Still One Of My Heroes

Tony Blair Takes David Gregory to School on... by TalkerOne

Say What You Like...

...as far as I'm concerned, Tony Blair is still a hero in my books:

The Enigmatic Mr. Blair

"Maybe he has acted for no more noble a motive than consideration for his American royalties and lecture fees, but anyway he has stood up and unequivocally opposed Mahmoud Abbas's bid for full recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN.

"You can pass whatever resolution you like at the United Nations or the Security Council, it doesn't actually deliver you a state on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, and if you don't have a negotiation, whatever you do at the UN is going to be deeply confrontational," Blair, who is the international community's official Middle East representative, was quoted as saying."

[---]

"Blair has supported the US and Israeli position that a real peace settlement can only come about from face-to-face negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Given the whole history of the conflict, this seems the only feasible position. A UN resolution recognizing a Palestinian state, as matters are at present, would have only one point: it would contribute to the delegitimization of Israel."

And that IS the point. And for that matter, the delegitimization of the UN, as if there's anything left to delegitimize.

Also, from the same source, The UN House of Lies

"In tones that ranged from combative to conciliatory to exasperated, the Israeli leader challenged the members of the UN to, for once, impose the same standards by which they judge Israel on the Palestinians. Why not, he argued, hold the Palestinians and Israelis to the same standards of conduct, and morality?

Netanyahu recited a brief version of the United Nations' abuses of Israel. The 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution. The 1980 peace agreement with Egypt that was denounced in the UN. He said, "And it's here year after year that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation. It's singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined. Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly resolutions condemn Israel -- the one true democracy in the Middle East."

Not only is Israel condemned routinely, Netanyahu said, some of the worst despots, dictators and terrorists are elevated to prominence in the UN: Saddam Hussein's Iraq as leader of the UN disarmament conference, Gaddafi's Libya chairing the Commission on Human Rights, and now Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon presiding over the Security Council.

It is a blindness to morality, an abandonment of epistemological standards that distinguish between freedom and slavery, between terrorism and democracy, that Netanyahu argued against. It is the same moral blindness that Jeane Kirkpatrick condemned as "the sin of moral equivalence.""

Loads of Good Stuff at Pajamas Media Today

But my favourite is Tony Blair's 'No apologies' Tour, which is primarily about Tony Blair's book tour, and an interview with one of BBC's finest:

(BBC's interviewer) "Marr’s questions and tone were shot through with the liberal-left assumptions that hold sway at the BBC. Time and again he put words in Blair’s mouth, made facetious comments, and took cheap shots: Any regrets? Would you do it again? Anything to say to the relatives of the dead? For Marr it’s not bias, or even probing journalism, to express suspicion of and incredulity towards Blair’s arguments — it’s the default position. (At one point Marr suggested to Blair that in supporting the invasion of Iraq he stood with an American president who was “loathed” by many people in Britain. What he meant was that Bush was loathed by the left, and by media commentators and other public figures whose condescending anti-Americanism transcends political divides. The hatred eventually filtered down even to people quite ignorant of current affairs.)

Blair stuck to his guns, and the point he returned to again and again was that, yes, the war was dreadful, and yes, mistakes were made, but while he understood and respected those who disagreed with him, he wished they would at least acknowledge that those who supported the war had arguments that were worth considering, that it was “at least arguable that the world is better off without [Saddam] than with him,” and that people understood the “complexity” of the decision."

The entire interview is here.

Tony Blair Looks Back

Blair answers the toughest questions with the moral clarity that made him one of my heroes. The interviewer, on the other hand, is bound and determined to pin his carefully crafted lefty narrative on Blair, but succeeds only in revealing what's wrong with journalism today. Create a narrative through a variety carefully spun misinformation campaigns, then carry on as if the narrative they have created is the undisputed gospel truth, and without challenging it, repeating it in subsequent interview questions.

Last Shot for the Day

Tony Blair, you're still my man.

Radical Islam world's greatest threat

"Asked about the argument that Chechens, Kashmiris, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans were resisting foreign occupation, he said Western polices were designed to confront radical Islamists because they were "regressive, wicked and backward-looking".

The aim of al-Qaeda in Iraq was "not to get American troops out of Baghdad [but] to destabilise a government the people of Iraq have voted for", he told the BBC's Owen Bennett Jones in a World Service interview."

[---]

"The former British leader - who now acts as the Middle East envoy for the international Quartet - said that Iran was one of the biggest state sponsors of radical Islam, and it was necessary to prevent it by any means from developing a nuclear weapon.

"We need to give a message to Iran that is very clear - that they cannot have nuclear weapons capability, and we will stop them," he said.

Mr Blair said he was not advocating military action, but simply saying no option could be taken off the table."

[---]

"These are really difficult issues, he said, but added: "This extremism is so deep that in the end they have to know that they're facing a stronger will than theirs.""

Trouble is, I just don't know if our will is stronger than theirs. Western leftists are on their side.