Blair's book hits a nerve in Arab world
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - "Once a Bush stooge, always a Bush stooge ..."
This was the repeated comment typed in Arabic at the bottom of articles that
surfaced in the Arab online world last weekend regarding Tony Blair's new book, A
Journey: My Political Life. The book has reminded many Arabs of how
much they disliked the former British premier.
Most had been glad to see him and his close ally US president George W Bush
begin their long march into history, believing they had left behind failed and
crumbling states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and Lebanon.
But speaking to ABC's Christiane Amanpour on Sunday, Blair
sounded unapologetic, "If we hadn't taken out Saddam [Hussein in Iraq], there
would still have been consequences." He added, "You cannot but have regrets
about the lives lost. I mean you would be inhuman if you didn't regret the
death of so many extraordinary, brave and committed soldiers, of civilians that
have died in Iraq, or die still now in Afghanistan."
He then praised his friend and ally, Bush, whose own memoirs are due for
release in November, claiming that he had showed "decisive leadership" in the
years following the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001.
When heading off to a book signing in Dublin on September 4, Blair was
confronted by 200 anti-war protesters carrying signs that said, “butcher". Four
of them threw eggs at the ex-prime minister and were swiftly arrested. One
citizen even walked up to him and filed for a citizen's arrest for his role in
the war on Iraq, forcing police to remove her from Eason's bookshop in Dublin's
O'Connell Street. Similar protests are expected on Wednesday when Blair signs
his book at Waterstone's Bookshop at Piccadilly Square in London.
I will never forget being in London in November 2001 while Blair was visiting
Damascus. Newsstands scattered all over Oxford Street carried front-page
headlines along the lines of "Blair gets dressed down in Damascus".
The previous day, Blair had reminded his countrymen that whenever in doubt
about the British campaign in Afghanistan, all they should do is "remember
those who died in America on September 11". Those words had a negative effect
on Syrians in particular and Arabs in general, who pointed to the scores of
Palestinians dying in the West Bank, while the Palestinian uprising, the
intifada, was entering its second month. How can you lament the loss of life in
one country, Arab dailies were asking, while turning a blind eye to a massive
death toll in another?
A few days earlier, a man had walked up to me in downtown London, seeing that I
was speaking Arabic, and barked: "Are you here to kill? Do you want to kill
some more?" Those were difficult times indeed for Arabs and Muslims in general.
Plenty of bad blood had been in the air in the weeks after 9/11, thanks to the
mayhem in Afghanistan, the horrors of September 11, and the war machines of
Blair and Bush.
I felt it in London and clearly Blair had felt it in Damascus. Syria's
President Bashar al-Assad had shattered the prime minister's imagination about
the new world being built after 9/11 by saying: "We cannot accept what we see
every day on our television screens, the killing of innocent civilians. There
are hundreds dying every day."
His words nine years down the road seem to mirror exactly what Blair still
misses, being that many believe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fiascos,
catastrophes of the 21st century.
At the time I drew parallels between Blair's words in 2001 and those of British
premier Winston Churchill when speaking to the Syrians after returning from the
Yalta conference in 1945. Blair seemed to forget that he was not Churchill and
this was not the Great Britain of 50 years ago.
Consecutive British policies in the Middle East, starting with the Sykes-Picot
Agreement of 1916, the Balfour Declaration, and leading up to the 2003 war on
Iraq, had all shattered Great Britain's respect in the eyes of the Arabs. The
Arabs betted on Blair to help influence Middle East peace during his years in
power, but he ultimately failed.
They bet on him again after leaving office, in his new capacity as head of the
Middle East quartet, top diplomats from the United States, the United Nations
and the European Union involved in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There, he has also failed to bring about any peace deal, regardless of whether
the current talks in Washington lead to any breakthroughs, which is very
unlikely, given the pro-settlement policies of the Benjamin Netanyahu
government.
And now, adding insult to injury, he releases an autobiography that basically
says: If the clock were to go back, I would do Iraq all over again.
No wonder the Arab press is full of criticism of Blair's book, although it is
yet to be translated into Arabic and hit bookstores in the Arab world. Leaks
from the autobiography have been enough to remind Arabs of the kind of
administrations over which Blair and Bush presided, especially when he writes
that former US vice president Dick Cheney had placed Damascus on his hit list,
with the implicit backing of his boss at the White House and their ally at 10
Downing Street. Blair wrote, "He [Cheney] would have worked through the whole
lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it -
Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. In other words, he thought the whole world had to be
made anew, and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with
urgency."
Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.
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