In the same vein, here is a brief criticism of Prime Minister Blair's response to the Chilcot report.
A brief criticism of Prime Minister Blair's 06JUL16 response to the Chilcot report:
Prime Minister Blair's response to the Chilcot report attempts to justify the British decision on Iraq using an apology format, and indeed, a savvy political apology can be strategically affirmative while actually unapologetic. Otherwise, an apology normally is an implicit acceptance of the accuser's contextual frame and contrite admission of culpability and/or error. Blair's response to the Chilcot report is inclined to be strategically affirmative of the Iraq intervention, but it falls short of the intended political impact because Blair failed to clarify the operative contextual frame that's necessary to properly sort, order, and evaluate the data he listed.
Context is essential. Blair properly cited that UNSCR 1441 was "[d]etermined to ensure full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations" and afforded Iraq's "final opportunity to comply". However, Blair critically omitted the operative context of UNSCR 1441 that "recall[ed] that the resolutions of the Council constitute the governing standard of Iraqi compliance" and "[re]cogniz[ed] the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security". Review the OIF FAQ main post and my rebuttal of Prime Minister Brown and attend to their dialectical structure. Suffice to say, in contrast, Blair's omission of core load-bearing elements much explains his dooming failure to clarify the operative contextual frame of the Iraq issue.
Blair provides a workable list of relevant data points, which could and should have been quilted onto the operative contextual frame to present a persuasive response to the Chilcot report that clarified the Iraq issue. Instead, Prime Minister Blair's failure to correct Sir John Chilcot's distorted context carried over Chilcot's mis-ordered mis-evaluation of the data and lets lay the obfuscation that enables Chilcot's faulty premises. In other words, Blair presented to the public an incoherent pile of puzzle pieces instead of a coherently assembled, clarified narrative-picture of the Iraq issue that could dispel and replace the prevailing, Chilcot-abetted revisionist narrative-picture.
Compounding his fundamental failure to clarify the operative contextual frame, Prime Minister Blair misrepresented key fact findings, especially from the Iraq Survey Group, just like President Bush did in his 2010 memoir, which I correctively criticized here. Regarding Blair's comments on the post-war competition for Iraq, also see my commentary on the post-war planning, setbacks, and adjustments.
Blair's exhortation to "learn the right ... lessons from Iraq" is precluded by the Chilcot-abetted revisionist narrative that has deformed those lessons. The historical record and, by the same token, the broader politics of Iraq can't cure themselves. Which is to say, history doesn't "tell" — it's told. How it's told is course-setting: Past is prologue. Past is premise. Inasmuch Blair "says that history will tell in the end what was right" (Shehadi), he's passed the buck to other public expert authorities, leaders and pundits, to clarify the operative contextual frame that's necessary to pick up his relevant yet inarticulate pile of data points, and sort, order, and evaluate them properly to set the record straight on the Iraq intervention. In turn, a clarified narrative is necessary to lay the proper foundation to "learn the right ... lessons from Iraq".
P.S. I changed my mind on refraining from direct critical evaluation of the Chilcot report.
PREFACE: Margot Tudor is a lecturer in Foreign Policy/Security at City St George's, University of London. I asked Dr. Tudor for help to invest my criticism of the Chilcot report in the the British discourse.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Margot Tudor]
date: Mar 9, 2025, 7:21 PM
subject: P.S. The "moral case for the Iraq invasion" was codified since 1991. Re: Need help to criticize the Chilcot report to the British public
Dr. Tudor,
This is a postscript to my Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 3:03 AM (my time) e-mail, below. My critical comment on The UK Media and the Moral Case for the Iraq War is meant to give you a taste of the methodology behind my Chilcot criticism.
Prime Minister Blair and his supporters were not talking out of their ass when they were "advocating the moral case, or humanitarian responsibility, of the intervention".
See the OIF FAQ retrospective #unscr688 section for a listing of UN resolutions, US law and policy, and fact findings that defined the UNSCR 688 basis of the Iraq intervention. I assume the UK had parallel law and policy for the UNSCR 688 enforcement.
The "moral case, or humanitarian responsibility, of the intervention" was codified in law and validated by fact since UNSCR 688 was adopted on April 5, 1991. Pursuant to UNSCR 678, the United Kingdom and United States enforced UNSCR 688 alongside UNSCR 687 as the cornerstones of the Gulf War ceasefire. In fact, the moral case on Iraq had been established and operative for years by the time Tony Blair became UK prime minister. Blair inherited the humanitarian element of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement; he didn't invent it.
The international mandate to invasively enforce UNSCR 688 was established by the statement in UNSCR 688 that the Saddam regime's human rights violations "threaten international peace and security in the region" (UNSCR 688), which brought them into the scope of invasive international intervention, as opposed to an intrastate human rights issue that would have otherwise been off limits to invasive international intervention according to the conventions of 1991.
Regarding "editors crafted an illusion of a desperate Iraqi population, longing for foreign intervention to ‘save’ them from their morally corrupt leader", the editors' support of Blair was based on standing law and fact, not "an illusion". Iraqi dissidents advocated for it, and their political efforts only scratched the surface. At formation, UNSCR 688 was adopted in the first place when the 1991 Iraqi uprising that overtly relied on foreign intervention was crushed without restraint by the Saddam regime because the UNSCR 678 enforcers withheld the foreign intervention that the Iraqi people expected and needed to challenge Saddam's rule. After that, the UNSCR 678 enforcers maintained the continuous foreign intervention of the northern and southern no-fly zones and northern safe zone pursuant to UNSCR 688. The United Nations and non-government human rights organizations condemned Saddam's human rights violations per UNSCR 688. The UNSCR 678 enforcers wrestled with the need for UN sanctions to compel Iraq's mandated compliance versus Saddam's exploitation of those same UN sanctions to further abuse the Iraqi people. (CASI's anti-UN sanctions activism was clarified by omitting or marginalizing the Gulf War ceasefire in CASI's moral calculus.) The UNCHR post-war investigation found Saddam's UNSCR 688 violation was "far worse" than we thought, despite that Saddam's human rights abuses had already been assessed at the end of the scale, including genocide.
Regarding "Blair and Bush’s strategy and their broader neo-colonialist agenda" and "The former Prime Minister’s case for intervention in Iraq was characterised by many UK newspapers as ... driven by liberationist ideals", to clarify, the ideology of the Iraq intervention comprised the essential norms of post-Cold War liberal international order, whose paradigm was embodied by the Gulf War ceasefire terms. Excerpt from the OIF FAQ retrospective #americanprimacy section:
The Gulf War ceasefire terms were purpose-designed to resolve Saddam's manifold threat established with the Gulf War. The scope of the ceasefire terms meant that enforcing Iraq's mandated compliance resonated beyond the 4 corners of the Saddam problem or even the Iraq intervention itself. In 1991, at the dawn of the post-Cold War, the Gulf War ceasefire was invested with all the essential international norms, including strict aggression, disarmament, human rights, and terrorism-related mandates, and vital enforcement principles that were required to reify the aspirational "rules" of the post-Cold War world order.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
Due to the historical context, threats and interests at stake, comprehensive spectrum of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), model enforcement procedure, and US-led UN-based structure, the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement was tantamount to the flagship and litmus test of the US-led post-Cold War liberal international order.
In other words, the resolution of Saddam's probation with Iraq's mandated compliance per the Gulf War ceasefire represented the primary test case for US-led international enforcement with a readily measured pass/fail gauge. The paradigmatic set of international norms that defined Iraq's ceasefire obligations was enforced with a clear UN-mandated compliance standard and a strict US-led compliance process. Iraq's mandated compliance set the gold standard for enforcing post-Cold War liberal international order, whereas Saddam's noncompliance risked a model failure for US-led enforcement of the liberal international order, a theme that permeated the US law and policy on Iraq through the HW Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations.
While "liberationist" sounds like shorthand for 'liberal international order', liberationist and liberal international order have different meanings. On the other hand, I have heard "neo-colonialist agenda" used as a pejorative for post-Cold War liberal international order, so that term may be basically accurate though twisted with added negative implications.
I hope my criticism of your Warnings from the Archive article helps you consider my Chilcot criticism for the purpose of investing it in the British discourse.
On Sun, Mar 9, 2025 at 3:03 AM [Eric LC] wrote:
Dr. Tudor,
I clarify and relitigate the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ using the law and facts that define the Iraq issue.
I approach the Iraq issue from an American perspective. However, I recently examined the UK Iraq Inquiry Chilcot report for the first time as part of my 22nd anniversary project, critical review of Council on Foreign Relations commentary from the 20th anniversary. CFR senior fellow Linda Robinson's "lessons" call for an American counterpart to the Chilcot report.
I found that the Chilcot report is specious: see my Critical notes on the UK Iraq Inquiry Chilcot report.
I am writing to you because the Chilcot report needs to be criticized in the British discourse, and I can't do that. I can only provide corrective content needed for the task. So I did a Google search for a Briton who can do it, which took me to your Warnings from the Archive article, The UK Media and the Moral Case for the Iraq War. Then I searched for your name and got your e-mail address from your faculty page.
Your article gave me a vague notion of somehow distributing my Chilcot criticism to pundits who supported Prime Minister Blair on Iraq, but I don't know who or how or if that's an effective way to do it.
Of course I expect my Chilcot criticism would need to pass your critical review for you to make it your 22nd anniversary project.
I clarify and relitigate the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ using the law and facts that define the Iraq issue.
I approach the Iraq issue from an American perspective. However, I recently examined the UK Iraq Inquiry Chilcot report for the first time as part of my 22nd anniversary project, critical review of Council on Foreign Relations commentary from the 20th anniversary. CFR senior fellow Linda Robinson's "lessons" call for an American counterpart to the Chilcot report.
I found that the Chilcot report is specious: see my Critical notes on the UK Iraq Inquiry Chilcot report.
I am writing to you because the Chilcot report needs to be criticized in the British discourse, and I can't do that. I can only provide corrective content needed for the task. So I did a Google search for a Briton who can do it, which took me to your Warnings from the Archive article, The UK Media and the Moral Case for the Iraq War. Then I searched for your name and got your e-mail address from your faculty page.
Your article gave me a vague notion of somehow distributing my Chilcot criticism to pundits who supported Prime Minister Blair on Iraq, but I don't know who or how or if that's an effective way to do it.
Of course I expect my Chilcot criticism would need to pass your critical review for you to make it your 22nd anniversary project.
