Blah Blah Blah.
Tony Blair is just a big sheep following his Shepherd.
Or maybe, pompous ass would be a better description.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/8/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greenwald writes: "Tony Blair today took a little time off from serving the
world's despots in order to exploit the 10th anniversary of the July 7
London train bombing. He did so by casting blame on 'radical Islam' for the
world's violence while exempting himself."
Tony Blair. (photo: Getty Images)
Tony Blair and the Self-Exalting Mindset of the West: In Two Paragraphs
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
07 July 15
Tony Blair today took a little time off from serving the world's despots in
order to exploit the 10th anniversary of the July 7 London train bombing.
He
did so by casting blame on "radical Islam" for the world's violence while
exempting himself, pronouncing:
This is a global problem . we're not going to allow anyone to excuse
themselves by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is
somehow a response to any decision by any government.
The proposition Blair just decreed invalid - "the slaughter of totally
innocent people is somehow a response to any decision by any government" -
is exactly the rationale that he himself repeatedly invoked, and to this
day
still invokes, to justify the invasion and destruction of Iraq, as in this
example from December 2009:
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of
weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war
to
parliament and the public. . . . "If you had known then that there were no
WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would
still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]". . . . He
explained it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region" because
Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
"Excusing the slaughter of totally innocent people" - whether in Fallujah
or
Gaza or Yemen - is a staple of Western elite discourse to justify the
militarism of the U.S., the U.K. and their most special allies. It only
suddenly becomes inexcusable when carried out by Muslims against the West.
It is a stunning testament to Western self-delusion that one of the prime
architects and salesmen of the most destructive political crime of this
generation - the invasion of Iraq - can stand up with a straight face and
to
applause and declare: "we're not going to allow anyone to excuse themselves
by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is somehow a
response to any decision by any government."
There will undoubtedly be all sorts of self-loving jingoists in the West,
along with those whose overriding political priority is the demonization of
Islam, who will find this comparison invalid and even obscene. After all,
their own governments' violence, aggression and slaughter of innocents is
kind-hearted, civilized and justified, whereas the violence, aggression and
slaughter of innocents by Muslims is savage and barbaric. But that's
precisely the point.
While the leading lights of the West love to celebrate themselves as
beacons
of civilized, progressive rationality, their overriding mentality is just
the crassest and most primitive form of tribalism: when Our Side does it,
it
is right, and when Their Side does it, it is wrong. No matter the esoteric
finery in which it drapes itself, that is the primitive, banal formulation
that lies at the heart of the vast, vast majority of foreign policy
discourse in the West. So often, those who fancy themselves brave warriors
for rationality and advancement by demonizing Islam are just rank
tribalists
whose own national, religious and cultural loyalties are served by doing
so.
One last point while we're on this topic: the notion that radical Muslims
commit violence in response to violence by the West is often characterized
as an attempt to deny that they possess agency or autonomy. That claim is
just bizarre, the opposite of the truth. Those who deny that Muslims act
with agency are, in fact, those who try to claim that they are manipulated
by religious dogma into committing violence without any rationale or
purpose. To point out that there's an actual, rational causal relationship
between their violence and the West's - to acknowledge that they choose
violence as a calculated course of action they believe to be justified just
as the West does - is not a denial of their agency, but rather an
affirmation of it.
This causal relationship is the point that Tony Blair and his like-minded
comrades are, above all else, most desperate to deny. Blair thus expressly
denies that the July 7 bombing in London was largely motivated by his war
in
Iraq even though his own government's secret report reached exactly that
conclusion; a Pentagon-commissioned report years ago acknowledged the same
causal motive for "terrorism" generally. They're desperate to deny this
causation because to recognize it is necessarily to acknowledge that their
professed moral superiority is the ultimate delusion, that they in fact are
the embodiment of what they love to hear themselves condemning.
It's always comforting to believe that one's own tribe is morally superior
yet perpetually victimized, so it's an easy sell. But as Blair's remarkably
self-unaware comments today illustrate, this mentality centrally depends
upon a steadfast commitment to blinding oneself to one's own actions and
failings. Nobody is more resolute in that commitment than Tony Blair.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Tony Blair. (photo: Getty Images)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/07/tony-blair-self-exalting-minds
et-west-two-paragraphshttps://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/07/tony-bla
ir-self-exalting-mindset-west-two-paragraphs
Tony Blair and the Self-Exalting Mindset of the West: In Two Paragraphs
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
07 July 15
ony Blair today took a little time off from serving the world's despots in
order to exploit the 10th anniversary of the July 7 London train bombing.
He
did so by casting blame on "radical Islam" for the world's violence while
exempting himself, pronouncing:
This is a global problem . we're not going to allow anyone to excuse
themselves by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is
somehow a response to any decision by any government.
The proposition Blair just decreed invalid - "the slaughter of totally
innocent people is somehow a response to any decision by any government" -
is exactly the rationale that he himself repeatedly invoked, and to this
day
still invokes, to justify the invasion and destruction of Iraq, as in this
example from December 2009:
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of
weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war
to
parliament and the public. . . . "If you had known then that there were no
WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would
still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]". . . . He
explained it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region" because
Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
"Excusing the slaughter of totally innocent people" - whether in Fallujah
or
Gaza or Yemen - is a staple of Western elite discourse to justify the
militarism of the U.S., the U.K. and their most special allies. It only
suddenly becomes inexcusable when carried out by Muslims against the West.
It is a stunning testament to Western self-delusion that one of the prime
architects and salesmen of the most destructive political crime of this
generation - the invasion of Iraq - can stand up with a straight face and
to
applause and declare: "we're not going to allow anyone to excuse themselves
by saying that the slaughter of totally innocent people is somehow a
response to any decision by any government."
There will undoubtedly be all sorts of self-loving jingoists in the West,
along with those whose overriding political priority is the demonization of
Islam, who will find this comparison invalid and even obscene. After all,
their own governments' violence, aggression and slaughter of innocents is
kind-hearted, civilized and justified, whereas the violence, aggression and
slaughter of innocents by Muslims is savage and barbaric. But that's
precisely the point.
While the leading lights of the West love to celebrate themselves as
beacons
of civilized, progressive rationality, their overriding mentality is just
the crassest and most primitive form of tribalism: when Our Side does it,
it
is right, and when Their Side does it, it is wrong. No matter the esoteric
finery in which it drapes itself, that is the primitive, banal formulation
that lies at the heart of the vast, vast majority of foreign policy
discourse in the West. So often, those who fancy themselves brave warriors
for rationality and advancement by demonizing Islam are just rank
tribalists
whose own national, religious and cultural loyalties are served by doing
so.
One last point while we're on this topic: the notion that radical Muslims
commit violence in response to violence by the West is often characterized
as an attempt to deny that they possess agency or autonomy. That claim is
just bizarre, the opposite of the truth. Those who deny that Muslims act
with agency are, in fact, those who try to claim that they are manipulated
by religious dogma into committing violence without any rationale or
purpose. To point out that there's an actual, rational causal relationship
between their violence and the West's - to acknowledge that they choose
violence as a calculated course of action they believe to be justified just
as the West does - is not a denial of their agency, but rather an
affirmation of it.
This causal relationship is the point that Tony Blair and his like-minded
comrades are, above all else, most desperate to deny. Blair thus expressly
denies that the July 7 bombing in London was largely motivated by his war
in
Iraq even though his own government's secret report reached exactly that
conclusion; a Pentagon-commissioned report years ago acknowledged the same
causal motive for "terrorism" generally. They're desperate to deny this
causation because to recognize it is necessarily to acknowledge that their
professed moral superiority is the ultimate delusion, that they in fact are
the embodiment of what they love to hear themselves condemning.
It's always comforting to believe that one's own tribe is morally superior
yet perpetually victimized, so it's an easy sell. But as Blair's remarkably
self-unaware comments today illustrate, this mentality centrally depends
upon a steadfast commitment to blinding oneself to one's own actions and
failings. Nobody is more resolute in that commitment than Tony Blair.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
