Harsh, but fair?

[karen2205]

I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That's your call. But believe one thing if nothing else - I did what I thought was right for our country. [Tony Blair - quote from BBC website]

Is it overly harsh for me to think; yes, I believe you when you say you thought you were doing the right thing, but that's not good enough. You are the Prime Minister; you have a duty to do the job properly, it's not a role where you can legitimately excuse your poor perfomance by saying 'I did my best' where your best falls far short of the objective standards of what was needed. And that's not a purely political point - I think there was an arguable political case for involvement in Iraq, the same way there was a good case for not getting involved. But you dodged the issue. You didn't engage with the unpalatable argument, instead you now appeal to the heart; 'I did my best' and fail to engage with the issues.

Comments

[aldabra]

Yes, I thought that too. He's not paid to have faith in himself, he's paid to make functional decisions based on objective fact. Of course it's possible to be wrong even if you've made an honest effort to engage with the facts, but that's not a justification for not bothering.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

The only possible reason, as far as I can see, to protest "I did what I thought was best" is if you are acknowledging that it wasn't actually best. And the corollary, therefore, is "but I was wrong".

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

In general terms: yes, it is overly harsh. In this specific instance, if you don't believe him, no.

Generally, I think there's several different issues here; "I did what I thought was right" and "I did my best" aren't the same thing. I think it's possible to do what you think is right and still do wrong, if you haven't thought hard enough about it. If you think as hard about something as you possibly can under the circumstances (given limited time and other pressures) and reach a conclusion that you are convinced about and that you think that all the facts you were in posession of at the time would always lead you towards, that is the best that anyone can do and it's definitely overly harsh to ask for more.

I wish the decision had been taken another way in hindsight, but I remember not being nearly so opposed to it at the time, based on very limited information. I don't believe him on everything, but I believe him on that one.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

"I did my best" is acceptable for a child. It's not for a Prime Minister.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's nearly harsh enough!

But then, I was opposed to military action way before it was taken. It was pretty obvious after Afghanistan (on which I spent a lot more protesting energy, IIRC) what was likely to happen. In fact, it was pretty obvious after the Gore/Bush/Fox/Supreme Court debacle, so while I was hardly resigned, I had become tinged with apathy.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I'm curious. What should we do if a country is taken over by an armed fundamentalist group which;

1) Shelters people who launch attacks on our civilians
2) Bans the education of women, and bans them accessing medical facilities
3) Executes women who resist domestic violence
4) Engineers famine in those areas whose people resist them
5) Attempts genocide against ethnic and religious minorities

Do we just wait and hope they go away?

Karen - I don't actually understand the question you're asking. You're saying Prime Ministers should work out what they believe is right, then use the magic psychic powers you get when you walk through the door of number 10 to find out what's actually right, and then do that instead?

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

In my opinion? First, do no harm.

In an ideal world, we (the good guys, UK, EU, whoever) would be able to conquer all the countries where your 5 criteria apply, quickly and easily, and negotiate with the population to create a stable, better government.

Only we don't have that much power. There's many countries where those criteria apply (Sudan, arguably Nigeria, Saudi) and we ignore them completely, partly for political reasons but also because we don't have the manpower or influence to replace the regime in power with a better one.

In Afghanistan, attacking the Taleban has led to similar failure to the problems in the Vietnam war, plus various factions are jockeying for power leading to even less freedom or security, and many people saying that actually, the Taleban weren't so bad.
In Iraq, there used to be a good infrastructure with education and medical care and little crime. Now there isn't, and the situation for repressed minorities doesn't seem any better.

If our forces could have concentrated on one of Afghanistan or Iraq, it might not have been such a cock-up. On the other hand, no-one has ever successfully conquered Afghanistan, so I doubt military might is the way to go. Economic inducements and diplomacy may be slow but at least rarely make a situation worse for a country's people.

As for Tony - he had a duty to listen to his expert advisers before deciding what he thought was the right thing. If his 'best' involved not doing that, then it wasn't good enough for me.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

That there are some cases where we can't improve the situation doesn't mean that we shouldn't try when we believe that we can. I think it is at the least very clear that the situation in Afghanistan has improved substantially since the Taleban were deposed - there's an elected Parliament with women in it, for a start, rather than a society where women were placed under house arrest. It's an impoverished country with a lot of religious nutters, so the whole place isn't going to change overnight, but there we are.

Economic inducements and diplomacy are unlikely to achieve anything in a country which has cut off diplomatic ties with all countries in the world save one, and whose leadership throws out international aid organisations and declares in the middle of a famine that if people are dying it is because Allah doesn't wish to feed them.

Iraq is certainly better in the Kurdish areas and in the southern marshes. That a religious civil war has kicked off in many other areas is unfortunate, and was always a possibility, but it's not clear that this wouldn't have happened after Saddam was removed from power by whatever mechanism this had taken place. I certainly think we should be doing more in Sudan, but we have a problem in that the Chinese are backing them (in exchange for oil, there, I think 'no peace for oil' might be my new slogan), so the UN will be typically useless.

he had a duty to listen to his expert advisers before deciding what he thought was the right thing

His expert advisers said lots of things. There is both the possibility of them being wrong, of them disagreeing, and it's also important to note that if you choose to take a different view from the one suggested by someone else, that doesn't necessarily mean you haven't listened to them.

[cabd.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to remind all here that while the political occupation of Iraq could have been better handled by the assembled cast of the Muppet Movie, Saddam Husseins reigime was directly responsible for the deaths of millions, both inside and outside of Iraq. When pointing out that we have replaced a stable government with something rather more close to anarchy is reasonable, I think we need to remember that Hussein only achieved stability through mass murder both of his own populace and others. I believe that there are still people in hospital from when he rained shells containing mustard gas down near the suburbs of Tehran.

[karen2205]

I think invading Iraq wasn't a bad move in the circumstances, given the suffering of the people. But (1) we ought to have done the job properly in 1990, (2) should have made the argument 'we're doing this on humanitarian grounds, because the suffering of these people is intolerable' rather than 'we've some intelligence about WMD', (3) proper plans should have been made to avoid a vacuum in governance/avoid the insurgency developing before the invasion started, (4) in general proper thought should be applied to military action to avoid repeating mistakes a la Vietnam.

My other, rather cynical justification for supporting the intervention in Iraq is that it's controlling George Bush (and the US in general). It's gone 'wrong' now, so the US will be less happy to intervene in the same way again, because of the personal/financial cost. I don't trust the US to get intervention right and I want them to be more cautious and thoughtful about it. Iraq has sort of accomplished this (ie. Congress passing bills in an attempt to get the troops brought home soon).

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Don't sell them arms and don't support them when politically expedient to play them off against other countries. Be consistent. Some countries have ignored UN resolutions for many years.

I think there is a case for needing to enforce international human rights law. I'm less convinced this should be done by individual nations to other nations, particularly when those nations have a conflict of interest over oil for example. My first aim would be to reduce arms and armies in every country and think more about multinational forces if needed.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

The Cold War was something of a special case. Obviously from where we are now it looks clear that Islamic fundamentalism is the more dangerous ideology to our way of life than Soviet communism, but I think before 1979 it was reasonable to be less clear about that. Ditto selling weapons to unpleasant regimes - if we didn't do it there was a large and hostile power bloc more than happy to take them on.

My first aim would be to reduce arms and armies in every country and think more about multinational forces if needed.

Right, so what you'd like to do is an impossible thing that won't happen, which is fair enough, you're entitled to want that, but the choice which is actually open to us is between doing or not doing those things which we can in fact do.

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

I think having a clear idea of what I'd like to see is a good first step. It doesn't have to constitute an immediate, workable plan - particularly since I have little say in the decisions.

Institutions, countries etc. do change so I don't accept it being impossible. Highly improbable possibly, depending on other changes in the world, timescales etc.

I don't find the way things are acceptable. I don't like the currently available options. While accepting that decisions need to be made in the present, I still want to look for better future options.

[cabd.livejournal.com]

All very, very commendable and I agree with most of what you're saying. But at the same time, while discussing the world we want to create, its reasonable to form an opinion on what to do in the imperfect world we're living in.

[cabd.livejournal.com]

While thats a lovely idea, it isn't going to happen any time soon. In the mean time, in our imperfect world where as many governments may have vested interests in preventing action being taken in the name of human rights because to take such action impacts on their own agenda, what would you do?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Karen - I don't actually understand the question you're asking. You're saying Prime Ministers should work out what they believe is right, then use the magic psychic powers you get when you walk through the door of number 10 to find out what's actually right, and then do that instead?

Those were my thoughts, too.

What more can people do than their best?

And if it's not good enough, perhaps that means that person was the wrong person for the job. But is that a reflection on the person or on the people who judged him fit for the job?

Expecting more from a person than they (subjectively) can do seems unrealistic to me.

[karen2205]

The analogy I have in my head is of say, a doctor failing to perform advanced life support properly resulting in someone dying who if the doctor had done her job properly would have lived. Subjectively the doctor could believe she'd done her best, but she would still have fallen far short of the objective standards we require of doctors. We expect doctors to be professionally competent to do their jobs.

If someone's not professionally competent then they ought not to be doing the job. And I expect (again arguably unfairly) people to be aware of their own strengths & weaknesses and to understand what is within their range of competence. If you're a politican 'professional comptence' means (to me) 'ability to take the advice you're given, assess its veracity, weigh it up and come to a reasoned conclusion that you're able to present as a reasoned conclusion rather than a 'gut decision'' It also requires 'learning from history' and 'forseeing the consequences and making plans to deal with them'. IMO a lot of the problems in Iraq come not from the invasion itself but from the utter lack of planning with regards 'what do we do once we've overthrown Saddam'. That's inexcusable IMO.

[pne.livejournal.com]

If someone's not professionally competent then they ought not to be doing the job.

That makes sense to me.

[cabd.livejournal.com]

While I agree that it is appropriate for a retiring PM to fight his corner and say why he was right to do what he did, I think that theres a time and a place. Said speech was neither.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Take your pick, several of the talking heads on Sky News had a go at him for avoiding the issues in his speech... one of them said 'and he didn't even mention Iraq', it was fortunate really there was a Labour Lord stood next to him to say 'er, yes he did'.