They’re narrative managing, writes Caitlin Johnstone, because history will remember them as wrong.
Feb. 5, 2002: U.S.President George W. Bush, right, and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair hold joint news conference in Crawford, Texas. (U.S. National Archives)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
[Listen to a reading of this article.]
After the U.S. troop withdrawal established conclusively that the Afghan “government” with which they’d spent 20 years pretending to nation build was essentially a work of fiction — thus proving to the world that they’ve been lying to us this entire time about the facts on the ground in Afghanistan — you might expect those who helped pave the way for that disastrous occupation to be very quiet at this point in history.
But, far from being silent and slithering under a rock to wait for the sweet embrace of death, these creatures have instead been loudly and shamelessly outspoken.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has posted a lengthy essay by the former prime minister who led the United Kingdom into two of the most unconscionable military interventions in living memory. Blair criticizes the withdrawal as having been done out of “obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’,” bloviating about “Radical Islam,” and asking, “has the West lost its strategic will?”
Read Tony Blair’s article on Afghanistan and what needs to happen next.https://t.co/WLy5UcxMpU
— Tony Blair Institute (@InstituteGC) August 22, 2021
It’s essentially a 2,750-word temper tantrum, authored by the same man who fed the British people this load after 9/11:
“The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.
This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
Blair promised that by helping the Bush administration usher in an unprecedented new era of military expansionism they could seize this unfortunate event to “re-order the world” in a way that would benefit all the world’s most unfortunate people. Mountains of corpses and tens of millions of refugees later it is clear to anyone with functioning gray matter that this was all a pack of lies.
And now, like any sociopath whose reputation is under threat, Blair has begun narrative managing.
Tony Blair is paid around £1m a year as an international advisor to an organisation called the Mubadala Development Fund in the UAE
It has been reported that Mubadala has been developing a plan to mine US$1 trillion worth of resources in Afghanistan.
Skin in the game?
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) August 22, 2021
Tony Blair is being paid £9m to advise the Saudi Arabian government. Yesterday the Saudis blew up a bus full of schoolchildren in Yemen. Reports suggest at least 29 children died. That works out at about £300,000 per child. Who says crime doesn't pay? https://t.co/hi4m5H79Bj
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush ????? (@WarmongerHodges) August 10, 2018
This is also why George W. Bush has released his own statement through his own institution. It’s also why Bush-era neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton are doing media tours condemning the withdrawal, and why Bill Kristol, whose neoconservative influence played a key role in the Bush administration’s military expansionism, is now promoting the arming of proxy forces against the Taliban.
They’re narrative managing.
They’re narrative managing because they’ve been proven wrong, and because history will remember them as men who were proven wrong. Their claims that a massive increase in military interventionism would benefit the people of the world have been clearly and indisputably shown to have been false from top to bottom, so now they’re just men who helped murder millions of human beings.
It’s about preserving their reputations and their legacies. “No no, we’re not mass murdering war criminals, we are visionaries. Had we just remained in Afghanistan another 20 years, history would have vindicated us. If we would have just killed more people in Iraq, it would be a paradise right now. The catastrophe cannot possibly be the fault of the people directly responsible for orchestrating it. It’s got to be the fault of the officials who inherited it. It’s the fault of the ungrateful inhabitants of the nations we graciously invaded. It’s the people and their imbecilic desire to end ‘the forever wars.’ “
But of course it’s their fault. None of this needed to be this way, it was made this way by stupid people with no functioning empathy. They can try to re-frame and spin it however they like, but history will remember them for the monsters they are. The saner our society becomes, the more unforgiving our memory of their crimes will be.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Well they were louder than ever.
What now you bunch of death merchant brainiacs ?
You cannot make this stuff up!
You damned right it’s their fault.
On 911 at the office I commented that , “America should have expected this”.
Some co-workers about took my head off. I knew then the U.S. was in for even more worse trouble and I was right. Again.
The warnings were there, both FBI and CIA must have known something more than I and we learned later they in fact did.
I then made things much worse by stating that in a way America deserved a wake up call. At that point as was viewed as an infidel.
I am one not easily swayed. Now a pariah of the neighborhood I seem tohave been right on both accounts.
No joy for me I weep for those unkowing countrymen of mine, individuals of great zeal bukt with no understanding of the true reality their own lives.
If I thought it would do any good Id cry!
From the country that fosters ‘Hell on Earth, thanks CN
On 911 at the office I commented that , “America should have expected this” and then “I then made things much worse by stating that in a way America deserved a wake up call.” You should know by now Mr. Williamson that telling the truth in the US can get you into a heap of trouble – seems like you can’t pretend very well – neither can I. Thanks for your truth but be careful out there.
The poor Afghans have suffered from America’s long war against “whatever”.
There was no benefit to anyone for this war,
except the Military Industry of the US, their investors, profiteers and world “associates”.
IF…there was a need to destroy Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan,
THEN…that was completed in a few weeks.
Bush MUST explain NOW to the World, Afghans and US citizens,
need for perpetual war there for two decades.
Similarly…Iraq was made home to near perpetual war for too long,
again without reason.
There were no WMDs !
I can’t speak first hand, against Blair, but Bush, Cheney, and Obama
deserve our never ending ridicule and disrespect
for their starting or continuing this purposeless war.
History will find all the perpetrators comfortable,
and safe in their posh abodes, at the end of their lives.
If more fitting rewards were to be bestowed,
the noose would be too comfortable an end.
Personal responsibility! What a concept. Unfortunately, when you’re in with the “in” crowd, you’re absolved of all responsibility. Unless you’re in Russia or China. In which case, you may well be held to account.
In 2011, the Independent reported that:
“Tony Blair’s government broke the law when it abandoned a fraud investigation into a multibillion-pound arms deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, the High Court ruled yesterday.”
Now, if there was no corruption, there would be no point in halting the investigation. In fact, it would be advantageous to let it proceed.
They’re not suffering much.
To show how long that damn war was dragged out, when it first started, this was one of the top hits on the music charts, that’s a long time to be at war, like Oliver Stone pointed out in Platoon, really it seems that we have been in some way at war with ourselves to allow something so horrendous to be perpetuated like that -hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xf-Lesrkuc
That’s what you get when we fail to put everyone of them in jail.
Hear hear ! The “hero-president” that had that responsibility refused to do as you suggest. He asked us to not look back, but, to look forward. Well some of us did look forward – we knew that daze like this were coming – here are there.
Sorry for error — meant this in final sentence – “we are there.”
This is one of the best, most brutally honest videos about Afghanistan:
hXXps://theanalysis.news/after-forty-years-of-u-s-destruction-of-afghanistan-its-time-for-reparations/
Paul Jay would be banned on YT for this if he wasn’t banned already.
Worse, they are calling for new wars.
John Bolton yesterday in the Wash Post wanted war on Pakistan, a nuclear power with over 2/3 the population of the US (240 million vs 335), a vastly more difficult thing than the fight we just lost next door.
Even Iran would be an easier target, 1/3 the population of Pakistan (80 million vs 240) and without nuclear weapons as yet. Bolton found the worst possible idea to advocate for a new war.
Bravo!
Caitlin, you are so right. My Mother said the same in 1945.
Astounding. In a just world all of these neocons would be guillotined in Times Square as the war-criminals they are. I can only wish there is an eternal hell waiting for these mass murderers.
Me too!
While I don’t spend much time thinking about or evaluating British Prime Ministers, Tony Blair is an exception. I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to reconcile my opinion of the British as a decent and thoughtful people with their choice of this vile and loathsome creature as their national leader. I will always retain an image of him sitting on George Bush’s lap with his idiotic grin, an unbelievable lickspittle piece of crap whose ascent to such a high position History has yet to explain.
Wonderful comment! That the BoJo mob can defer to the USA Trump/ Biden persecution and torture of Julian Assange shows it is bipartisan evil.
“ I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to reconcile my opinion of the British as a decent and thoughtful people with their choice of this vile and loathsome creature as their national leader.”
Hear, hear! Now replace “British” with “American” and “this …. creature” with “a series of creatures over the decades”!
Amen.
Chris Hedges predicted 4 weeks ago that the Taliban would win in a matter of weeks and the criminals who caused this war would not be held accountable by the media that has supported their crimes.
hXXps://scheerpost.com/2021/07/26/hedges-the-collective-suicide-machine/
Thank you Richard. Chris Hedges has been getting it right for years yet has been ignored and marginalized for years by those still buying the crap our political leaders peddle. It’s not only the leaders though – I have come under personal attack over these same years for sending out his work to those I believed should know more or would listen. The attacks are personal and never address the content of the material – ever. It’s not what Chris said or what I tried to share – it is simply that his views threaten the status quo. So we continue to listen to the same people that got us here, keep us here on the road to our demise. I come to CN to read the views of those who get it.
It is at least 10 weeks to Halloween, and yet we already see apparitions shambling and mumbling “forever wars, more forever wars”.
Some actually use longer sentences ““obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’,” but the meaning is the same.
Caitlin you couldn’t have said it any better!!!!