A war criminal gets honored

   By: Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

H On the eve of the New Year 2022, the UK’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair got honored with a knighthood. Tony Blair is one of the co-architects of a genocidal war against Iraq on a fabricated accusation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. During the long occupation, Mr. Blair and his partner President George W. Bush couldn't find any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. So, the war was planned only to kill Muslims and destroy a Muslim country. So, Mr. Blair is very happy that the war met its stipulated target. This is why while he was the Prime Minister, Mr. Blair didn’t pay any heed to more than 2 million people’s anti-war protest rally in Hyde Park in London. His craze for war went on. As per stipulated aim, the US and the British Armies caused the unprecedented destruction in Iraq. Even in World War I or II, no country was bombed as badly as done in Iraq. So, Mr. Blair has proven to be one of the ugliest and cruelest war criminals in human history.

The Iraq war killed and maimed almost a million. Hundreds of Iraqi cities were bombed and thousands of Iraqi houses were razed to the ground. Currently in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of men and women live with a lost leg, a lost arm, a lost eye or other disabilities. The war ended, but the people live with horrors of disabilities and painful scars in their psyche. Mr. Blair didn’t show any sign that he feels those pains. Bombs with depleted uranium were dropped on Iraqi cities to cause genetic deformities and cancers. So, in every sense, the war in Iraq has been one of the most cruel and evil acts in human history.

Along with the physical and the infrastructural damage, the ethical, the cultural, and the societal damages are also huge. The US and the British war criminals have damaged the social fabrics of Muslim brotherhood in Iraq that survived through centuries. Instead, they raised walls of bloody divisions on ethnic and religious sectarianism. So, Iraq now stands divided. Because of the social and political engineering of the occupying forces, the Iraqis have been made unfit to live peacefully and amicably among themselves. After committing all these horrendous crimes, Mr. Blair’s dead soul didn’t show any sign of regret for committing such crimes. Rather, like any criminal, he still feels that the war was the right thing to do. 

Honoring such a morally dead war criminal raised anger among the peace-loving people living in the UK. Within 6 days, more than a million people have signed a petition condemning such an act of glorifying a murderer. The genocidal massacre of innocent men and women is not the only crime; honoring or glorifying such a war criminal is also an act of crime. A man with an iota of morality can’t appreciate a killer. But in the UK, the story is otherwise. There is no shortage of people who appreciate the British colonial heritage of occupying the Asian, African and American countries and the genocidal cleansing of the natives in America, Australia and New Zealand. So, these people take it as a tribal duty to honor the war criminals of their own British tribe. Honoring Blair is indeed a candid expression of such tribal arrogance.

A Labour MP Richard Burgontalks about the moral disease of British society. He tweeted: “It says a lot about what is wrong with our system when, after being one of the leading architects of the Iraq war, Tony Blair is honoured with a knighthood while Julian Assange, who exposed war crimes in Iraq, faces extradition to the USA and a lifetime in prison.” (The Guardian, 7/1/2022). Like the ruling Conservatives, the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer also shows his own moral illness. He showed his love for this killer. He said, Mr. Blair deserved the honor. Such expression tells a lot about the high moral deficiency in the ruling elites of the UK. This is why they find no moral hindrance to create Israel on an occupied Arab land support the Israeli brutal occupation and atrocities against the Palestinians.

Source: http://southasiajournal.net/