Bye, Bye, Blair

British PM Tony Blair will step down on June 27. Here from the archives is Geoffrey Wheatcroft's big Blair profile in the June 2004 Atlantic.

I'll just return to my token stolen-from-my-grandfather point about Blair, namely that he was more significant in selling the Iraq War in the United States than is commonly recognized. Lots and lots of Democrats who would never in a million years have taken George W. Bush's word for it that there was this huge Iraqi WMD threat and a reasonable American military plan to take it out, were perfectly prepared to be convinced by the fact that Blair, who one would think had access to more detailed information than any of us sitting at home reading the newspaper. In retrospect, obviously, this turns out to have been a terrible heuristic, but I think it was one that influenced a lot of people at the time.

Comments

Brown's persona is really appealing to me, as opposed to the unberable Blair, but he's been just as terrible on civil liberties, so I can't say I really like him anymore.

Posted by David Weman | May 10, 2007 10:12 AM

As my coworkers were wondering -- why the #@%$ did Blair support the Iraq war so? What does Bush & CO have, in terms of blackmail on him?

Perhaps, thanks to Britain's ability to jail any whistleblowers (as recently has happened) under the "Official Secrets Act", we'll never know.

BTW -- pardon me for being so neo-con about cavalierly wanting to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign nation in the name of spreading freedom -- but can't we Americans somehow use our might to destroy Britain's "Official Secrets Act"? I've wondered -- can't we force people to choose between odious laws like that and free trade? Have a bunch of newspapers (with international reach so it's a free trade issue) approach a GATTs type panel with a case that the "Official Secrets Act" is unduly trade restrictive. You know the GOoPers are good at political theatre like that -- we used to be even better at it (before our best players went neo-con), so why not revive that tradition?

Of course, it would help if the MSM actually cared about breaking news stories rather than being corporate patsies.

Posted by DAS | May 10, 2007 10:33 AM

Brown's gotta love the timing. Now that Blair has basically made a cocked-up mess out of everything, now he says, "OK Gordon, you can have it"? Yeah, thanks a bunch, Tony.

Posted by Glenn | May 10, 2007 10:37 AM

I was one of the people who felt that the invasion was probably justified because I trusted Tony Blair.

I never would have supported the war at all if Blair had not been so supportive of Bush's policy.

I have been a yellow dog Democrat since the 1988 'publican convention.

I always liked Tony Blair and I still like him. I don't understand his Iraq position anymore but I still like him.

Posted by neil wilson | May 10, 2007 10:38 AM

'can't we Americans somehow use our might to destroy Britain's "Official Secrets Act"?'

I don't even know where to begin...

Posted by David Weman | May 10, 2007 10:42 AM

"Lots and lots of Democrats who would never in a million years have taken George W. Bush's word for it that there was this huge Iraqi WMD threat and a reasonable American military plan to take it out, were perfectly prepared to be convinced by the fact that Blair, who one would think had access to more detailed information than any of us sitting at home reading the newspaper."

Can you name some of these lots and lots of Democrats? I don't mean your roommates etc, but some politicians or prominent figures? I don't see any need for Blair to explain either the rampant nationalist feeling post 9/11 which threatened anti-war politicians at the polls, or for the pervasive hostility and colonial attitudes towards Arabs in the Democratic party which long predates Blair and will continue long after he is gone.

Posted by otto | May 10, 2007 10:42 AM

My sense from that time was that the group you're talking about is pretty small. I think Bush could have decided to invade the Mariana Islands in response to 9-11 and the establishment, mainstream media and public would have gone along with him.

I remember Thomas Frank writing an article that claimed the French foreign minister's pomposity at the UN was a big factor in convincing Americans of the rightness of the president's case. I think he wrote it for Le Monde, though, so I'm kind of hoping this was a pander to the French, rather than something Frank actually believed.

Posted by witless chum | May 10, 2007 10:55 AM

Congressional Democrats surely had access to intelligence themselves?

Posted by Thomas Ash | May 10, 2007 10:57 AM

Congressional Democrats surely had access to intelligence themselves?

Not all of it, no. What they got was severely limited and edited.

Posted by ajay | May 10, 2007 11:02 AM

Blair is the biggest disappointment (politically) of the last decade.

I miss the sense of promise he used to have.

On the other hand, at least he can talk, and knows the dates of the American Revolution.

Posted by Ben Cronin | May 10, 2007 11:03 AM

My British friends laugh at Blair's popularity in the US. They see him as just this side of a religious crazy and that's a subtext that is completely lost over here. The accent adds 20 IQ points, I like to say.

Posted by Steve | May 10, 2007 11:07 AM

One generally unremarked factor in Iraq is that Britain was the former colonial power-- so that the British were a uniquely bad choice for a major ally in the Iraq war. Hard to argue that the nefarious Brits weren't betraying everyone when, in fact, they were. I'd imagine that the Iraqis would have been better disposed towards Americans without the British.

Posted by MattF | May 10, 2007 11:13 AM

Count me among the Democrats swayed by Blair.

I don't get what Steve is saying. Someone is considered too religious for Britain but accepted as mainstream over here? That's really not that shocking.

Posted by Tony V | May 10, 2007 11:13 AM

I don't understand his Iraq position anymore but I still like him.

People close to him say that he was afraid if he didn't go along it would turn into a wedge issue the tories could use and he wasn't going to let them out-atlantize him (is that a word?).

I think after time he believed in it all out of pique and spite and an inability to admit he was foolish the same way the last of the dead enders here do.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 10, 2007 11:18 AM

I, like Steve above in the comments, have always been puzzled by the esteem Blair is held in in the US. I think a lot of it has to do his distinctive speech-delivery gap: he has always given brilliant speeches about various issues - see the way he's driven the global warming issue on the international stage - but has never seemed to know, or even be particularly interested, in following through on anything and actually making it work - hence Britain's still rising carbon emissions. British citizens like myself are well aware of this gap, hence his unpopularity in the UK, but I suppose people from other countries tend to only see the speeches and don't see the misguided actions that follow. The exception to this is of course Iraq, where everyone can see how little Blair was able to, or even attempted to, do to stop the invasion and occupation turning out as badly as it has.

Posted by Ranald | May 10, 2007 11:31 AM

Don't think he is held in high esteem by US lefties.

Posted by David Weman | May 10, 2007 11:36 AM

I always liked Tony Blair and I still like him. I don't understand his Iraq position anymore but I still like him.

This remains one of the fundamental problems with politics. I agree that somehow he's still likeable, despite having collaborated at lying our two nations into an illegal war. If only he resembled someone like Milosevic, so that we'd be much more blithe about shipping him off to face war crimes charges.

On the other hand, at least in return for his craven, lickspittle posture on Iraq, he was able to extract major concessions on global warming remediation and Palestine from the Bush administration.

Posted by mds | May 10, 2007 11:56 AM

How is it possible that the only part of the Blair legacy worth commenting on is his support for a war that would have happened even if he'd pulled a Chirac/Schroeder.

He was around for 10 years; surely there's other things he did that are worth discussing.

Posted by right | May 10, 2007 11:57 AM

I don't get what Steve is saying. Someone is considered too religious for Britain but accepted as mainstream over here? That's really not that shocking.

I am not saying he's too religious by British standards. I'm saying, or at least my friends are saying, that he's a nutjob by mainstream American standards too, it's just that Americans don't understand that for some reason.

Most liberals seem to view Blair as this smart, promising guy who blew all his credibility by enlisting with Bush, kinda like Colin Powell did. Maybe so, or maybe he actually is a sort of fanatic who would never have been so popular among American liberals without the intelligent-sounding accent.

Posted by Steve | May 10, 2007 12:00 PM

I'd imagine that the Iraqis would have been better disposed towards Americans without the British.

Well, first of all, you might recall that we didn't exactly have the luxury of lots of allies to choose from back when we launched this thing. But even if we had gone it 100% alone, I think the "former colonial power" factor is trumped in spades by the Israel factor. Did you know that many Iraqis refer colloquially to our troops as "the Jews"?

Posted by Steve | May 10, 2007 12:03 PM

he was able to extract major concessions on global warming remediation and Palestine from the Bush administration.

Like what?

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 10, 2007 12:08 PM

I think a lot of it has to do his distinctive speech-delivery gap - Ranald

Who? Blair or Bill Clinton? ;)

Posted by DAS | May 10, 2007 12:25 PM

Exactly. So he's as completely soaked in blood as his partners across the pond, idiot princeling and the snarling vizier.

Posted by Nell | May 10, 2007 12:56 PM

he was able to extract major concessions on global warming remediation and Palestine from the Bush administration.

Like what?

Ed, I'm pretty sure that was snark.

Posted by Glenn | May 10, 2007 1:16 PM

The only thing I've read that has come close to making any sense to me about why Blair would choose to go along on George's Wacky-Iraqi Adventure, was in Tony Judt's Postwar, where he discusses the Suez Canal crisis and how devastating it was for the British that Eisenhower didn't back their (and their compatriots, France & Israel) little imperialist land (er, water) grab. Judt said that the lesson that British politicians took home from that episode was, "Never be on the wrong side of the U.S. in a dispute with Europe." Maybe that lesson still holds sway on Downing Street.

Posted by Glenn | May 10, 2007 1:20 PM

On the radio yesterday, I heard Blair's pre-9/11 Chicago speech on humanitarian foreign intervention and it was amazing how 9/11 didn't change his thinking. Iraq was just one small step away from Kosovo in terms of his thinking.

I used to think like that too. I thought Kosovo and humanitarian missions could help US interests if done correctly, and as long as they were strictly humanitarian and not a "pre-emptive strike." Besides that, it helped Democrats control the defense issue.

Now, that sounds silly. As soon as "voluntary military intervention" is your default position, it's not much of a stretch to get into a mess like Iraq. The Dems need to focus on foreign intervention as last resort, as a necessary counterbalance to the intense pull toward using the military (No-bid contracts, oil, political gain, foreign investment).

Posted by Chris_ | May 10, 2007 1:24 PM

"He was around for 10 years; surely there's other things he did that are worth discussing."

Not really. Blair's governments have been pretty lackluster in terms of actual achievements.

The economy ? They pretty much followed the previous governments policies with some tinkering.

Foreign policy ? Well you've iraq and quite frankly not much else. failed to join the euro as he wished and failed to get any other progress on europe.

Civil liberties ? Worst government since pitt's in the 1790's on that score.

Public services ? Talked a good game about reform but settled for simply throwing money at the problems.

Corruption ? Well he did succeed in having a government which is regarded as being the most corrupt and dishonest in living memory.

Basically blair always talked a good game but was never prepared to acutally do anything. He was so enraptured with spin that he rapidly came to think that merely talking about something was the same as doing something.

And given his habit of simply outright lying when it was convenient for him, i could never quite work why some americans seem to take him at face value. Back in 2001 he appeared on a tv show and said with a straight face "i'm a pretty straight sort of guy" and the audience burst into derisive laughter.

If the tories had had their act together blair would have been out on his ear in 2001, never mind 2007. The man was a shameful embarrassment who has
tarnished the already disreputable office of PM.

Posted by kb | May 10, 2007 1:43 PM

Matt's granddad is right about me. It's true. I was smitten with Tony Blair. I still like him. I can't help myself.

Posted by chris | May 10, 2007 1:54 PM

count me as another that matt's granddad diagnoses correctly.

The thing about it is: it was evident to me from day one that Bush wanted to invade Iraq for a variety of ulterior motives. Primarily psychological, i.e. his massive inferiority complex for being such a wimp and a perennial loser in comparison to his dad. Maybe secondarily the lust for power, desire to be a 'war president' etc. Maybe third on the list an oil-grab. But mostly the guy just always radiated the fact that he was a wimpy loser with a chip on his shoulder, who wanted to do one better than his dad.

So does that mean I was opposed to the Iraq war? No; I did not oppose it. Because, even if you are stuck with an impotent loser as president, your country still has to do something if there is a hostile power that is threatening you with nuclear weapons.

And just because someone has ulterior motives doesn't mean that the other things they are saying are false.

Most firefighters have all kinds of complicated ulterior motives for doing what they do--borderline pyromania in some cases, over-active need to be heroes, adrenaline junkies, etc. But if the fire department knocks and says your house is on fire, you get out, because you even people with ulterior motives can tell the truth.

Still, I had my worries about Bush.

Thing about Blair? He had no discernible ulterior motives. There was nothing in it for him. He had no reason to lie about it

So when he was also saying there was an imminent danger of a fire, well, it looked like there really was one.

yeah, it made a difference in my case.

Posted by metoo | May 10, 2007 3:55 PM

Re: They see him as just this side of a religious crazy

Blair as a religious crazy? Good grief, your British friends need to visit the US and get a good dose of Falwell and Robertson before making that judgement.

Posted by JonF | May 10, 2007 4:13 PM

Why is it so hard for you people to understand why Tony Blair supported the invasion of Iraq? He did so because he thought it was the right policy; also, previous military inventions against similarly evil dictators had been handled at relatively little cost in (British) blood or treasure (e.g., The Balkans, Sierre Leone).

As for the silliness about Dems being duped by "edited" intelligence: you really need to smarten up. Dems on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have oversight responsibility for the intelligence agencies and access to the same level of intelligence as the president.

"...if the Democratic Party is now almost uniformly anti-war, it is also understandable why it can't field a single major presidential candidate who was in Congress when it counted and tried to stop the invasion.

After all, responsible Democrats in national office had been convinced by Bill Clinton for eight years and then George W. Bush for two that Saddam's Iraq was both a conventional and terrorist threat to the United States and its regional allies."

Posted by Fred | May 10, 2007 5:26 PM

Brown's persona is really appealing to me, as opposed to the unberable Blair, but he's been just as terrible on civil liberties, so I can't say I really like him anymore.

He's not that great on public services, either: PFI was his little accounting scheme, and it's going to bite people on the arse. But the superficial bullshit of Blairspeak will largely be gone.

(The News Hour recap shows how Bush Is Bad For Your Health: Blair looks a lot wearier now than he did in in 1999 or 2001.)

Oh, and at least one reason why most people in Britain opposed the war was because Blair was being used by Bush to sell it.

One generally unremarked factor in Iraq is that Britain was the former colonial power-- so that the British were a uniquely bad choice for a major ally in the Iraq war.

And to be honest, most Brits wouldn't have known that until the rush to war began: the inter-war mandates don't stick in the popular memory of colonial holdings.

See, I thought Blair had a Gladstonian streak in him before Bush's election, but it was expressed in controlled expressions of liberal interventionism towards fucked-up small countries. It's hard to be a Gladstonian when you're essentially serving at the behest of a gunboat diplomat.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 10, 2007 6:20 PM

After all, responsible Democrats in national office had been convinced by Bill Clinton for eight years and then George W. Bush for two that Saddam's Iraq was both a conventional and terrorist threat to the United States and its regional allies. - Fred

This is silly. We, alas, have lots of threats to deal with. Does that mean we depose the leadership of every threatening state? Especially if civil war is a predictable result?

Yes. Even many Dems. believed that Saddam Hussein was a threat. This does not mean that those of us who opposed the war are unhinged moonbats beyond the left edge of acceptable discourse and un-serious about national security. If anything, those who want to traipse from war to war to war, even if it'll weaken rather than strengthan national security, are the ones who are un-serious.

Dems on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have oversight responsibility for the intelligence agencies and access to the same level of intelligence as the president.

IIRC, this statement is demonstratively false -- in fact, they did not have the same access. Whether they ought to have had the access is a different quesiton, but the admin was hiding things from Congress, especially the Dems. therein.

Posted by DAS | May 10, 2007 6:29 PM

Everyone regardless of party who glommed onto Saddam's Cabinet of Doom for whatever their reason was a fool and responsible for mass counts of negligent homicide. "Responsible" my ass.

Posted by Ed Marshall | May 10, 2007 6:52 PM

"Blair as a religious crazy? Good grief, your British friends need to visit the US and get a good dose of Falwell and Robertson before making that judgement."

Why ? By British standards he is nearly off the scale as far as religious politicians go.

The presumption is that's why his support of the iraq war happened. He was so morally certain that was he was doing was right that mere evidence could be discounted if it disagreed with him.

Generally the UK electorate prefer politicians who are or pretend to be cheerfully agnostic or 'social' christians who pitch up at church on sundays but have enough sense to realise that their private beliefs are no basis on which to run a country.

Which is why even though brown's father was a minister of the church of scotland he's been very careful never to let slip what his own views on the whole god bothering side actually are.

Posted by kb | May 10, 2007 7:33 PM

"I'll just return to my token stolen-from-my-grandfather point about Blair, namely that he was more significant in selling the Iraq War in the United States than is commonly recognized."

I think this is the essential legacy of the scumbag Blair; without the credibility he provided, the fiasco either would not have gotten off the ground or assuredly would have had a much shorter duration. He is really an absolutely cynical and evil excuse for a human being...in many ways worse than the zero in the White House.

Posted by della Rovere | May 10, 2007 11:28 PM

I'm baffled that Matt seems to claim that the main factor in Tony Blair's influence over Americans was that he was widely considered to have better information. I felt like his sense of moral purpose, his willingness to engage with opponents, and the fact that he came from a different part of the political spectrum from Bush, were the things that lent him extra credibility. All of the Speshul Sekrit Information he hinted at having (which never seemed to amount to anything) was rationally no more than an argument for getting the weapons inspectors back in to get *real* intelligence.

Posted by william | May 11, 2007 1:54 AM

I'm sure this quasi-argument will (or would, if enough people had at it) die of a thousand cuts, but: I think the reason Blair's support for Bush on Iraq mattered was because, to a lot of "centrist Democrats" and/or "liberal hawks", Blair was almost a stand-in for Clinton...never mind whether Clinton and Blair were "real" Third Way guys, I just think a lot of people remembered the promise that used to seem so great every time they saw Bill & Tony together.

FWIW, I also think Blair went into this Iraq thing knowing it would eventually destroy his legacy, but thinking - wrongly - that the special relationship (which I, for one, TOTALLY endorse) required it.

Posted by El Caballo de Sangre | May 11, 2007 1:58 AM