EX-PRIME Minister Blair yesterday, at the Chilcot Inquiry, revealed the imperialistic logic behind the war on Iraq.
He said that after the attack on the Twin Towers it became obvious that a number of regimes would have to be dealt with, and these were Iran, North Korea and Iraq, Bush’s infamous axis of evil formula.
Blair spoke about the transformation in US and UK foreign policy after the attack on September 11, 2001, which had changed the ‘calculus of risk’ for the transatlantic allies.
He agreed that Iran and North Korea posed the greater danger to imperialism, and that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on the Twin Towers or with Al Qaeda.
He said of Saddam: ‘It wasn’t that objectively he had done more . . . it was that our perception of the risk had shifted.’
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The shift in the perception of risk was the driving force for war!
Blair says: ‘The primary consideration for me was to send an absolutely powerful, clear and unremitting message that, after September 11, if you were a regime engaged in wmd, you had to stop.’ This same Blair applies this formula to Iran today.
The fact that all Bush and Blair had was a ‘perception of risk’ did not stop Blair telling MPs in 2003: ‘His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now.’
After 9-11 the agreement was made with Bush that unless Iraq gave up its non-existent wmds there would be war, and the Saddam regime would be removed.
The implication of his line of thinking is that Iran and North Korea would then have to be dealt with, and that Iran is next.
He was opposed to Hans Blix being given more time to discuss with the Iraqi leadership, and to continue with the weapons inspectors inside Iraq, on the grounds that Blix would not be able to handle the Iraqi leadership.
He refused to consider Blix’s remark to him, as to what he would do if 250,000 men invaded Iraq and they could not find a single wmd.
So the US and the UK went to war with Iraq while Blix was urging the Security Council that more time had to be given, and that Saddam was beginning to cooperate, while no traces of wmds had been found, during the inspection of more than 100 sites.
A deeper reason for the attack on Iraq was given by Blair who told the Chilcot inquiry that if Saddam had been allowed to remain, and the war halted, the high oil prices that followed would have made Iraq incredibly rich and that ‘we’ would have lost our nerve as far as attacking it was concerned.
Blair called this approach casting aside the 2003 question and asking the 2010 question, of the allies losing their nerve in the face of a stronger Iraq.
Iraq was taken out because it was the weakest of the anti-imperialist forces at the time, after 13 years of murderous sanctions, and also that because of its vast oil wealth it had the capability to powerfully recover its strength and to threaten imperialist ambitions in the region.
Bush and Blair are the standard Christian imperialist politicians capable of slaughtering millions on the basis of the perception of risk to imperialism, and then saying that the desperate situation that they have created is ‘democracy’ and that they regret nothing.
The Chilcot Inquiry proves just how correct the WRP was in 2003 in supporting Iraq and calling for the defeat of the US-UK imperialist war machine.
There is no doubt that Afghanistan is getting the same treatment and that Iran is next in line for imperialist attack.
The working class of the world must unite against capitalism and imperialism and build sections of the Fourth International to fight for the victory of the world socialist revolution.
