The great islamic threat?
By Gwynne Dyer
(source: The MetroWest Daily News)
People often wind up believing their own cover story. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, for example, is trapped forever in the rationalizations he used in 2003 to explain why he was going along with George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He was at it again last week, telling the BBC that "radical Islam" is the greatest threat facing the world today.
The BBC journalist went to Ireland for the interview, because Blair chose Dublin for the only live signing of his newly published autobiography: a personal appearance in Britain wouldn’t be safe. Even in Ireland, the protesters threw eggs and shoes at the man who was Bush’s faithful sidekick in the struggle to save Western civilisation from radical Islam.
But is militant Islam really a bigger threat to the world than the possibility of a major nuclear war (happily now in abeyance, but never really gone)? Bigger than the risk that infectious diseases are going to make a major come-back as antibiotics become ineffective? Bigger even than the threat of runaway global warming?
Blair has to say it is, because he was one of the people who launched a crusade against radical Islamists after 9/11. Or at least against those whom they accused of being supporters of radical Islam, although many of them (like Saddam Hussein) were nothing of the sort.
Blair has never publicly acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was actually an enemy of radical Islam: admitting it would drain the last dram of logic from his justification for invading Iraq. So he only talks in general terms about fighting "radical Islam," and hopes that the more ignorant part of the public will think that includes the Iraq war.