A novel sensation of feeling sorry for Tony Blair

BY JOE BENNETT

OPINION: This week I felt sorry for Tony Blair. It was a novel feeling.

When Mr Blair took office in 1997, he was young, trim, dapper and his grin was as wide as the Thames. He had made it to the top and here was his chance to write his name into history.

But when he appeared this week before the Iraq inquiry, he looked gaunt and grey, as though he were being eaten from the inside. Time has not been kind to him.

Time is like a longline being hauled aboard, and you and I enjoy leaning over the side of the ship to see what will emerge next from the green mysterious waters. Oh look, another earthquake, a coup, an exciting new war.

But those who seek high office are not content to spectate. They want to affect those events so that, when the future has become the past, the coils and loops of line now lying on the deck will spell out their own name.

The decision for which Mr Blair will be remembered is invading Iraq. There was a good case to be made for the invasion.

Saddam Hussein terrorised, tortured and killed people. He would die one day, but he had groomed his sons to carry on in the same style and they looked like being good at it. There would be no relief for Iraqis unless someone came in from outside with big guns.

But any invasion is fraught with consequences, few of which are foreseeable. Previous American administrations had baulked at entering Iraq for just this reason. But September 11, 2001, altered everything. Saddam had played no part in 9/11, but the mood of the United States had changed. It wanted to bash someone up. And Mr Blair said Britain would join in.

The biggest crowd in British history gathered to protest against the decision. And both sides predicted what would happen down the line.

Opponents saw a rerun of Vietnam, troops stationed in Iraq for indeterminate years to come, the further embitterment of the Islamic world, and al Qaeda recruiting suicidists faster than it could source gelignite to dress them in.

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Supporters saw the end of a tyranny, the advent of peace, the establishment of a stable pro-Western democracy in a region that's a bit short on them, and lots of cheap oil, although they never admitted the last of these.

Both sides were partly right. Seven long years later, Saddam and his sons are dead, things are better for the oppressed and the oil is flowing.

But the troops are still there, terrorism is alive and well, there are still bombs going off in Baghdad, and the Iraqi Government doesn't yet look capable of running the country.

In other words, the present, unlike the glittering dream of the future, or the orderly arrangement of the past, is a mess. As always.

Mr Blair sold the war on the grounds that Saddam had weapons that threatened the West. As it turned out, Saddam didn't. Many critics suggested that these weapons were a mere pretext.

And in a recent television interview, Mr Blair seemed to imply just that. He was asked whether, if he had known that there were no such weapons, he would still have invaded. He replied, "I would still have thought it right to remove him, but obviously you would have to deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

At the inquiry these words were quoted back to Mr Blair. His response was extraordinary. According to him, they illustrated only that, despite his vast experience of giving interviews, he still had something to learn. In other words, he'd expressed himself poorly, he'd departed from the script, he'd gone off-message.

I doubt whether he now knows whether he actually believed that Saddam had those weapons. All he knows is the message that he told at the time, the simplified version of an endlessly complex situation. Such simplification had been his way of getting what he wanted. And what he wanted was to be seen as the great liberator, to do a good and bold thing. To be a historical figure.

And now it's chewing him up. There's nothing new in this. Most of Shakespeare's tragedies are versions of the same story. Ambition has a habit of returning to plague the inventor.

And just as I do for even Shakespeare's most monstrous tragic heroes, I feel some pity for Tony Blair. Power screws you up.

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