Let me put in a word for Anthony Blair. I despise the Blair creature so much that words long ago failed me, and I have even run out of scornful facial expressions and rude noises to use when his name is mentioned.
I long for the day when the mystery of his rise to the highest office in British politics can be documented and explained, with all the culprits exposed.
But this week I must rally to his defence. It has now become fashionable to deride him (which it certainly wasn’t in the old days) and he got a nasty reception when he was given some award at a London dinner.
Yet the people who despise him mostly continue to support the policies that destroyed him – the babyish, grandiose warmongering and demands to impose ‘democracy’ on all corners of the world.
What a burden it is these days to be well informed, well travelled and to know a little history.
It is almost physically painful to listen to our political leaders as they jut their chins, do their Churchill imitations, and march towards yet another disaster.
And it is nearly as bad to listen to weighty commentators demanding that other people’s sons, brothers and fathers go to war.
It is even worse to watch chirpy, dim TV war reporters exulting on screen at the latest fashionable insurgency and chumming up with gangs of smiling murderers, whose cause we have thoughtlessly chosen to back.
I ask all these people to see if they can arrange a weekend break in Libya, the country they ‘liberated’ a couple of years ago. The Tripoli airport, alas, long ago closed and seems to have been burned down.
But perhaps they can hitch a ride on one of the pirate boats that criss-cross the Mediterranean, bringing uncontrollable legions of migrants to Italy, bound for Calais.
That filthy business, too, is the fault of our Prime Minister and those who supported his Libya adventure. Gaddafi, whose murder by brigands caused Hillary Clinton to cackle, prevented that.
The disturbing scenes at Calais, as migrants battle to board British-bound ships, are David Cameron’s direct responsibility, and the responsibility of all those who uncritically backed his adventure. We hear quite a lot about the horrors of the Islamic State, and rightly so. Brave reporters have ventured into the zones where it is taking power, though it may soon be unwise for them to do so.
But nobody goes to Libya, now a cauldron of blood and screams where no sane person will venture, a horror caused entirely by us.
And I read very little from Donetsk and Lugansk, the Ukrainian cities which have for months been indiscriminately shelled by the Kiev junta whose violent, lawless seizure of power we so stupidly backed last winter.
The Kiev regime has been ‘killing its own people’ in their hundreds, and sad columns of refugees are fleeing from its guns and rockets, and from the cruel ultra-nationalist militias which fight alongside it.
But the sort of people who normally complain about such horrors, and demand the overthrow of those who do them, are silent.
They prefer to say lofty and noble things about wicked Vladimir Putin and the nasty Russians – who did not start this war and who warned for years that they had had enough of EU and Nato expansion into neutral territory.
No doubt, if Mr Blair had not gone off to spend more time with his money, he would be taking all the same wrong sides as Mr Cameron is taking now. But so are most of the people who now affect to despise Mr Blair.
It’s no good damning the man, and continuing to support the policies.
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