Usually when politicians apologize it's because they have been caught doing
something wrong, or they are about to be caught. Such was likely the case with
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently offered an "apology" for
the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair faces the release of a potentially damning
report on his government's conduct in the run-up to the 2003 US/UK invasion
of Iraq.
Similarly, a batch of emails released from the private server of former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton show Blair pledging support for US military action
against Iraq a full year before the decision to attack had supposedly been
made. While Prime Minister Blair was assuring his constituents that he was
dedicated to diplomacy in the Iraq crisis, he was communicating through back
channels that he was ready for war whenever Bush decided on it.
A careful observer of public opinion, Blair took the surprising step of "apologizing" for
the Iraq war during an interview on CNN last month.
However, there are two other characteristics of politicians' apologies: they
rarely take personal blame for a misdeed and rarely do they atone for those
misdeeds.
Thus Tony Blair did not apologize for his role in pushing the disastrous Iraq
war. He did not apologize for having, as former head UN Iraq inspector Hans
Blix claimed, "misrepresented intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to
gain approval for the Iraq War."
No, Tony Blair "apologized" for "the fact that the intelligence we received
was wrong," on Iraq. He apologized for "mistakes in planning" for post-Saddam
Iraq. He boldly refused to apologize for removing Saddam from power.
In other words, he apologized that the intelligence manipulated by his cronies
to look like Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to the
UK turned out to not be the case. For Blair, it was someone else's fault.
But if we are waiting for any kind of apology from George W. Bush for Iraq
we shouldn't hold our breath. Likewise if we are looking for any kind of apology
from President Obama for a similarly disastrous war on false pretext against
Libya we shouldn't bother waiting.
If they ever did apologize, we can be sure that like Blair they would never
really confess to their own manipulations nor would they seek to atone for
the destruction their manipulations caused.
In fact, far from apologizing for leading the United States into the Libya
war based on a false pretext, President Obama is taking US ground troops into
Syria on a false pretext. Let's not forget, this US military action was sold
as a limited operation to save a small religious minority stranded on a hilltop
in northern Iraq. After one year and thousands of bombing runs against Iraq
and Syria, Obama announced last week he is sending US ground troops into Syria
after promising no fewer than seven times that he would not do so.
Here's an idea: instead of apologies and non-apologies from politicians, how
about an actual debate on the policies that led to such disasters? Why not
discuss why the US keeps being drawn into wars on false pretexts? But that
is a discussion we will not have, because both parties are in favor of these
wars. They are ready to spend us into Third World status to continue their
empire. When we get there, we will never hear their apologies.