Lordre: Iraq

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US brings its rulebook for losing wars to Ukraine

While many on the pacifist left see Russia as hypocritical, modelling its actions in Ukraine on US aggression against countries like Iraq, it is once again the United States that seems to have brought faulty ideas about war and victory to Ukraine.

What kept causing defeat for the United States in foreign conflicts is not a weakness in its excellent military technology, but the intellectual bankruptcy of American leaders and strategists, many of whom are little more than dullards and thugs. For all their military might, such warriors don't understand what war even is.

Americans seem to regard war as nothing more than a shooting competition, getting overly fixated on acts of killing and talking about who they have killed. This may be because of the gun culture that the lives of most American military enthusiasts revolve around.

Killing the enemy

We saw the the trigger-happy approach on display by American leaders in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the mere deaths of insurgents or even civilians were portrayed as victories in the war. It was also a major weakness in the US strategy in Vietnam, which notoriously focused on body counts. Hence, attrition is always the main American goal in wars, despite there being no obvious end to it. It offers no threshold at which one can actually be calculated to win, or even any guarantee that the conflict will ever end.

American military leaders think war is defined as shooting the enemy, and victory is defined as the enemy being dead. The depth of their military thought goes no deeper than that. There is no thought to what happens next, and even less for any agency on the part of their targets.

Coincidently, I’m celebrating the 27,000 dead Russian soldiers and a bakers dozen dead GENERALS! How embarrassing for you!!#SlavaUkraine https://t.co/6n8F66y4ch
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) May 22, 2022

In the American military mind, if you kill the enemy, and you keep killing the enemy, eventually they will all be dead and the war will be won. It does not matter what anyone is trying to do, or who goes where, as long as the enemy is being shot. Based on the reports bragging about the allegedly killed Russian generals and high Russian casualties, this idea is now being applied by American warmongers to Russian forces in Ukraine, even though Russians are far better equipped and able to defend themselves than other factions the US and its allies failed to defeat when applying the same philosophy.

No-one needs to die

Although it will surprise people who play computer games, making sure enemy soldiers won't go home to their mothers is not in tune with how wars are really won. No-one is keeping a score, and it is very often the loser that manages to achieve more 'kills' before losing (just look up deaths in the American Civil War or World War Two). This is because war is not even about killing anyone.

As Clausewitz famously stated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. And we also cannot forget Sun Tzu’s formulation, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight”. In other words, winning wars is as much to do with not killing people as it is to do with killing them. For Russians to learn that they are being killed by American weapons will not make Russians think they live in a safe world where they do not need to apply military force, and should seek peace.

Imagine if the situation was reversed. This would mean Russia bragging about causing American troop deaths in a war, and expecting America to then withdraw from foreign conflicts and give up on military solutions to threats around the world. Imagine, also, that this foreign conflict is happening just across the border to the mainland United States, and could spill over into American cities or include artillery being fired at such cities, the way the war in Ukraine threatens Russian cities. Would Americans cave in to the pressure, maybe deciding that their military is not very good, and give up?

In fact, needlessly killing an enemy and threatening them with death is not only absolutely irrelevant to waging a war effectively but just complicates the ability to wage it by making the enemy double down, because now they are even more emotionally invested in the conflict and the war is more personal. This approach produces fiercer and more numerous people willing to fight, especially when the war is waged close to home, as the Ukraine war is for Russians.

Understanding how to win a war is all about defining victory, which is actually nothing to do with killing or dying and can be accomplished with no casualties (like Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, which has no parallel in the pointlessly bloodthirsty history of the United States).

Russia brings rulebook for winning

From the start of its intervention, Russia took the opposite view to American warmakers, with no particular interest in how many people it would kill in Ukraine. Even just getting started in what may be a long war, Russia has been just as interested in rebuilding infrastructure as destroying it. The West, on the other hand, tells of Russian brutality and talks up the West's supposedly humanitarian approach to war, but this is drivel. Rebuilding the cities they destroy is something the US and UK never do, and would never do. People in the West are okay with Ukraine becoming a desolated boneyard, as we have no attachment to the country. It isn't our neighbour, we don't know anyone there.

The second reason the US cannot win wars is because it sets no realistic objective, resulting in 'mission creep' as politicians and military leaders continuously imagine how they can hurt their opponent, with no clear idea of where the process ends. This is already a criticism of the US approach to the war in Ukraine.

Defining victory

The objective of wars is to win them, not necessarily to kill anyone. This means putting the opponent at your mercy, whether now or in the future, and then negotiating the end of the war.

The Taliban, through superior endurance, put the American military and the American people at its mercy in Afghanistan and won. It did this not through might, but through endurance: America lost the will to go on, yielding to pressure, while the Taliban did not. It may take a long time, but the side that has the staying power will always win, and the other side will eventually be put at its mercy. Russia has the staying power to stay where Russia and Russians are, and Ukraine is a neighbour of Russia and home to 8 million Russians – more people than the population of Finland. The West's attachment to Ukraine and the need to prop the country's regime up is a recent scheme from 2014 onwards, as fake as our attachment to the cardboard cut-out Afghan regime that collapsed in Kabul.

The United States will lose for the same reason it always loses: disinterest in the people on the ground or the need to win their hearts and minds. The US is involved for its own glory and its need to kill people it sees as bad. US weapons will always kill people, but the end result will not be a favourable political outcome any more than it was in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Former president George W. Bush accidentally stated the truth about his 2003 invasion of Iraq, referring to it as unjustified and brutal.

Rather than taking the chance to suggest that the American regime has changed since its aggression in 2003 (like Bush's fellow Iraq-era war criminal Antony Blinken did), media stories were instead trying to cover for Bush and convince us that this old war was in fact justified. This makes sense, because the same journalistic outlets helped to cause that war, so of course they have a reason to be apologists for the aggression.

Iraq and Ukraine wars incomparable

The Iraq War was much more brutal and lethal than the war in Ukraine, with no concern for mass civilian casualties during US attacks. In the opening days of the US attack on Iraq, American troops murdered far more people than their Russian counterparts did in the same length of time in their attack against Ukraine’s embattled regime.

The Iraq War is also obviously far harder to justify, waged far away from US shores (in contrast to the Russian intervention in the neighbouring state) and against a country that posed no threat, was at peace, and was receiving no foreign instruction and backing to a wage war (contrast Iraq with Ukraine, which was getting huge weapons deliveries specifically to kill Russian troops before the Russian attack).

It would have been a mistake if Bush had said that the Iraq and Ukraine wars are similarly brutal and unjustified. US actions in Iraq were far more brutal and difficult to justify than Russian actions in Ukraine. Again, Iraq was at peace and posed no imminent threat to the US. Ukraine was already at war with local rebels and was being equipped, to loud applause, specifically to pose a threat to Russian troops.

American superiority?

The Iraq invasion is only more justified than the Ukraine invasion if you subscribe to the idea that the US is simply better than other countries, being the indispensable country and thus more morally entitled to take direct action to defend its security than Russia. The people subscribing to this idea think it is great if the US attacks potential small threats thousands of miles away, but also believe Russia must never be allowed to use its military to penetrate across the border to address a far more substantial threat. Even more ridiculously, the proponents also think Russian leaders should base Russian foreign policy on this same idea: the US is indispensable and must never have its security undermined, whereas Russia is dispensable and it is okay for Russians to perish. Any suggestion by any nation that it might care about its own security more than the United States is deplored by the United States, which demands fawning and adoration by the whole world.

The preposterous idea described above is “American exceptionalism”, as famously affirmed by Barack Obama in a West Point speech. There, he said “The United States is the one indispensable nation”.

Others know this dispensable point of view simply as chauvinism and the unexceptional, historically unimaginative craving of each a powerful Western country to gain world domination. The same view was shared by Spain, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Germany, and now the United States. In the case of America, the asserted moral clarity (that America is a "force for good") turns mere exceptionalism into neoconservatism, which became guilty of war crimes, lies, torture and cancer-spreading weapons.

Bush’s gaffe and the media’s attempts to cover for him reveal the vacuous, fake morality governing all the outraged Western responses to the war in Ukraine. The people wanting to punish Russia are not really unnerved by scenes of death or the inhumanity of any atrocity, as they themselves are responsible for worse crimes and continue to give justifications for those acts.

"Democracy" is meant to refer to a political system that derives legitimacy from the people, but the word usually gets used when talking of foreign conflicts. Those who talk of it will say the Western countries have a unique ethnicity, which makes them better than others.

Despite Ukraine's government banning all opposition, we are being told that Ukraine is a bastion in the fight for "democracy". As usual, Western countries teaming up to fight someone is usually the main reason to talk of "democracy", even if this is not applicable to the situation all. Someone looking for images of "democracy" won't find it hard to stumble upon scenes of explosions and dead bodies.

In the end, those who meet adoring crowds or talk of any need to serve the people are more likely to be labelled as dictators than democrats. The anonymous members of the American military and intelligence junta are presented as the men of democracy, regardless of whether they are elected or have anything to do with any democratic process at all.

Zones of freedom

The word "freedom" was used in artful equivocation by politicians such as George W. Bush during his invasion of Iraq in 2003. The conquered "zone of freedom" in fact meant an area free to be plundered and preyed on by American corporations, in keeping with the vaunted "free market" so loved by Americans. To the average listener, though, it may have suggested that the country would be freed from torture and oppression, when in fact the United States brought both to the Iraqi people. The term "zone of freedom" was also used for NATO expansion, which precipitated the current conflict in Ukraine.

The "democratic peace" theory died in Iraq in 2003, too, although its well-wishers continued to refuse to write its obituary and are now busy with Ukraine. When democracies were the ones attacking the others, and they were doing so for the very reason of their arrogant belief in their political system, it was clear that associating the democratic system with the establishment of peace was a mistake.

Democracy as a call to violence

"Democracy" is invoked almost always for the express purpose of rallying people to war, not peace. It is used to conjure up images of soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, which, however heroic, is no image of peace. Those who plead for bringing what they call "democracy" to other lands are the most depraved warmongers of our time, even if they can successfully point to the atrocities of others.

The next time you hear a speech about "democracy", try to locate anything in the speech that offers any substantive commentary on the merits of a system of government by the people. Try to listen out for praise of the people and their wisdom, since they are meant to be the masters in the democratic system. You can almost certainly guarantee that such content will be absent, yet the word "democracy" shall keep appearing, because "democracy" is here being used only in the manner of a stupid idol with no useful properties. It is a mere word, brought forth to persuade and bring comfort to people who like to hear it.

Our countries in the West use "democracy" as false rhetoric. In practice, our governments subvert truly democratic causes and demands in favour of monopolistic power and deception. The "democratic peace" we seek is consequently false, and will never be realised. The West attacks the regimes it dislikes. Its so-called theory confuses a cloud of locusts with a rainbow of peace.

The US has seized on what it regards as Russia's breach of international peace and stability to reassert its mantle of responsibility over a just world. Why did America lose this mantle, and is there reason to support this country having another try at some form of global order?

The question isn't really one for European governments or other American client states, but for humanity as a whole. What good would it do, if a country with butterfingers is given another chance to remake the world in its image?

Their own worst enemy

The US has had such free rein for so long that it is the source of most of the security threats in the world today, like some capricious deity responsible for unleashing evil into our world. Remember that the US played a major role in creating the Afghan insurgency that gave rise to al-Qaeda, it armed Saddam Hussein, it sponsored coups, and it inflamed civil wars. It caused chaos in a number of countries such as Syria, giving rise to ISIS.

Just about everywhere the US is able to act freely to make the world a better place, it makes it a worse place. Then, promptly, all media coverage of whatever troubled region we were talking about ends, leaving suffering people behind as the US eyes the next region it intends to operate on - like some mad surgeon with a hundred percent death rate behind him.

Rules-based disorder

At present, we are faced with the apparent collapse of an international "rules-based order", the favoured term of America and its allies when they arbitrarily moralise about international affairs and declare through various media platforms "what must be done" about some problem they happen to find offensive to them. American leaders presume to define good and evil (the current Ukraine narrative), and assign the former label to themselves or US clients in all cases, although in practice good and evil are not typically good assessments of the behaviour of states. The result of this mindset is hardly order but disorder, enmity and the inflammation of crisis everywhere across the world.

There are two big reasons that would compel one to decline America's pleas to be given a second chance as the world's moral arbiter and sole superpower. The first is that of its failures being rooted in its own core identity, such that it is doomed to continue failing and repeating itself indefinitely, because it creates all the alleged problems it hopes to address. The second is that of the character of those who currently guide American foreign policy.

Agents of chaos

America keeps failing to establish "order" because its identity is chaos. Americans are always most glad when they are destroying governments and handing out guns to bandits around the world, in keeping with their own ideas about guns belonging in the hands of random citizens. As a country born from sedition and criminal secession from Britain, the Americans can't help thinking like criminals at the international level and coveting scenes of disorder rather than order.

It is a fundamental part of American liberalism, whether handled from a progressive or conservative angle, that America sides with gun-toting rebels and contras rather than those who maintain the peace. They fail to govern the world because their ideological reverence is not for a body of laws but for chaos and banditry. The romantic urge to recreate the Wild West overpowers their reason, compelling them away from the path of responsibility even if they try to plan otherwise, like some dog unable to resist scratching its flea-ridden hide, no matter the wishes of its owner.

Serial failures

The current American foreign policy establishment is especially underserving of a second chance at creating the "American Century", as they used to call their dream. Every single foreign policy idea they have presented, from the insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980s to the occupation of Afghanistan of 2001-2021, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, backfired spectacularly and endangered their own country.

The Americans are all too eager to give themselves a second chance at governing the world and creating a stable order. Others should not be so keen to see that.

Should we believe extraordinary claims from government sources, such as the "Tic Tac" UFO encounter footage from the US government?

While extra-terrestrials may be a favoured explanation for some, for UFO sightings, a secret military technology is more plausible, because we are at least aware that military secrets are real. However, even that is far-fetched. A technology that is truly beyond anything known to science, for example, having the ability to fully neutralise g-forces, is also countered by a more likely possibility.

Extraordinary claims

The most reasonable explanation for any compelling video evidence of extra-terrestrial or truly unexplained UFO encounters, if they originate from a government source, will be that they are nevertheless fake. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, so video and official endorsement of video is not enough. People also saying they saw it doesn't help, as testimony is unreliable.

In 2003, the American people believed their government's mere word about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After waging the war, they learned it was not true. Many lost faith in the mainstream media, and now obstinately disbelieve even the more mundane claims of governments.

In 2022, prior to it happening, we had headlines and pictures in tabloids about a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many believed it, because it came from government sources, namely the US government. Others disbelieved it for that very same reason. Unfortunately, the American warnings turned out to be true in the case of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, and the Russians seemed to begin the very operation they were insisting would not happen.

For many Americans, Russia's deceptions will vindicate the US government and they will be more likely to trust the US government's authority again, even when it is lying.

Distrust them

Despite the above change, governments still lie. The most effective lies are those that are mixed with confirmed reality by those telling the story. Many believe that if they can confirm some part of a story, the rest must be true.

In the case of formal, government-stamped evidence of the seemingly impossible, what we are looking at could be an experiment in the authority of the state. It could be a test of how credulous a citizen can be, if their government verifies something as true, or a sort of experiment in how far the militarisation of false information can go when pushed from government to journalists. How far do loyal citizens actually go in believing the state? Might they even believe in alien invaders if they are reported on the news?

Government authority lends credibility to a report, but it by no means confirms it to be accurate.

Russia's offensive all across Ukraine, in response to eight years of localised conflict in the Donbass region bordering Russia, is portrayed by the US and its Western allies as suddenly imperilling a previously reliable "international system".

If the thesis that Russia broke the international system is correct, it would mean other countries may engage in some sort of invasion next time, feeling there are no consequences.

Eight years of Western omissions and callousness on Donbass

Russia explained its actions as an attempt to force an end to eight years of conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine, bordering Russia. They don't see their actions as the start of a war, but the closing stage of a war between large Ukraine and tiny Donbass. In the latest round of escalation in the region, they say, Ukrainian shells prompted mass evacuations onto Russian territory, and explosions reached Russian territory as the conflict inevitably spilled over their border. The Russians profess a desire to defeat and capture Ukrainian commanders and politicians, with an aim to prosecute them for war crimes over the course of eight years.

The Western perspective is, predictably, more simplistic. They say Russian President Vladimir Putin is personally driven by a desire to restore the Soviet Union, based on selective quotations, and is simply invading Ukraine to accomplish this. They omit all kinds of details. There is no word from them on the suffering of the Donbass region, or they dismiss the entire eight-year conflict there and huge death toll among ethnic Russian residents as Russia's own fault for sympathising with rebels at its border.

Russia's view of the intervention as legal

From the Russian perspective, they are not violating international law but are defending small countries they hastily recognised and signed defence pacts with in the Donbass region - the Lugansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic. The Russians cite the UN Charter, which states that countries are entitled to self-defence and collective defence when attacked from outside. This is dubious, because the LPR and DPR are not member states of the UN, so they are not protected under the Charter. The Charter does seem to allow countries the right to collective defence of allies, though, so Russia likely is referring to this wording to justify its actions.

Could Russia be acting like America?

What we are witnessing is the Russian Federation's own version of NATO's Yugoslav intervention in 1999 and its ultimate revenge for those NATO actions against its Serbian allies. While I don't know enough to comment on military minutiae, it is similar to Yugoslavia: unilateral independence for breakaway territories, a huge campaign targeting the military of the alleged offending regime with the aim to disarm its forces, and an effort to apprehend and prosecute suspected war criminals.

The biggest violator of international law?

Back to the specific issue at hand: the US accusing Russia of being the ones who destroyed the international system and undermined international law.

US and Western bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other countries were major violations of international law, and the US got away without the level of censure Russia is receiving from US allies. Russia cannot be accused of stepping out line, if there is no line. Others were already badly out of line, so staying in line would be suicide for the Russians, especially as these violators venture ever closer to the Russian border. Turkey has a worse record than Russia for breaking international law, entering into the Syrian Civil War and also establishing military positions in Iraq. Its violations are basically identical to Russia's under international law, as are America's.

Russia's rejection of US censure over its intervention by pointing to US violations of international law may be dismissed as "whataboutism", but it is not. Whataboutism is invalid if is merely a sort of insult, and not part of a logical syllogism. In this case, there is a logical syllogism that justifies Russia's temporary dismissal of international law:

Premise 1: The international system depends on people following it (this fits with the US's own statements about Russia threatening the system by not following it), Premise 2: the US and its allies didn't follow international law, Conclusion: the US destroyed the international system

Russia's use of force is the direct result of the US dismissing international law during its own campaigns of conquest and encroachment, forcing others to dismiss it too if their interests are at risk.

Countries are being compelled to use force because since the end of the 1990s, the sole superpower, the US, imposed the law of the jungle (or the state of nature, according to Hobbes) on them with its own capriciousness. "Might makes right" is the idea they propagated, not democracy or the rule of law. If American forces could blow things up and kill people, they were allowed to.

International law has been destroyed by repeat violators, before. When the Axis powers refused to follow international law prior to the Second World War, the Allies were forced to disregard it as well, and invaded a number of countries without sanction under international law as they sought to defend themselves. Russian actions, if examined in isolation, violate international law, but they are a response to continuous violations by the US, who were increasingly interested in training and arming Ukraine on Russia's border.

Note that the sudden appeals to international law by Western countries mark a departure from previous rhetoric on the "rules-based order" - a term specifically devised to avoid following international law. The US has suddenly found itself on the right side of international law in this one case, but their original contributions to this crisis and many other crises consisted of their own violations of international law. The US and its allies have an arsenal of excuses that allow them to invade anyone or do anything they want (human rights, democracy, humanitarianism, doing the right thing etc.). As such, the Americans and their allies weakened the international system and they are at fault for it breaking down and the primacy of force returning as the way to solve major international disputes, which is likely to be seen a lot more in future.

Ukraine crisis was started by US illegal actions in 2014

What is an even better point is that the "democratic" Ukrainian government post-2014 is itself the result of a US violation of international law. In 2014, the United States interfered and directly assisted a coup in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, to steer the country away from Russia regardless of how the population felt. A large following of demonstrators effectively occupied and seized power in the capital, strong-arming the entire nation into following their narrow vision, which aligned just exactly with the US State Department.

Russia could argue that it is unilaterally enforcing international law by removing an illegitimate US-installed government, although this is a bad way to conduct oneself. The reality is that, sometimes, new regimes come to power by force (e.g. Iran's government in 1979 or Yemen's Houthi-dominated government in 2014) and nothing can or should be done.

As far as Russia is concerned, the US has already destroyed the international system as a result of its own interventions in other countries, which violated international law. Russia is still prepared to follow international law in most cases, frequently appealing to it as a series of absolutes from which one can't deviate and aligning with China on this. However, it now seems Russia is prepared to make exceptions to international law when US violations result in escalating violence on an area bordering with Russia.

Being a sore loser about his defeat and incompetent retreat in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden seems okay with stealing money from grieving mothers and putting children at risk.

Afghans, including even the Taliban, had nothing to do with 9/11 or international terrorism. However, American neoconservatives need targets to attack, and the Afghans seemed shootable to them.

Now, yet another neoconservative-stuffed administration finds it okay to take money from Afghans and hand it to 9/11 victims in a demonstration of what they really represent. This is intended to perpetuate the belief in American righteousness and victimhood, even as these neoconservatives stand unapologetically over the bodies of those they killed.

Twenty years of defeat

The United States occupied Afghanistan for twenty years, supposedly to hunt down Osama bin Laden, who was dead for half the time of that occupation. When the US entered the country in 2001, Afghanistan was in civil war, with the Taliban holding the capital but facing substantial resistance. The US allied themselves with the Northern Alliance, who were resisting the Taliban. According to the righteous neoconservative logic, an American presence would bolster a powerful coalition and secure inevitable victory.

When the United States departed Afghanistan in 2021, in despair and shame, the Taliban held almost total control over the country before US forces had even exited. With barely a shot fired, and with American troops forced to watch and be humiliated in front of the world, the Taliban were able to overtake the country in a way that had not been possible even prior to the US intervention. The US, or at least those who still maintain control over its foreign policy right now and faced no consequences for their careers, failed all their objectives and were kicked out of the country.

To give some idea of what that failure meant, let us consider the words of Joe Biden:

"We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong. Incredibly well equipped. A force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies. We gave them every tool they could need"

Every moment, every dollar spent, and every soldier killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan was a waste. The strategies and predictions of US think tanks and foreign policy experts all failed to materialise. All the propaganda and self-important rhetoric about democracy and freedom, which continues unabated but has shifted to other conflict zones like Ukraine, led nowhere.

Rewarded for creating misery

Rather than firing the people who caused the biggest foreign policy defeats in their history, America and its allies listen even more to the instincts of neoconservatives such as Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland, who maintain a familiar aptitude for false claims, false expectations, civilian casualties, and slow defeat. It is as if they have no thinkers with an interest in foreign policy other than these quacks who have a hundred percent chance of being wrong.

When hearing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the US is acting differently in #Ukraine than #Iraq because the US is trying to prevent a war this time, remember that he directly supported the Iraq War.

He is literally the liar he is trying to contrast himself with.
— Lordre (@LOrdreNet) February 20, 2022

By punishing the Afghan people when they needed help, Biden makes it clear that twenty years of alleged support for them was a sham as the US attempted to spread its own influence and power in the region. We should not forget that it is under moral pretexts and international media fanfare that the US coldly murders civilians and tries to station soldiers in every strategic region of the world.

We should be thankful for the end of the war in Afghanistan, but be under no illusion that it marks the end of American cruelty and oppression. The neoconservative (or interventionist, if you like) army at the heart of American foreign policy is continuously re-hired and sent to all conflict zones in the world to get more civilians killed, drag America further through blood and mud, and then fail.

While many object to knighting Tony Blair on moral grounds, citing his role in the Iraq War and the tragedy he therefore inflicted on their lives, rewarding Blair is a bad call even from a realist perspective.

It is harmful to the British state's authority and credibility that it failed to put Blair on trial. It is potentially disastrous that the Queen is perceived to endorse him by knighting him.

Sooner or later, a state that ignored and handwaved away the people's feelings can face a lot of distrust, and this is a mistake of governance more than a failure of morals. Even the most corrupt and vile person in the highest places of the state, if they had sense, would exorcise Blair and sacrifice him to regain the trust of the many millions of citizens who remember how he lied to justify the Iraq War.

With an award, Blair undermines the country's image at home and abroad and contributes to the perception of state deception and cynicism. Here is a person who lied the country into a war and suppressed information that disputed the legality of his actions.

Remembering the lies

Tony Blair and his defenders pass the events of the Iraq War off as mistakes by a sincere man, but this is refuted by those who knew Blair was lying at the time and took significant action of their own to protest his disinformation. These included the largest street protest in British history and one cabinet resignation.

Blair's participation in a crime is better documented than the actions of other criminals who are now behind bars. There will be a perception that his role within the state makes him immune from justice and even still eligible for awards, and that is just why so many people distrust the state itself.

This is a man who knowingly imperilled British troops and Iraqi civilians and unleashed a disaster in the Middle East, for reasons that were insufficient and he knew they were. He is responsible equally for the failed war effort in Afghanistan and for a lot of terrorism in the world, much of it motivated by a sense of injustice because this one person's wrongful actions were unpunished. A lot of people would still be alive today and the world would be a much better place, were it not for him. The place of Britain in the world would be better. Life would be easier for everyone in the British government itself, from lowest worker to the highest holder of political office, who would no longer be faced with citizens who obstinately disbelieve everything they say.

If punished appropriately, Blair would do a huge service to the country and empower the state's authority. The action would send a message to the world that the country in fact stands for a set of rules, and that not even those who reached the top of the state are immune from justice. That commitment to always follow the law, no matter where it leads, is what Britain is meant to represent.

Not so noble

The revealing of crooks and paedophiles such as Jimmy Savile and Prince Andrew, in high and esteemed places in British life, is a perception damaging to the state, and the damage must be repaired. The names of these televised deceivers, Savile and Blair, belong on the same page, no matter how liked they once were by many.

The population is becoming suspicious that something is wrong with those who supposedly represent our best. Whatever it is, it is disproportionately found among them in comparison with the normal population.

We don't hear that our colleagues are paedophiles and crooks, but we hear a great deal about this problem arising among the supposedly noble and honourable sirs who possess esteemed titles. Maybe it is true that power attracts the psychopathic.

Why can't we just let him go?

Finally, if Britain doesn't tidy up the problem of apparently self-serving incestuous power that allows the state figures to tell lies without punishment, political attitudes among the public will include rejecting everything the state says as a lie even when it is true. With many rejecting government pleas to vaccinate, and the earlier crazy attacks on 5G infrastructure and workers, we may already be nearing that stage of absolute distrust in all institutions and authority.

One unpunished (even rewarded!) lying politician is the biggest reason many will cite for their distrust. The state risks losing credibility with millions of people because of Blair, or properly rejecting this goblin.

My Dissident Voice article continuing this topic: The State’s Celebration of Lies and Punishment of Truth | Dissident Voice

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