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Tony blair knighthood3/2/2023 "The 2003 war against Iraq was a crime against humanity - therefore Blair should be tried instead of getting rewarded," he said. Jabir told MEE that virtually the entire political establishment in the UK and US now accepted that the war had been wrong and that the damage caused in "wasted" lives had been incalculable. Meanwhile, 56 percent of Labour Party voters also disapproved. He said the legal document was not burned, but eventually locked away in a Ministry of Defence safe and is "probably still there."Ī poll released by the British polling agency YouGov on Tuesday suggested the UK public was overwhelmingly opposed to the former premier being knighted.Īccording to the poll, 62 percent of the public either "tend to" or "strongly" disapprove of Blair receiving the honour, with only 14 percent in favour. “Moreover, when my principal private secretary, Peter Watkins, called Jonathan Powell in Downing St and asked what he should now do with the document, he was told in no uncertain terms that he should ‘burn it’.” “It was not exactly the ringing endorsement that the chief of the defence staff was looking for, and in any event, I was not strictly allowed to show it to him or even discuss it with him,” wrote Hoon. The new revelations by Hoon, which come from his recently published memoirs, suggest that a "very long and very detailed legal opinion” from Attorney General Peter Goldsmith indicated that the invasion was on shaky legal ground. 'The 2003 war against Iraq was a crime against humanity - therefore Blair should be tried instead of getting rewarded'Īlthough Blair was leader of the Labour Party through three UK election victories, his reputation since leaving office has slumped heavily and continued scrutiny has been poured on the justification for the war. Kamal Jabir, a politician with the Civil Democratic Alliance, and a former freedom fighter against Saddam Hussein in the 80s and 90s, said: "With millions of caring world citizens l stood firm in objecting the 2003 war against Iraq - I was hoping that Tony Blair as one of the young leaders of the Labour Party would have the courage and the wisdom not to follow George Bush’s wrong decision to invade Iraq using false and fabricated intelligence to justify an ugly and unfair war that paved the way to the rise of the present corrupt and Islamic extremist parties and gangs in Iraq." Speaking to ITV, Starmer said he understood many held "strong views" about the Iraq war, but said that this did "not detract from the fact that Tony Blair was a very successful prime minister of this country and made a huge difference to the lives of millions of people in this country.”īut for Iraqis, and many others across the globe, the 2003 invasion has come to be seen as an outrage. On Tuesday, Blair's successor as Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, said that the former prime minister "deserves" to be knighted and cited a number of domestic reforms he introduced during his time in office, 1997-2007. "It's horrendous news to be honest," he said. The actions of British forces in Basra have repeatedly come in for criticism with claims of willful killings, detainee abuse, and what the International Criminal Court has deemed "credible allegations of torture and rape".Īpart from the initial violence, many have argued that the subsequent chaos provoked by the invasion led to the rise of the Islamic State group, who capture vast swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and have launched terror attacks around the world that have led to thousands of deaths.Īli al-Baroodi, a teacher and campaigner in the former IS stronghold of Mosul - which was obliterated in 2017 in a foreign-backed campaign to defeat the militant group - told MEE that honouring Blair was "disgusting" referring to him as "B-Liar" as many anti-war campaigners have done. Sakini, whose Sairoun party won the largest number of seats in Iraq's parliamentary elections last October, said giving Blair the title was effectively " honouring the violation" that was the Iraq war. "Especially for Tony Blair, who participated in the occupation of Iraq and was a major reason for wasting the resources of this country."
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