Still spinning after all these years

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In his response to the Chilcot report, Blair said “I say to right-minded people: ‘Go and read the reports and tell me you wouldn’t have made the decisions I made’”.  It’s a clear statement going right to the heart of the problem.  Its whole meaning turns on an understanding of who or what are ‘right-minded people’.

The phrase is clearly intended to convey the idea of ‘most people’ or ‘a majority’, but in this case, it seems to mean little more than people who share Blair’s world view.  In essence the statement reduces to “those who agree with me agree with me, and those who don’t are simply wrong”.  Apologetic it is not.  It underlines the way in which he seemed incapable at the time, and still seems incapable today, of conceiving of the possibility that anybody wouldn’t share his world view.  It was that unshakeable conviction that he was right and anyone who disagreed was wrong that led the UK into war; and it doesn’t matter how many enquiries or reviews are held, people with that mindset will never learn from them.

Fighting fire with fire rarely works

Tweet The gulf between recognising that there is a problem and finding the ‘solution’, can often be immense, and it’s unrealistic to believe that every problem even has a solution.  In the world of politics, though, politicians feel a requirement upon them to claim that there is a solution, that they know what it is, and that they must express such claims with as much sincerity as they can muster.

It’s in that light that I attempt to interpret what Cameron said yesterday about the danger which ISIS represents, and the ‘solutions’ which he proposed.

He talked about the need to ‘enforce’ British values.  I’m far from convinced that I know what these ‘British values’ are, let alone what makes them uniquely British.  But insofar as I have any concept of what those values might be, I’m pretty sure that ‘enforcing’ a set of beliefs and values on others isn’t amongst them.  Indeed, I would have thought that that was more the speciality of ISIS and similar groups.

He also justified his desire to bomb targets in Syria on the basis that ISIS don’t respect borders.  But most borders are where they are – in often arbitrary places – as a result of past wars and/or settlements of past disputes.  ISIS, in that sense are ‘merely’ tearing up past settlements and creating a new state by use of force.  That’s exactly what other military campaigns have done over the centuries – and the UK traditionally has a lengthy, and not exactly honourable, record of doing just that.

Cameron continually talks about ‘the true meaning of Islam’, claiming that those who don’t share a more mainstream interpretation are somehow not true to the religion.  This one simply doesn’t seem to stand up to any scrutiny.  Within any religion, there are always different interpretations of the ‘true’ meaning, and the adherents of each will always believe that their interpretation is the only really ‘true’ one.  And the problem with this sort of ‘truth’ is that it cannot be determined by majority vote.  For those who hold a particular viewpoint, their ‘truth’ is absolute.

The ‘truth’ which drives ISIS and similar groups seems to me to be simply this – “we know what god’s laws are, it is god’s will that we all obey those laws, and we are imposing god’s will”.  It’s so far away from modern Christian interpretations (although not so far away from those of the relatively recent past), let alone the secular viewpoint of an increasing number of us, as to be almost incomprehensible in a western context, but for those who hold that view it’s so obvious as to need no further explanation.

And that brings me to my biggest issue with what Cameron is saying and doing.  However strange and alien some ideas may seem, bombs and bullets cannot change them, let alone kill them.  They can kill some of the people who hold those ideas, certainly.  But they are unlikely to kill them all, even if that were to be the aim.  There is a real danger that they actually have the opposite effect, and simply encourage more people to hold those ideas.  And one of the few certainties is that they will kill many innocents along the way.

I fully accept what Cameron and others are saying, in that armed groups of fundamentalists ranging across the world using extreme and often barbaric violence to impose their world view is a danger which needs to be countered somehow.  And I won’t pretend for a moment that I know with any certainty how to counter that threat.  But I just don’t believe that more bombing and destruction carried out in the name of all of us, simply because our leaders don’t know what else to do, is much of an answer to anything.

Was he right or was he wrong?

Tweet Members of the Labour Party haven’t exactly been rushing to agree with Blair following his comments about the situation in Iraq this week.  And I can imagine that Miliband and chums aren’t exactly best-pleased to hear a voice from the past resurrecting a ghost that they have been trying to lay to rest.

In essence, Blair’s claim, which has astonished many (to put it mildly) is that the latest events in Iraq are in no way a consequence of the war which on which he and Bush so enthusiastically embarked, and that the situation would have been even worse had they not taken the action which they took.  He’s also calling for more resolute action now (a curious position for a ‘peace envoy’ to take, but let’s leave that to one side).

I suspect that history will ultimately judge Blair to have been wrong, even over the long term, but in truth, none of us can know for certain.  The point is that we can never run history twice to see what would have happened if different decisions had been taken.  If the latest events demonstrate anything, it is surely that the whole situation is far more complicated than most of us realise, and it’s extremely difficult to decide who are the good guys deserving of support and who are the bad guys needing to be dealt with.  Indeed, it’s increasingly the case that yesterday’s bad guys are becoming today’s good guys (or perhaps ‘not-so-bad guys’), and alliances are shifting, largely on the basis that our enemy’s enemies are now our friends, whatever we may have said about them yesterday.

What I do know is that it was always less than honest to try and present a very complex situation as a simple case of good vs evil, in the way that Blair and Bush did.  And what concerns me even more is the possibility that they might have genuinely believed that to be the case.  There’s something more than a little dangerous about any politician who has such unshakeable faith in his own rightness that he cannot even conceive of the possibility of being wrong.

The Welsh connection

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The Western Mail reports today on the Welsh connection to the Liam Fox affair, in that one Stephen Crouch is one of those who appears to have been funding Adam Werrity’s little jaunts around the world.  The local MP, Simon Hart, is quoted as describing Mr Crouch as a former chair of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Constituency Association.  The MP’s own website, however, still describes him as chairman as of this morning.  (Better get there quick though – I’d expect that to be changed fairly rapidly!  I'm sure it will be archived somewhere, though.).

(In passing, was I the only one to detect ever such a slight whiff of hypocrisy in Peter Hain’s call for Simon Hart to 'come clean'?  Presumably, just like he himself did over the donations to his ‘think tank’ when he was fighting for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party?)

I’ve referred to Mr Crouch previously.  He was the connection which led a rather colourful oil tycoon (and former mercenary boss) to donate £5,000 to the local Tories.  But he’s not a stranger to controversy himself.

In 1995, there were questions raised about his involvement in lobbying for the easing of sanctions against a certain Saddam Hussein, in order to make it easier for British companies to do business with the regime.  Never let anything get in the way of business, I suppose.  (Or perhaps I'm thinking of the Godfather there)

He was also the subject of some ‘fishing’ questions in the House of Commons about the extent of his own contacts with UK ministers (the last time the Tories were in power, as it happens).  It's the sort of thing that happens when MPs suspect that all isn't quite as it should be, but don't know exactly what they're looking for.  It’s an interesting parallel with the Werrity affair.  (And, like Mr Werrity, he seems to have had the ability to turn up in the right places on occasions.) 

I quite liked this one – a masterpiece of a non-answer if ever there was one:

Mrs. Clwyd: To ask the President of the Board of Trade when Ministers or officials of his Department last met Mr. Stephen Crouch.

Mr. Ian Taylor: Neither Ministers nor officials of this Department have met Mr. Crouch in his capacity as director general of the Iraqi British Interests Group.

There is, as they say, nothing new under the sun.

Following the trail

Tweet On Monday, the Western Mail caught up with the story about an oil tycoon who is also one of the former bosses of a mercenary army giving £5,000 to the Tories in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, on top of the £50,000 he had given to Conservative Central Office.

As quoted, I found the reaction of the local Tories both interesting and inadequate on three counts, and it perhaps deserved the asking of a few further questions.

Firstly, the response by the MP was to say that he didn't know the donor. Well, no, and I agree that he couldn't be expected to know everyone who contributes a few bob to his funds - although £5,000 is hardly a run-of-the-mill donation. The issue, however, isn't whether he knows the donor; it's how the money was made - an issue which both he and his party have simply ducked.

Secondly, they denied that the money was going on election campaigning, saying that "It will be used to meet the day-to-day running costs of the association". So that makes it OK, then, does it?

And thirdly, the money was apparently received through a personal friend of Mr Buckingham, a certain Stephen Crouch, who is a former chair of the constituency association. I sort of wondered what the connection is. According to the MP's website, "Stephen is currently working in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq as an advisor to governmental, non-governmental, and economic institutions". Iraq, of course, is another country where Mr Buckingham's company has major interests and where 'private security firms' are in regular action. It's probably just one of life's little coincidences though.

The quiet man

Tweet Generally, the most effective criticism is not that delivered vituperatively or in anger, but that delivered in calm, quiet, measured tones. Hans Blix gave us a beautiful example yesterday in his evidence to the Iraq enquiry.

His killer line was when he said that he didn't doubt the good faith of Bush and Blair, but "What I question was the good judgement". This was a man who was closer than anyone else to the key question of whether there were or were not WMD in Iraq, and to hear him confirming that he had explicitly and personally warned Blair, before the invasion, that there might be none to be found was extremely damning. It confirms that Blair knew that the 'dodgy dossier' might well not be correct, but chose to ignore any evidence which didn't fit with the view which he and Bush had already formed.

Dr Blix is a Swede of course. His country has a long and honourable tradition of providing men like Dr Blix who will look at the evidence carefully and thoroughly from an objective perspective rather than being bullied into agreeing with the US government. It's the sort of contribution which many of us would like to see Wales making to world affairs, rather than being dragged into illegal wars on someone else's coat-tails. Might isn't right, and long may there be people like Dr Blix to tell us so.

The wages of spin

Tweet I thought that Alastair Campbell performed well during his grilling by the Iraq enquiry; but I wouldn't have expected otherwise. He's a master at his trade, and that came across. The question is, though, how credible is he? All those years as a spinner have destroyed his credibility for many people, even if he's actually telling the truth.

In principle, I've never had an issue with an attempt to present a decision, policy, or whatever in the best possible light. Faced with a 1 litre container which has half a litre of water in it, there's nothing at all wrong with trying to present it as half full rather than half empty (or the other way around, if you're the opposition). But there's a great deal wrong with trying to present it as 'almost full', let alone 'overflowing'. And far too often, the spinners cross the line between selecting the most 'relevant' facts, and presenting them in the best possible light, and inventing 'facts' which support the story that they want to tell.

A strong and confident performance may look good on the news bulletins; but if it's based on untruths, it will eventually fall apart. Given the underlying untruths which seem to have been at the very heart of Blair's decision to go to war, I don't think that any performance on the witness stand, however adept, will salvage Blair's reputation on Iraq.

Ultimately, the wages of spin is disbelief. Making statements which are not credible, or which are later shown to be simply untrue, destroys the credibility of those who make them.