sticking to his guns

Not having been subjected to his rule—and thus to the notorious spinning that came out of his office—I have the luxury of considering Tony Blair’s comments and arguments on their merits. He hasn’t moved an inch on Iraq:

In my view if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this [WMD] issue had changed I was in favour of military action. And, I am afraid, in one sense it is worse than people think in so far as my position is concerned. I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now.” But did he feel remorse about a war and an occupation that left 4,000 Americans dead, 150 British dead, 75,000 Iraqis dead by the most conservative estimate and more than 3 million refugees?

“There’d be something wrong with me if I didn’t, or an acute sense of responsibility which I . . . will have for the rest of my life,” Blair said. “But I can’t say what I don’t believe about this; whatever it began as, it is part of this wider struggle today and . . . if there’s anything I regret. . . it is . . . not having laid out for people in a clearer way what I saw as the profound nature of this struggle and the fact that it was going to go on for a generation.”

And for once his conclusion was, very uncharacteristically, gloomy. “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out. Our determination has got to match theirs and our will has got to be stronger than theirs and at the moment I think it is probably not.”

Read the whole thing.