian Axis.

The Iranian thugocracy is training, funding and protecting an Islamicist near you. Home security in the States is threatened by radicalised communities funded and supported by Iran (see today's reports).

During the "Arab Spring", twitterati amongst the genuine democracy protestors in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria widely noted the presence of Parsee and Palestinian speaking Iranian Revolutionary Guards/Hamas operatives inciting violence and mass insurrection amongst the protestors. In recent weeks antisemitic graffiti has appeared in significant quantities across Alexandria and Cairo.

Under Tehran city the thugocracy have built an underground training facility where they eavesdrop on their own citizens and plan murderous outrages.

There are many noxious regimes - Venezuala, North Korea, Libya, Syria....all are allies of Iran.

However, few share the fanaticism of a suicidal death cult that spawned Hezbollah, Hamas and perpetuates Islamic terror worldwide. The Iranian leadership is not disimilar to Japanese Shintoism of the 1920s/30s.

Their willingness to die for their dogma should worry us all.

mitcheltj

Be thankful for the small mercy that Mr Blair is no longer in a position to do harm - though I do wish that he would just shut up: nobody wants to hear what he has to say anymore.

exile on euro street

Why does pointing out that Blair is being more than a little disingenuous in his comments on the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that my post was ignored? Are you people so much in awe/fear of him?

Jeremy

Tony Blair:

“What that means is that you can knock out, militarily, the regime, but then when you’re engaged in the process of nation building afterwards, it’s not like nation building was in, say, the Balkans or Eastern Europe.”

“You know, you’re nation-building in circumstances where there are groups of people prepared to use terrorism, and in particular suicide bombing, to destroy your attempt to build a country. So you may have the best intentions in the world in building it but they’re actually viscerally opposed to the type of nation you’re trying to build, which is an open and a democratic nation.”

No shit, Sherlock. And how many years after the event did this particular penny drop?

Dennis Churchill

exile on euro street
September 9th, 2011 10:59am
Maybe they had to take advice on your use of “Fraud” and “Blair” so close together.

Andy Carpark

Tony 'Demosthenes' Blair. Where is he now? That is surely the most astute piece of political analysis his 'Azerbaijan' speech back in December 2009.

'Thank you for welcoming me here. Like at home, the weather is just like we have in London. But the sun now is coming out, so let's take it as a good sign for the future. I always wanted to visit Azerbaijan. I know this is a country rich with its traditions of art and culture.

'I've just had an excellent meeting with the President of Azerbaijan who has been explaining to me a very positive and exciting vision for the future of the country. To be honest, until I looked at the list of what formaldehyde does, I had no idea of how many parts of my life were governed by the existence of this thing. When I go back home, I will tell my nine-year-old boy: "Stop all other studies and concentrate on formaldehyde and you will be fine!"

'I had this conversation with Al Gore about the environment, where Al says to me, 'When there is a will, there is a way.' But I always say to him, 'It's easier to have a will if you show that there is a way.' So this AzMeCo plant shows there is a way!'

Baron

the Messiah has spoken, the earth should have stopped spinning, you keep ranting about Blair?

Alan Douglas

Shouldn't somebody hammer home to this Blair popinjay that to be an elder statesman you first need to have been a statesman ? He has always defined what vacuous is.

Alan Douglas

michael

State serving corporate interests ... you mean civil service cronyism
-e.g. Alan's only customer Rupert or the nations PFI financier Fred?... folks like these would never dream of being the cash-cows for the civil service' continuing procurement of vested interest.

MilkSnatcher

It's really a shame anyone publishes the thoughts of Chairman Blair. Iran: population 77m (that's the 18th largest countrry in the world), mostly mountainous terrain, 3x size of Iraq (which is largely flat), Persian not Arab, propensity to martyr resistance that would make Iraq look like a coffee morning, liberal opposition that was stirred up and then ignored by the Americans (think Marsh Arabs II, would make Bay of Pigs look like a coffee morning).

Herbert Thornton

Reading these comments makes me feel as if I'm living in a world where almost everybody believes that the earth is flat - and moreover, where a man who is universally detested makes a speech declaring that the earth is not flat but shaped like a ball.

The much hated speaker is shouted down. Those who believe the earth is flat shout - "kill him!" while those who believe that the earth is round denounce him for stating the obvious.

exile on euro street

@Dennis Churchill 11.33 Let's hope they did take advice because now we can call him Fraud-Blair with impunity.

@James Forsyth: Why is what Fraud-Blair says of any significance? This man had no discernible skill beyond using some shallow easy charm to win a couple of elections against a disastrous opposition, and now uses the same oiliness to make a pile. In power he was a catastrophe and the UK will pay for it for many years to come. Why are politicians and journalists in the Westminster bubble so in thrall to him? Please tell me, I honestly would like to know because I just don't get it.

Sir Everard Digby

Herbert Thornton:

You don't get it do you? Blair would continue to say the Earth was flat even when presented with irrefutable evidence to the contrary or vice-versa depending on the vested interest group to which he was trying to appeal.

Therefore,anything he says must viewed with deep suspicion. To him the earth can be both flat or round,both or neither and that presents no contradiction to him.

Pointing out those contradictions does not make us subscribers to the flat earth society,or not,as the case may be.

It does make him a fantasist though

strapworld

I am waiting to see a photograph of 'godfather' Blair in his white outfit. I reckon he found it in Cliff Richard's holiday home wardrobe and borrowed it. Perhaps he will wear it when in the dock facing war crime charges.

That little contribution shows how much I care what the warmonger has to say.

Holly ......

Blair couldn't posibly be trying to
'divert the story' from his own scabby legacy could he?

Can this sorry excuse for a person hear the ticking of the clock getting LOUDER?

Derek Pasquill

Perhaps in a hundred years time, Blair will replace boogeyman as a word used to frighten little children.

Other "boogeyman" substitutes - democracy, multiculturalism, progessive liberal.

exile on euro street

Herbert Thornton - sorry, but you're living in a world where everyone has always known the earth was shaped like a ball. The much hated speaker is being shouted down for claiming that his belated realisation that the earth is round is something nobody knew before.

Tom

Agree StrapW The UK will be much safer once Ex-Pres Bliar & the rest of his deranged Cronies are sent to the ICC in the Hague. The official letters that have leaked out since the fall of Gaddify with Bliar's Government involvement it appears, in both torture & rendition, should finally set the wheels in motion to apprehend this despot along with his illegal war in Irag. Why can't the media just put a total ban on reporting his lunatic utterance that would certainly be very welcome by all.

2trueblue

What does Bliar actually know about nation building? He was with us for 11yrs and did not manage to move the UK forward. He left it more divided than any PM in modern history.

What happened to his 'peace envoy' job? There is nothing Bliar says that could make it worth my while taking one step forward to hear him. He left a mess behind him where ever he went. Both he and Bush went into Iraq and there was no planning for the aftermath. So we really do not need him,, he has little to offer. Is he now a non dom or is he paying taxes here?

RocketDog

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

What happened to the National Interest?

RCE

Well, all I can say is that it's a good job he kept our borders secure and didn't invite in millions of fighting-age men who sympathize with Islamists and Iranians.

EyeSee

Is 'underestimated' your version of 'didn't give it a passing thought'? Blair says nation building is tough in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, because they are tribal and not really nations at all. That was something imposed by exiting colonial powers. Powers told that they were terrible people (mainly by those who wanted, but didn't have empires), but who then allowed the 'International community' to draw up borders for those nice, but not as bright as us, foreign chappies. The Middle East is not a mess because we created a mess, but because we instilled order and then left. Left tribes to reassert, to turn to their religion rooted in the middle ages. We didn't show them what they could achieve, we just showed the powerful where the money was.

And Blair said it was easy to nation build in the Balkans. Yep, just give each tribe a country after they have killed each other for a while. That might work elsewhere too. It is the sort of concept we should expect of Blair; cowardice and giving in to violence.

Percy

He may be right, he may be wrong but I can't understand why anyone reports on what this busted flush has got to say.

Verity

The curiously self-regarding Tony Blair couldn't and cannot see beyond his own reflection in the mirror. He thinks the Middle Eastern situation is, in some universal way, all about him.

Iran is the only genuine, ancient, nation in the Middle East. It has been a real country (it used to be called Persia) for two or three thousand years (can't be fashed to look it up) and, equally important, the Iranians are not Arabs. They are Aryans,like us.

Any leader with any sense would be working on getting rid of the mad mullahs and returning Iran to the levels of civilisation it enjoyed before the muslim whack jobs got in.

I have a friend who lived there before the Shah was deposed and he said the women wore the highest heels, the biggest hair and the most dramatic make-up of any women anywhere. Now they have the burqa police who check to see that a woman's burqa covers her ankles.

These are people we should be helping. Has anyone thought of offering Blair a permanent post in Pakistan or somewhere?

Etak

Re: Dennis Churchill, I quite agree. I'm always surprised how many high-profile British politicians have never had another profession. Shouldn't it be a pre-requisite before entering politics? I left university with warped political ideals – thankfully a few years in the real world ironed them out. Miliband and Cameron, while ok’ish speakers, for me, lack a certain dynamism; the sort the late James Goldsmith had in abundance.

Dennis Churchill

Etak
September 9th, 2011 4:52pm
I don’t think it would matter as much if we had continued the Anglosphere’s tradition of minimum government, but we have moved towards a model where the state intrudes on every aspect of life, economic and personal.
A political class that has no real experience outside politics combined with such a system seems a formula for decline and chaos.

Herbert Thornton

Sir E. D. - I was not accusing you of being a member of an equivalent to the Flat Earth Society any more that I would levy such an accusation against Verity. Unfortunately however, a great many people - the politically correct in particular - do deserve to be so described.

Exile on Euro Street - You too are missing my point. Everyone may, nowadays, have always known the earth is shaped like a ball - but my point is that people who have the kind of mentality that used to believe that the world was flat now believe Politically Correct dogma - including in particular the tenet that Islam is harmless.

As for Blair, the man is a highly successful snake oil salesman. But that doesn't prevent him, if asked to tell us is what time it is, showing us his watch and letting us read it with our own eyes. That of course may not guarantee that he's set it to the right time.

Frank P

Etah

Ok-ish speakers? Don't you mean oik-ish speakers?

RocketDog

Verity and Etak
Both correct. Persians can be Aryans and boy they don't like being mistaken for Arabs or Asians. We need to take notice of what people of experience tell us, not the media. Politicians today, by and large are not people of experience

David Lindsay

No fool like an old fool. But might Tony Blair be a fool in the King Lear sense? For the tenth anniversary of 11th September 2001, Blair tastefully calls for war against Syria and Iran. The Chaldo-Assyrians, the Copts, the Twelve Tribes of Christian Palestine, the black Africans of Libya, and now those who benefit from the Christian festivals as public holidays in Syria, from the huge programme of government spending on Jewish holy sites there (so that there must be plenty of Syrian Jews to visit them, whatever certain neighbours might suggest), and from the reserved seats in the Iranian Parliament for Armenians, Assyrians and Jews.

Dennis Churchill

Etak
September 9th, 2011 4:52pm
I don’t think it would matter as much if we had continued the Anglosphere’s tradition of minimum government, but we have moved towards a model where the state intrudes on every aspect of life, economic and personal.
A political class that has no real experience outside politics combined with such a system seems a formula for decline and chaos.

Herbert Thornton

OOPS! My 6.00pm posting included - "....levy such an accusation...."

That should of course have been "level such an accusation".

Richard of Moscow

Iranians and Arabs are belligerent toward the west because they believe the west is run by cowardly, ignorant, impotent pond life such as Tony Blair.

Are they wrong?

victor jara 67

Just Tony doing Pax Americana's bidding again. However the Shia axis of Iran,Syria and Hezbullah in Lebanon has been weekened with the pressuire on Assad in Syria.

With US influence diminishing Turkey is the new power on the block courting arab support for a confrontation with the squatter state in Jerusalem. Interestingly Turkey and Israel share an adversary in Iran. The tradition demons appointed by the west are not as clear as before.

bob johnson

The header should read - Blair returns to warn of the dangers of Blair..