BBC News – Tony Blair: ‘We didn’t cause Iraq crisis’

Writing on his website, he said the violence was the “predictable and malign effect” of inaction in Syria.”We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this,” he wrote. “We haven’t.”He said the idea that the current crisis was a result of the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was “bizarre”.Mr Blair said the takeover of Mosul by Sunni insurgents was planned across the Syrian border.

via BBC News – Tony Blair: ‘We didn’t cause Iraq crisis’.

What amazes me is the habit of no one taking responsibility for anything in these tragedies. We have a blind eye of Western powers turned toward the Gulf and its massive funding of terrorism, polarization against Shi’ites, because they are ‘allies’. We have no responsibility for the bitterness and fear Iraqis feel from any American or Iraqi government use of force, due to the horror of overkill and abuse in Blair’s war, and therefore their actually siding in many cases with the Sunni extremists. We have no responsibility from Iran and Russia for aiding and abetting Bashar’s destruction of his own people that laid the groundwork for an insurgency that had no protection from extremist penetration. All around, there are many states here to blame for this mess. yes, the Neocons always come in at the last stage, when all their damage was done, and say, we must use force and use it  hard. Yes, now that things are really extreme due to their own policies of overkill, excessive force, cover up for allies, and lack of truly honest democratization across the whole region. The latter is another major factor here, in that much of the funding for extremism across the Gulf is from populations eager to express frustrations and aspirations that cannot fill at home. Despite all the damage done, it is finally clear that had the United States and the West had a more balanced approach to Iran they may have seen the wisdom of insisting on multi-lateral Sunni/Shia Gulf negotiations, to prevent a set of proxy wars and rebellions from Syria and Iraq to Bahrain. But Blair the warrior only focuses on force at these moments instead of A. accepting failure, and B. devising the diplomatic initiatives that would truly isolate extremism.