The NYT somewhat misrepresents Tony Blair’s speech to his party conference yesterday, arguing in a headline that the prime minister had offered a partial apology for deposing Saddam. He didn’t. He merely said that he took responsibility for the wrong information that led to the invasion. It was more eloquent and more candid than anything Bush has said. And precisely because it was so candid his defense of the war – now – is more persuasive. He sticks to his view that we are indeed in a global war against Jihadist fanatics who are intent on our obliteration:
If you take [this]view, you don’t believe the terrorists are in Iraq to liberate it. They’re not protesting about the rights of women – what, the same people who stopped Afghan girls going to school, made women wear the Burka and beat them in the streets of Kabul, who now assassinate women just for daring to register to vote in Afghanistan’s first ever democratic ballot, though four million have done so? They are not provoked by our actions; but by our existence. They are in Iraq for the very reason we should be. They have chosen this battleground because they know success for us in Iraq is not success for America or Britain or even Iraq itself but for the values and way of life that democracy represents. They know that. That’s why they are there. That is why we should be there and whatever disagreements we have had, should unite in our determination to stand by the Iraqi people until the job is done.
A-frigging-men. Yes, I’ve been alarmed at the gross mismanagement of the war; and I do not believe it helps our effort to minimize or ignore it. But Blair reminds us why this current struggle in Iraq is indeed a critical struggle in the war. The reason, I think, that George W. Bush is now ahead is simply because he reminded people in New York City that this is indeed the struggle; and because people don’t believe Kerry has the will and steadiness to win it. To put it bluntly, I don’t believe Iraq is a “diversion” from the war on terror; I believe it’s the central front. If you share this view, Blair’s view, it’s extremely hard to support Kerry.
THE UN-KERRY: And Blair’s indirect rebuff to the senator from Massachusetts is clear enough. Here it is:
When I hear people say: “I want the old Tony Blair back, the one who cares”, I tell you something. I don’t think as a human being, as a family man, I’ve changed at all. But I have changed as a leader. I have come to realise that caring in politics isn’t really about “caring”. It’s about doing what you think is right and sticking to it. So I do not minimise whatever differences some of you have with me over Iraq and the only healing can come from understanding that the decision, whether agreed with or not, was taken because I believe, genuinely, Britain’s future security depends on it. There has been no third way, this time. Believe me, I’ve looked for it.
To all those on the left who seem to have forgotten that in this war against Islamo-fascism there is indeed no third way, take a look at Blair’s speech. Social justice means nothing if we are obliterated by a dirty bomb, nothing if we see our freedoms destroyed by an Islamic religious right with WMDs. And it is obscene for some people who claim to believe in progressive ideas to be finding indirect solace from the acts of Jihadist thugs. Hitch is dead-on in this respect. Bush deserves to be scolded for his arrogance, his divisiveness, and his incompetence. But not for his fundamental judgment about the world we live in. There, he’s right. And Kerry’s wrong. And that, in the end, may be all that matters.
The Dish 