“Of course you can’t say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015,” Tony Blair told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in a documentary on the Iraq War that aired Monday.
The war in Iraq is largely to blame for the public’s poor perception of Blair. “His support for US President George W Bush in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was the most disputed foreign policy decision by a British prime minister since Anthony Eden decided British troops should invade Egypt in 1956,” the BBC reported earlier this year in an article entitled Why is Tony Blair so unpopular?
His latest comments however are widely seen to be a preemptive attempt at deflecting future criticism. A forthcoming report to be published by Sir John Chilcot will examine the UK’s role in the Iraq war. A recently leaked memo indicated that Blair had agreed to go to war in Iraq a year before actual the invasion.
The invasion and subsequent dismantling of the Iraqi armed forces led to a political and military vacuum. The UN says over 18,000 people have died since the start of the war, but Iraq Body Count, an independent public database that uses media reports and other data, places the figure at over 144,000 documented civilian deaths.
Meanwhile, some radical Islamist groups, including the notorious ISIS, organized and prospered in this vacuum. When Zakaria asked Blair if the Iraq War was the main driving factor behind the rise of ISIS, also known as ISIL or the Islamic State, Blair replied, “I think there are elements of truth in that.”
The former British Prime Minister regularly faces vitriol for his role in the invasion of Iraq. George W. Bush, however, has seen his popularity increase since he left office, despite foreign policy decisions that are still plaguing the United States today.
“I feel revulsion,” Reg Keys, father of Lance Corporal Tom Keys who was killed in Iraq in 2003, told the Telegraph in response to Blair’s latest comments. “This man [Blair] certainly got it wrong. 179 British service personnel dead, 3,500 wounded. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children that lost their lives. The guy has got to hold his hands up [and say] I got it wrong and I apologize.”
Yet, while Blair has come forward to claim some iota of responsibility, Republican Presidential Candidate Jeb Bush has struck a different chord by repeatedly defending his brother’s record.
“I’m not saying this because I’m a Bush,” he said in Iowa recently. “I’m proud of what he did to create a secure environment for our country.”