"If a UK government is hawkish to invade a country that poses zero immediate threat to the UK because ‘US foreign policy alignment is important’ then make that case to invade on that basis." - petejh
Agree with most of that post Pete. But while US foreign policy alignment was certainly part of Blair's thinking, I really don't think it was the main reason. As far as I could see, Blair fundamentally believed in the US neo conservative project, and the Iraq war was the centerpiece of their strategy.
"It only “resulted” in the deaths if no British involvement would have meant no Iraq War. To me it’s clear that the war was going to happen regardless" - seankenny
Indeed. If anything, I suspect the Brits being there possibly very slightly reduced some of the more extreme things the US were planning (not that it helped a fat lot).
My take on Iraq was always the following:
It was a US neo conservative war, and was completely inevitable as soon as Bush came to power in 2000, regardless of whether any other countries were on board or not. There was a group of neo cons who had always since their earliest days in the 60s and 70s believed essentially in "down with dictators, up with democracy". Which on the face of it sounds reasonable enough. But it was emphatically not the US foreign policy of the time - which was essentially "down with Communism and we don't care how many dictators we need to prop up as long as they are not communist dictators".
For the most part back then that group of neo cons didn't have any real power. After communism collapsed at the end of the 80s, the US needed a new foreign policy aim, and that group of neo cons started to gain more influence. But still not enough to persuade George Bush senior to actually invade Iraq when the US pushed Saddam back to the Iraq border after he'd invaded Kuwait in 1990. And they were furious with George Bush senior for not pushing on into Iraq when they reached the border. They felt like that was a major strategic mistake, as they believed that the time was ripe and if they had toppled Saddam at that time, dictatorships around the world would would drop like flies.
During the 90s they gained more and more influence, and it was clear by the end of the 90s that if the Republicans won, that the administration would be completely dominated by neo cons. And that the thing (Iraq) that they'd been seething about for the whole of the 90s would be the highest thing on their priority list. And of course during the 90s, Saddam had done lots of completely horrific things to the Shiias and the Kurds in Iraq in order to ruthlessly keep power, thus making the case the neo cons were putting forward a much easier sell. The WMD thing was always likely to be bollocks, Iraq had been completely contained in the 90s, and whilst Saddam was certainly a huge threat to all the Shias and Kurds in Iraq, there was very little external threat. But there was enough ambiguity (and of course Saddam had actually used chemical weapons at various points) to make it sound vagely plausible, which they clearly thought was an easier sell to Americans, than trying to explain neo conservative philosophy.
And then 9/11 happened, and the administration had carte blanche to do whatever it wanted. At which point, the Iraq war was completely and utterly inevitable (although they'd no doubt have found a way to do it regardless of 9/11, as it was top of their agenda from the second they got to power).
What were they trying to achieve? Well it was hardly a secret. They called the campaign "shock and awe" after all. That was really what they wanted. They wanted dictators around the world to shudder in their boots. They thought that if they took out Saddam, they could basically tell the world what to do. That a wave of democracy would spread around the world, and dictators everywhere would fall. It's why they had so little interest in Afghanistan. The neo cons never believed in that war, as it didn't fit their agenda at all, they just felt they had to do it as it was obviously where the 9/11 plot had come from. ie: they saw it as a bunch of beards in caves, and that wiping them out wouldn't have any impact on the rest of the world. Whereas taking out Saddam (ie: a country with a proper army, where they could fully demonstrate US military dominance), they believed, would change the world. (If they'd put even half the funding into Afghanistan as they did into Iraq, there was a slim chance it might have actually done some good).
For a tiny amount of time during the Arab spring, when Mubarak fell in Egypt, I almost started to believe that the neo cons might have had a point after all. That was the start of everything they had been aiming for right there. But then reality struck back, from Egypt to Syria to everywhere else. And ultimately the state department, as opposed to the neo cons, had always been more on the right track. ie: stabilty, even under an utterly grim dictator is probably preferable to war, instability and chaos, even if war is initiated with the best of intentions. And attempts to change the world in a short timeframe, believing democracy will solve all problems and that people will vote in their best interests if given a chance were always doomed to failure. The realities are that people in most places in the world, if given the chance, don't vote like Harvard educated lawyers in their own personal economic interest. They tend to vote on religious or sectarian grounds, thus making the reality of democracy in many places in the world, little more than a census, and of zero use in terms of creating stability.
Whilst a Labour politician, from a foreign policy perspective Blair was an arch neo con. He truly believed in the project. That famous speech he gave to rapturous support in the US - can't be bothered looking up the exact quote, but the gist was - "the kalaidoscope has been shaken... let us re order the world around us". That was exactly what he and the neo cons were all about.
For the most part, I don't really go along with people saying that the neo cons were evil or only interested in money or oil, or whatever else the lefty version of events tries to portray. Of course some people made lots of money out of the war, and the way it was conducted was so bonkers and horrific as to be beyond belief. But for the most part I tend to think that they were more hopelessly naive than evil. And in the attempt to do what they thought was right, all sorts of truly evil things ended up happening.
As the late great Isiah Berlin once said (not got time to look up exact quote, but the gist is): "If you believe you have the answer to all of humanities ills, there is the risk that you will do all sorts of horrific things." And you could add to that that you would try and justify what you were doing in all sorts of ways that bore little resemblence to the truth. Of course Isiaah Berlin was referring to primarily to communism, but it applies to the neo conservative philoshophy just as well.
As for the rest of the thread, my basic take on the world (from an economic point of view at least) is that I (mostly) have left wing aims but I (mostly) don't believe that typical left wing policies have any hope of doing much to achieve those aims.
To me the biggest single problem in the UK is housing and planning reform. The miserable lives that large swathes of the population are living are a direct consequence of that. And whilst I have some patience with those blaming all of the UK's current problems on the Tories (and they've certainly made everything much worse over the last 15 years). But the truth is that the housing problem in the UK really started way back in the late 90s when Blair came to power, with huge increases in house prices betwee 97 and 2002. Blair was always more interested in fixing the world, than fixing the UK.
Both administrations in the UK have been similarly tragic though. The Labour government spent most of it's decade in power (and most of the wealth generated in a period of good growth around the world) embroiled in foreign policy issues. The Tory goverment for the last decade have been entirely embroiled in Brexit. On both occasions, very little time has been spent on actually figuring out how to improve the lives of people in the UK.
