Tony Blair: the dead that won't lie dead

Those who fed into Blair’s Zimbabwe misadventure, like him, do not seem to comprehend why Zimbabwe and President Mugabe in particular continue to enjoy support not only from Africans but also other progressive forces across the globe which has made UK-US intervention in whatever guise unacceptable.

The Herald

By Tichaona Zindoga
THE memoirs of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a book titled "A Journey" have received wide reviews, which predominantly hammered home the one truth that Blair is an archetypal bigot.

This ranges from his narcissistic view that he "was a big player, was a world and not just a national leader".

He as strongly as ever supports fellow warmonger and liar, former US leader George W Bush whom he declares "cleverer" than his critics imagine.

He goes right down a 1994 night when he made love to his wife and supposedly got support for his political ambitions.

Amidst the interest that has been generated by the pen of this man who left the scene in June 2007, waking a murderous legacy of neoliberal interventionism and the so-called global war on terror, one reader noted a particularly disturbing attribute of Blair.

In Tony Blair, the world has seen the emergence of a "Zombliarism" (or such term), the dead that won’t lie down.

If that ironic role as a Middle East "peace envoy" plus a couple of other moral grandstanding activities do not suffice, Blair’s continued obsession with Zimbabwe makes this apparently immortal (im)moral and political ghost quite alive.

In his autobiography, Blair says globalisation has made military intervention in "rogue regimes" overseas more necessary than ever, without sensing the irony of his own exported rogue-ness.

The man, who relishes the prospect of attacking Iran one day, chiefly regrets not having been able to topple President Robert Mugabe during his tenure at Number 10 Downing Street.

He would have "loved" to topple the veteran leader who decided to empower hundreds of thousands of families previously condemned to arid areas by British colonial systems.

He wrote: "People often used to say to me: If you got rid of the gangsters in Sierra Leone, [Slobodan] Miloševic, the Taliban and Saddam, why can’t you get rid of Mugabe?

"The answer is I would have loved to, but it wasn’t practical (since, in his case, and for reasons I never quite understood, the surrounding African nations maintained a lingering support for him and would have opposed any action strenuously)."

Looking back just a year ago, in July, Blair called for that which he had failed to do in his 10 years at Number 10 Downing Street.

"I think whoever has the possibility should topple Mugabe," he said.

Without, even at this time as well, sensing the strong irony he added of President Mugabe, whom he accused of destroying the country, that "many people have died unnecessarily because of him".

In all this one finds basically two levels of the Blair ghost.

On the one hand is the troubled, wandering and inconsequent spirit that could not effect regime change in a small country called Zimbabwe during a whole 10 years and ended up groveling for just anybody’s help through a German newspaper last year.

This led one analyst to slam back not only his ineffectiveness (the analyst is on the regime change side, apparently) but also the very folly of not having opened talks with Zimbabwe, which might have benefited both parties.

Said the analyst: "When the ordinary Zimbabwean hears that Tony Blair is now leaving office without ever setting foot in the country that he talked about so much at international gatherings, they will wonder what he hoped to achieve by shouting from afar."

Yet on the other hand of this nuisance is a symbolic dimension of this evil spirit that is represented in a political philosophy that he started.

It will be noted that since Blair started his anti-Zimbabwe war, beginning by reneging on his government’s commitment to fund land reform in the country when his New Labour won power in 1997, a stand-off between the two countries has gone on.

His successors, Gordon Brown and the current coalition involving Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, have maintained cool relations with Zimbabwe.

This British-exported standoff has also applied to the US and the EU among other Anglo-Saxon powers.

Those who fed into Blair’s Zimbabwe misadventure, like him, do not seem to comprehend why Zimbabwe and President Mugabe in particular continue to enjoy support not only from Africans but also other progressive forces across the globe which has made UK-US intervention in whatever guise unacceptable.

To them that see things in black and white — absolute contradictions — the inherent justness of Zimbabwe’s cause especially where resources are concerned, as opposed to their historical injustice, just does not matter.

Unfortunately, the evil in the Machiavellian Blair and his philosophy is very much alive.

His appetite for international affairs, we are told, has been sharpened by his role as a mediator in the Middle East!

He says that he feels "indeed a greater urge to leadership".

Thus he tries, as arrogant as ever, to systematise interventionism, saying: "If change will not come by evolution, should it be done by revolution?

"Should those who have the military power contemplate doing so?

"The leader has to decide whether the objective is worth the cost. What’s more, he or she must do so unsure of what the exact cost might be or the exact price of failing to meet the objective . . . In this context, by the way, indecision is also decision . . . Omission and commission both have consequences."

This adventurism not only seems to project his warmongering demon but also rings of war projected as a business, and business executed without feeling.

This makes his vaunted reawakening in the Middle East as unfortunate as it is omi-nous.

It has been observed that Blair has reaped millions of dollars for his involvement in the Mideast, not as a bona fide statesman, but as a supporter of Israeli apartheid against its occupied Palestinian counterpart.

A million-dollar "peace-broker" award that he was proffered by Israel seemed to confirm this depravity, which also was a slap in the face of his Iraqi war founded on lies.

A critic was quoted as saying of the accolade: "This prize looks like a payment for services rendered.

"It will make people feel that he’s not really a peace envoy, he’s an envoy operating in the interests of the Israeli state in the Middle East."

This subplot makes Blair, even supposedly contained within the pages of a book, a sick and morbid character both in deed as in spirit and philosophy.