Why Blair will never say sorry

Hopes for repentance or punishment from the Chilcot Inquiry will be frustrated: Blair is deluded and the I

By Lucy Snow

I woke up with good intentions last Friday morning - Blair appearing at the Chilcot Inquiry, 10 o’clock; but four hours later, I had to give up. Where was this going? This inquiry is a PR exercise that seeks the intangible goals of ‘learning lessons’ and ‘improving processes.’

We know what happened, and we know that there is no way Blair could be held accountable for ‘war crimes’ under the legal definition, yet the public seem to be waiting for some admission of guilt, some sense of closure that seems unlikely to arrive.
What we can draw from Blair’s appearance is that he is the only person in Britain who does not seek this closure. Those hoping for an emotive apology, some sense of regret, must have been bitterly disappointed. The public have overlooked the fact that from 9/11 onwards, Blair switched from adoration-seeking spinner-in-chief to a ‘Conviction Politician.’ He is not a malicious war-mongering demon, but a zealot, so sure he was doing the right thing that mere facts must not stand in his way. Throughout the Hutton Inquiry, and with his remorseless transparency hitting its peak last week, Blair and Campbell have barely concealed their stretching of the facts during that September. If the charge is fitting the ‘evidence’ to the policy, rather than the other way round, they came close to admitting guilt. Although loath to use the term ‘sexed up,’ and technically cleared of blatant lying, we can safely assume that there was embellishment to serve a policy that was probably decided on September 12th 2001, as Blair rushed to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Bush. He must have been the least surprised person in Britain when no weapons were found, having spent months elaborating on what was little more than second hand whispers from a Baghdad taxi driver.
Weapons of mass destruction were a convenient excuse for Blair’s real agenda- unconditional support for America’s determination to rid the world of Saddam, a former friend of the West (we supplied the arms he fought Iran with), who was now out of control. Therefore his main line of defence is the ‘2010 question,’ the ‘what ifs’ of Saddam Hussein remaining in power. Many, including weapons inspector Hans Blix, think he would have been contained or, more likely, have been overthrown by his own people. Pity we can’t ask the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died since 2003.
Blair’s six-hour appearance before the Inquiry has exposed two things, neither of which will satisfy the public. Firstly, Blair was and always will be a believer in interventionist foreign policy. And arguably, following his work in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, why wouldn’t he be? Before Iraq, he was hailed as a hero for his democratizing tendencies. He has always seen delivering liberal democracy as an antidote to extremism, and it is this perception of the world that has left him so convinced of his own rightness, so indifferent to a national need for repentance.
Secondly, Blair divulged his own weakness in negotiating with America. He admitted that he had talked to Bush about the Palestinian peace process, encouraged him to cease co-operation with Israel in order to improve relations with the region, and yet he failed to utilise his chief bargaining tool by committing military aid at such an early stage. Blair was left ‘disappointed’ by Bush’s reluctance to act on his wishes. The one positive thing that could have come out of the invasion of Iraq – namely America finally committing to peace in the Middle East – was lost within weeks.
Unfortunately, Chilcot is not looking to condemn anyone, and the public will ultimately be unsatisfied. It is naive to expect some sort of repentance for ‘bending the rules’ when Blair staunchly believes that he had to make a decision based on what he thought was right, the facts relegated to an inconvenience and off-loaded onto ‘king of spin’ Campbell. Perhaps rather than pouring money into inquiries that will only be celebrated if they manage to extract the impossible apology of a self-styled crusader for righteousness, we should concentrate our efforts on repairing the damage that his convictions have caused.