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What Tony Blair could have been

Blair's decade in office was marked by many successes and demonstrated brilliant political stewardship. But, in the end, his meteoric political career has ended in defeat and scorn. Call it Saddam's curse.

The silver-tongued Blair transformed the demoralised, Marxist dominated Labour movement he inherited into a forward-thinking, business-friendly party. Blair purged Labour of lingering Marxist-Socialist influences and replaced the sullen old guard with young technocrats.

Blair's ‘New' Labour' benefited from a powerful economic upswing generated by the highly successful reforms initiated by former Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Blair took advantage of this windfall, transforming Britain into one of Europe's most dynamic and envied economies. Equally important, Blair deserves credit, as he put it, for making Britain ‘at ease with globalisation' and ‘comfortable in the 21st Century.'

In the process, Blair raised Britain's living standards and employment, making it a magnet for massive foreign investment and entrepreneurial Europeans. Blair's government helped rescue Sierra Leone from anarchy, the Albanians of Kosovo from Serb ethnic terrorism, and even seemingly resolved Northern Ireland's troubles.

Many admiring North Americans wished their own inarticulate leaders possessed even a dash of Blair's charisma, earnestness, and eloquence. In Europe, the youthful Blair was feted as a modern statesman who was showing the humane ‘middle way' to national prosperity while maintaining a network of social safeguards.

Had Tony Blair quit office on 10 September, 2001, he would today be remembered and feted as one of Britain's finest prime ministers. But then came Blair's undoing, his fatal attraction to President George Bush's war policies.

Historians will endlessly debate what impelled the sensible, intelligent Blair to enlist as first mate on Bush's political Titanic. Blair had none of the arrogance and ignorance that led Bush and his Conservative Republicans into war. Unlike Americans, who were gravely misled about the Mideast by their media and pro-Israel special interest groups, the worldly British knew precisely what was going on.

Yet Blair ended up as a promoter for the Bush Administration's grotesque lies about Iraq. He facilitated the Bush/Cheney war by providing Washington with credibility, diplomatic cover, and the pretense of a ‘coalition.'

Britain, as America's premier ally, naturally felt pressure to join the war. But a true friend warns when you are about to drive over a cliff. Blair did not. Instead, he encouraged Bush and Cheney's worst crusading instincts, validated their misconceptions and prejudices, and threw British troops into failed neo-colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By joining these wars, Blair enflamed the Muslim World against Britain and aroused violent reactions among a tiny minority of Britain's 1.6 million Muslim citizens. In response, Blair curtailed sacrosanct British civil liberties and brought its esteemed legal system into question.

In the end, Blair had almost no influence over the Bush Administration. He was cruelly derided everywhere as America's ‘poodle' and a sort of Jeeves the British butler in the imperial White House. Blair's formerly brilliant reputation was destroyed by Iraq. Saddam's curse had struck once again.

A majority of Britons opposed the Iraq war and resented being seen as dutiful spear-carriers for America's nuclear knights. As Labour's popularity plummeted, a party rebellion forced Blair to announce he would resign and make way for Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

The Iraq debacle, and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, have become a curse for all politicians involved. Iraq is destroying Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party. It has ruined Blair, and may undo two other Bush protégés, Australia's increasingly unpopular PM John Howard, and Canada's conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper.

Blair could have backed away from the Iraq disaster, but refused to abandon ship and kept insisting to the bitter end his faith-based policies were still right. This master of oratory could not, it seems, summon up the simple phrase, ‘I was wrong.'

It's tragic watching a brilliant political leader destroyed by a totally unnecessary, dishonest war. Tony Blair met his Waterloo in Iraq. He will not be the last.

Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun.