The "war criminal" at lunch:
Tony Blair was subjected to an attempted citizen’s arrest while dining at a London restaurant, but he managed to placate the man by discussing the Syrian conflict.
The former prime minister was approached by Twiggy Garcia, a bar worker, during a meal with family and friends at the fashionable Shoreditch restaurant Tramshed.
Mr Garcia told Mr Blair that he was making a citizen’s arrest because he was a “war criminal” who had launched an “unprovoked war against Iraq”.
I'm a big enough man to admit that the thought of Tony Blair in hand cuffs is amusing. The wrecker of the British constitution, expander of the welfare state and destroyer of whatever remained of British reticence, the Blair is not among my favourite people. There is a kind of juvenile delight in seeing people you dislike thrown behind bars. But that's the thing. It's the sort of half-joke you chuckle to a friend over a beer or coffee, it's not the sort of thing you'd seriously advocate.
It is a truism long established that little good in the world has been done my men named Twiggy. It is a truism nearly as long established that the Iraq War did not go according to plan. I was an early supporter of the war and believe, even with hindsight, that had the post-war preparations been a bit more sensible, the whole thing would have been regarded as a success today.
Rather than running Iraq like a quasi-colony for a few years, the post-modern Blair and the naive Dubya, decided that everyone wants to be free. True enough, but wanting something and knowing how to get it are two different things. The people of Iraq have little understanding of how a free society works. You cannot liberate a country that has never known liberty. This was the fundamental mistake of the Iraq project. It was a mistake that Gertrude Bell or Lord Palmerston would not have made. Despite the disasters Iraq is still a sight better than Syria, Iran, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
So yes the dynamic duo of Blair and Bush did screw up, but even their screw ups had some kind of positive after effect. Getting ride of Saddam was, at least for a time, a good object lesson to the world's thugs to think twice about aiding and abetting terrorism. A lesson that might have been better learned had the Obama administration not spent its first term placating, vacillating and evading its way through the Middle East.
That's the grand geopolitics stuff. Then we come back, as we so often do, to Mr. Twiggy Garcia. Those of a certain age will recall the original Twiggy, a pioneer in the field of depressed looking and excessively thin female models. I have no idea if Mr Garcia is a distant relation, or if he was named in her honour. I typically don't make fun of people's names, but who thought it was a good idea to take a macho Spanish name like Garcia and stick it next to a name like Twiggy? For a man?
The Guardian, ever zealous to inflict humiliations on their fallen hero Blair, has given Mr Garcia some column space to explain himself. The picture of Mr Garcia in the article is a delight.
Mr Garcia added that his “heart rate increased” when he discovered Mr Blair’s “eerie presence” in the building and that he feared the politician’s security team might have overheard him asking a colleague: “Should I citizen’s arrest him?”
Grammar, along with international law, is apparently not a strong point for Mr Garcia. In fairness Tony Blair does have a kind of eerie presence. I've been saying that for years. But that isn't illegal. Having made questionable foreign policy decisions is not a crime. Having violated certain interpretations of UN resolutions is not, so far, a crime in any civilized country. Mr Blair's real crime in the eyes of the Left is having dared, in however limited and compromised a fashion, to assert western values. He was not willing to play the moral relativism game in Iraq. It was a nasty regime that violated basic rights and threatened stability in the region. He was wiling to say that yes certain concepts of liberty, rule of law and basic decency are superior to tribalism and primitive fanaticism.
But again, we return to Twiggy. That the Grandees of the British Left hate Blair for having betrayed the sacred tenets of multiculturalism, at least aboard, is understandable if obscene. But what on earth was Twiggy thinking? Did he seriously imagine that a former British Prime Minister, a man who won three straight majority governments, was going to be intimidated by a slight lad with a silly name and absurd hair? The simple answer is that he likely wasn't thinking.
Modern education has produced an unusually vainglorious generation. Having been flattered since childhood that they are the Light of the World they, quite naturally, imagine that their actions can alter the course of human history. Not, mind you, through some brilliant and original work of art. Not through a technological breakthrough. Certainly not by anything as crass as becoming an entrepreneur. Genuine accomplishment and hard work is far too time consuming. Just feel the right feelings and utter the right slogans. It's ersatz self-esteem. I doubt Twiggy could explain what law Tony Blair supposedly violated. He was probably all of ten years old when the war started. Yet his friends must think him very brave.
In Iran young men and women are beaten for failing to adhere to Islamist law. What risks did Twiggy run in taking on the Big Bad Blair? Was there ever the slightest chance that Tony Blair, a man as polished as a marble floor, would have swotted the little brat as he deserved? None. He's a silly poseur with the name and hair to match. If only he were a cultural outlier.
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