The Culture of Blamelessness
The pronouncements were not true, but nobody lied. The intelligence was flawed, but not the decisions. The justifications were wrong, but the war was justified.
Lord Butler's report into the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was commissioned by the British government in one of many attempts to draw a line under the Iraq war.
The Prime Minister accepted that there were 'mistakes' and took 'full responsibility for them' - but excused himself on the grounds that the 'mistakes' were made 'in good faith'.
Shifting his ground Blair took back the acknowledgement of 'mistakes' saying that 'I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all.'
But the Butler report never did, nor could, have asked whether the intervention in Iraq was a good idea, being restricted to the technical question of the intelligence.
The net effect of Butler's conclusions is to create a looking-glass world. In that looking glass world you can insist that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, then that even though they have not been found they will be, and finally that even if they will never be, all the previous statements were, if not strictly correct, made in 'good faith'.
'Good faith' is a place where you can say things that are not true, and that almost everybody else knows are not true, that you have no evidence for, and still speak truly. True to what? Not true to the facts. True to the inner light of belief. That the government poisoned the well of knowledge is a mere mistake. Their consciences were kept pure.
Prime Minister Blair's warped sense of responsibility is anything but responsibility for his actions. He only accepts responsibility for spots on his soul. But like a Kierkergaardian hero, he has no responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
Rhetorically, Blair's talk is all of responsibility. But you are left asking, when will anyone accept responsibility for what happened? The unction-mill is working over-time. But the construction is always passive - 'mistakes were made'.
When it comes to consequences, Blair shifts from the moral high ground to doublespeak. It was a mistake to say that Saddam Hussein was going to bomb us in 45 minutes. But it was not a mistake to 'get rid of him'.
But '45 minutes' is a mistake with moral consequences: terrifying people to achieve a political goal is itself a destructive act. It creates terror. And as terror ebbs, it creates cynicism. It short circuits' political debate with histrionics, setting difficult precedents for the future.
And 'getting rid of Saddam' might well be a good goal. But the means have consequences, too.
When the world's leading powers visited their internal instability on the Middle East that cost thousands of lives. The military solution was undertaken without any sense of responsibility for its destructive impact upon the region, and upon Iraq in particular.
Authority in Iraq was broken, and reinvented, to suit agendas that were being written in Washington, London - and Paris and Berlin. Instability was visited upon Iraq that had its origin in the West.
Just as much as the superficial belligerence, the underlying nervousness of the coalition has added to Iraq's stability. The ragbag army, dropping in and out of Iraq, offers a bewildering mix of old-fashioned repression and contemporary cowardice. It is the most explosive mix you could imagine. With first Spain and then the Philippines pulling out under pressure, Iraqi insurgents are not surprisingly emboldened.
But none of this conflict is the responsibility of the Prime Minister, who acted in good faith, and accepts full responsibility, but somehow remains blameless.
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