Tony Blair is being pilloried for suggesting he might have prayed for guidance when considering his Iraq war decision:Last night, news of Mr Blair's comments provoked strong reactions. Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Basra in 2004, said she was "quite disgusted" at the comments made by the Prime Minister. The Military Families Against the War campaigner said: "How can he say he is a Christian? A Christian would never put people out there to be killed."It's hard to criticize a mother who's lost her son, but Ms. Gentle's statement is historically without merit. Being a Christian has never implied being a pacifist.
However, while it's quite refreshing to see Mr. Blair is not ashamed of his faith, such comments unfortunately have the potential to do great damage to the UK's GWoT efforts. First, Bin Laden will surely rack those comments into his next tape as evidence that we really ARE crusaders. Second, such a confession might lead folks to believe he's completely run out of reasonable excuses for his decision and has turned to the unimpeachable Almighty as a source of last resort. In other words, he's using God as his 'exit strategy'.
But things don't quite add up. Blair has shown remarkable resolve through his Prime Ministerial career towards Saddam, extending a bipartisan helping hand to two American presidents back through the first Clinton administration. That hardly sounds like the actions of a poll checker. Bailing out on Bush would have been remarkably easy and politically advantageous.
So why did he stay? Some might say it's that fierce loyalty going back to World War II, solidified by 9/11. Others might say he was snookered. There's yet another scenario to consider. Being the head of state of our closest ally, it's possible he was made privy to sensitive information about Saddam not suitable for public ears. If true, perhaps he feels that knowledge, whatever it might be, is better taken to the grave.
1 comment:
Jesus told his followers to "render unto Caesar..", suggesting that he was more interested in the souls of the individual rather than their comliance with local laws and edicts.
Of course that applies to soldiers following orders. Bush and Blair are different. Blair seems to be saying he made his decision based on a "greater good" principle, ie, going to war to save innocents at some later undetermined point. Such a thing is almost impossible to defend, since we can't now know what Saddam might have done had he stayed in power. So he's right, only God can judge him there.
We could make the same analogy based on the events of 1939. Let's say that Chamberlain, DeGaulle and FDR decided to pre-emptively stop Hilter before he invaded Poland, then the operation become bogged down similar to what we have now in Iraq. Would their actions have been mocked as "anti-Christian", even though they might have saved millions of lives in the process?
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