Seems like a storm in a teacup.

I'm no fan of George; his antics in the Celeb BB House showed his contempt for the people who elected him (by not being in parliament, especially for some key votes, and not for pretending to be a cat, however off-putting). In fact, his record of non-attendance in general shows to me he's more interested in building a cult of personality around himself than actually being a politician. Or, fate forbid, make a difference.

However, when asked 'Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber, if there were no other casualties, be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?', what response can be expected? If, like George (myself, and a hefty proportion of the population) you believe that Tony Blair has taken this country into an illegal invasion, and as such is personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians, how could your answer be anything other than: Morally understandable - yes; the right thing to do - no.

Which is what he has said. Admittedly I'm sure Tony would prefer the reason it would be wrong not to be because it would escalate rather than improve the situation between the west and the middle-east, but because he's a nice guy and doesn't deserve to die. But when you've got as much blood on your hands as Tony does, you should take what you can.

As for Stephen Pound - if George said the sun will rise tomorrow, there'd be a queue of Labour MPs wanting to denounce him as making promises he can't keep. It's sad and a big part of what's wrong with modern politics - it all sounds like a bunch of kids in a primary school yard, arguing over who's dad is bigger than who's.

More interesting, I thought, was this tosh. When did Ming the Merciless turn into Ming the Pacifist?

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By Ming the Not Thought This Through
No politician, ever, by act, word, or deed either expressly or by implication, should give any support to the notion that violence might be justified.

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If I thought Ming was a pacifist I might find that honourable. As he isn't, he just sounds like he wants sound bites rather than content. Ah, the Blair legacy will be with us for a long time I fear...

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by Jayjay
However, when asked 'Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber, if there were no other casualties, be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?', what response can be expected? If, like George (myself, and a hefty proportion of the population) you believe that Tony Blair has taken this country into an illegal invasion, and as such is personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians, how could your answer be anything other than: Morally understandable - yes; the right thing to do - no.

Which is what he has said.

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I don't think it is.

Galloway's Respect party is hastily trying to claim he was just trying to understand exploding mullahs: "Like the Prime Minister’s wife commenting on suicide bombings in Israel I understand why such desperate acts take place and why those involved might believe such actions are morally justifiable."

But he wasn't. Saying "Yes, it would be morally justified" isn't the same thing as saying, "Yes, I can see how a mad mahdi would think it's morally justified." Galloway, not just the suicide bomber, thinks it's justified. He only said he'd shop such a plot to the cops because it'd create a racist backlash, not because it was wrong.

I was quite miffed to find that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had visited our SureStart centre in Gloucester during the general election, and I'd missed the visit, but it saved me from a moral dilemma. I truly believe that if I were in the same room as the man who has still not come up with an acceptable excuse for being complicit in such wholesale slaughter, and whose previous excuses have all turned out to be as paper thin as the anti-war faction thought they were, I would be obliged to try to snap his neck, however unlikely my chances of success were. Each day he fails to resign over Iraq, as a bare minimum gesture, is another day that we tolerate a criminal with, as Byron said, blood on his hands, for a leader. So as far as assassination threats go, Blair has sown the wind. He's also provided plenty of fertiliser, by continually behaving as if he has not the slightest thing to apologise for, when he's betrayed his own alleged Christian beliefs. I don't think he'll ever be brought to justice by legal means.

Know the feeling. When I was outside Parliament for the Top-Up fees vote I had to take myself away from the smug Blairite due to a very real desire to stick the boot in. (And I now support top-up fees, so that would have been a hiding to nothing. Literally.)

Maybe Blair won't see justice, but appointing oneself judge, jury and executioner can't be the answer. Whatever Jacobean fantasies I might entertain (and there's been some doozies) surrendering to them would reduce me to his level.

He's betrayed many things, but not his Christian beliefs. That faith has never had a problem waging wars in the holy land.

Some people might be able to morally justify it but that doesn't make it morally justified. As we are talking about an impact on a whole society assassinating something like this cannot be uniformally morally justified (there will always be people that disagree)

You can only justify an action if you can justify the consequences as well. Seeing the suicide bomber would have to get pretty close to be sure to be succesful it aint like he would suffer or generally notice very much of an explosion. So in effect you are justifying the punishment of someones family and friends. Not to mention that it's bad for the economy (energy prices / general unrest and insecurity) which means higher bills, more people without a job etc etc. So you also punish all those people as well.

So really what you are justifying in that case would be a quick and painless death of the person in question and all hell breaking loose on the rest of the population of 2 - 3 continents.

Pretty sure you can't justify those consequences therefore you cannot justify the action either. Also the fact that someone else has to give their life to do something which should be justified in the first place should have been a pretty good indicator.

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by Byron
Know the feeling. When I was outside Parliament for the Top-Up fees vote I had to take myself away from the smug Blairite due to a very real desire to stick the boot in. (And I now support top-up fees, so that would have been a hiding to nothing. Literally.)

Maybe Blair won't see justice, but appointing oneself judge, jury and executioner can't be the answer. Whatever Jacobean fantasies I might entertain (and there's been some doozies) surrendering to them would reduce me to his level.

He's betrayed many things, but not his Christian beliefs. That faith has never had a problem waging wars in the holy land.

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The time when crusades would be waged openly is long gone, though, and Blair certainly didn't have the Church's backing on this occasion. No, for this he had to put his secular hat on, the one that let's him kill dozens of innocent people in an attempt to wipe out Saddam with an airstrike. He doesn't have the right to call himself a Christian.

I agreed with him about top-up fees too, even though when he opted to be grilled by an audience, including students, I wanted him to do badly, anything that would undermine his authority to invade other countries. If not for his complete brain spasm over Iraq, I would be prepared to trust over a lot of things, but he's palpably in denial of how badly he betrayed that trust when he presented the case for military action. Until he goes, I will have no truck with Labour, and I'm kind of disappointed in Gordon Brown for not being more openly sceptical. John Reid as leader... don't even go there...

I don't think killing Blair would be about 'sinking to his level', though. The bad things he has enabled, at the very least, to come to pass, were part of an agenda, whether the goal was oil or influence in the region. The PM's own demise would be a consequence of that agenda, just like the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, and the hundreds of dead and maimed British troops, and the far greater number of their American counterparts. If punishing a crime is sinking to the criminal's level, the courts do that everyday. I don't view it as such, though.

By the way, on Radio 4's 'Any Questions?', someone, and I believe it may have been John Denham, said that while Galloway may have had the right to say what he did, that didn't mean he was right to say it. As the last part looks like a matter of opinion to me (as I for one disagree), that's a pretty meaningless assertion.

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by The_Host
If punishing a crime is sinking to the criminal's level, the courts do that everyday. I don't view it as such, though.

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Exactly, the courts do it. Just punishment decided by an impartial judge and delivered after due process of law is very different from assasination.

Let me create a scenarion for you. You live in a land where thousands of your fellow citizens have been killed by an invading country. And continue to die, have homes destroyed and freedoms curtailed (never mind the intermittant loss of essentials like water and electricity) as part of the occupation by these foreign troops. Would you consider killing the leader of that nation (or one of its main allies) an act of retribution, immorality, or a bid for freedom - to end the occupation?

I've no idea what I'd do in that situation. Part of me hopes I'd join whatever resistance force there was and do whatever I could to achieve liberation and an end to suffering. Part of me suspects I'd just try and hide. But what I cannot do is turn around and describe anyone prepared to do that as a 'mad mahdi'. I just call them desperate, whether we're talking about Israel/Palestine, the Iraq Occupation, or anywhere else under a brutal occupation.

This is why I agree with the demagogue George here. Blair has taken too many innocent lives for his life to be worth a sot. If I thought Blair's death would mean peace I'd openly back it right now. But it won't. Because he didn't do it alone. He did it with the backing of Parliament, and of the country. We even re-elected him. See, the problem is it isn't just his fault, even though he led. Because we followed. As a democracy we must share the responsibility, and accept the consequencies, of his actions.

Mr Galloway's comments merely reflect the feeling (I suspect) of the main body of those who oppose the war. Whether he is saying 'I can empathise' or 'I agree' is small fry at best and semantics at worst. The real question is, are we as a nation going to continue to support Blair and his acts of mass murder, and if not, what exactly are we prepared to do about it?

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by Jayjay
Let me create a scenarion for you. You live in a land where thousands of your fellow citizens have been killed by an invading country. And continue to die, have homes destroyed and freedoms curtailed (never mind the intermittant loss of essentials like water and electricity) as part of the occupation by these foreign troops.

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how do you square this with the fact thatmore people are being killed by the insurgents than the military?
yes, some civilians are dying following attacks from the coalition forces - but far more are dying in attacks by their fellow iraqis.
and these people are also doing their damndest to stop people joining the iraqi police, by bombing the gell out of anyone who shows any interest in joining - there is no chance of the iraqi people being able to control their own destiny if they have no police to up[hold the law - or, indeed, no military to defend them because (again) the insurgents are bombing the iraqi army.
cant remember where, but i read somewhere recently that the number of iraqis killed in explosions set off by their own people is rapidly approaching the number of those killed since the original invasion - not sure how accurate this report is, has anyone else seen it?

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by Jayjay
Mr Galloway's comments merely reflect the feeling (I suspect) of the main body of those who oppose the war. Whether he is saying 'I can empathise' or 'I agree' is small fry at best and semantics at worst.

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It's not semantics, it's an essential distinction. Empathy is the imaginative process of viewing the world through another person's eyes. It doesn't imply agreement of any sort. I can empathise, or try to, with an Islamist terrorist or a Gauntanamo Bay guard. But it doesn't stop me wanting both jailed for the rest of their natural lives.

As for the morality of assassination: I think it's wrong, full stop. The US government is rightly condemned for "targeted killings" of terrorist suspects. Let's not play the same game. Justifying assassination endorses murder as a valid policy tool and abandons all hope of establishing a system of international justice.

Ironically, "Blair has taken too many innocent lives for his life to be worth a sot," is itself a very Blairite statement. It accepts the Blair-think idea that human life has no inherent value. Any meaningful concept of human rights values life whatever a person does.

(BTW, I'm aware this is probably Galloway's latest attention-grabbing publicity stunt, but it's an interesting topic of debate nonetheless.)

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by Byron
(quotes)
Exactly, the courts do it. Just punishment decided by an impartial judge and delivered after due process of law is very different from assasination.

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Unfortunately, the courts won't do it. Blair controls the terms of reference and bleats that 'four enquiries' have exonerated him. Only 'history' can judge him, which must have been Hitler's view...

And yes, it can seem like a crude tactic, bringing in Hitler, but what JayJay said about how Iraqis might feel towards Blair is exactly what British people thought about Hitler, that killing him could end the war, even though he was not a combatant. Why should Blair's skin be inviolate, when so many young men and women are risking theirs?

And to Saddam, add Castro and Gaddafi. National leaders whose assassination was regarded as acceptable...

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by The_Host
(quotes)
Unfortunately, the courts won't do it. Blair controls the terms of reference and bleats that 'four enquiries' have exonerated him. Only 'history' can judge him, which must have been Hitler's view...

And yes, it can seem like a crude tactic, bringing in Hitler, but what JayJay said about how Iraqis might feel towards Blair is exactly what British people thought about Hitler, that killing him could end the war, even though he was not a combatant. Why should Blair's skin be inviolate, when so many young men and women are risking theirs?

And to Saddam, add Castro and Gaddafi. National leaders whose assassination was regarded as acceptable...

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Much as I dislike Blair, he isn't remotely comparable to Hitler. If you want to debate whether the mustached one should have been slotted, sure, sounds interesting, but this thread isn't the place.

Blair's agenda-setting is exactly the reason he should be arraigned before a court. Doing so would bury his claims of unaccountability for ever. Assassination would admit failure and martyr him. If hes never tried, well, better the effort is made and sets an example to future generations than we resort to the tactics Blair would use. The moves against Castro and Gaddafi are exactly the sort of extra-judicial state terrorism that defines everything I oppose. (The repeated Castro farces were responsible for a 1970s presidential order to the CIA banning secret assassinations.)

The ends do not justify the means.

I think you're a little in love with the idea of being 'better than Blair', Byron. I spoke of the difficulty of bringing him to justice before. Perhaps I wasn't clear, in my own mind as well as my words. Simply put, after years of the killing in Iraq, and the weasel words at Westminster, and new legislation to outlaw protest, and back in Iraq the regular reports of our side sinking to 'their' level, I've lost faith in justice. If killing Blair amounts to no more than vengeance, that's got to be better than hearing him whinge on about terrorists hating our 'way of life', so he can take away the liberties that ensure that 'way of life'. It's like Costello said about Maggie: "I never thought for a moment, that human life could be so cheap, but..."

And if I thought Blair wasn't remotely comparable to Hitler, I wouldn't have mentioned Hitler. Remote similiarities abound, such as the propaganda Blair authorises, and the manifest destiny he appears to believe in is far from unlike Hitler's convictions of moral justification. I'm sure a lot of people thought Adolph was quite the lad when he annexed Czechoslovakia...

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by The_Host
I think you're a little in love with the idea of being 'better than Blair', Byron.

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I believe letting hatred drive you into becoming the very thing you oppose is self-defeating, yes.

Morality aside (if you believe an appropriate response to repressive law is murder we occupy different moral universes) assassinating Blair would fail utterly in its stated objective. The backlash it provoked would make the current war on terrorism and attacks on civil liberty look like a breezy afternoon stroll. Individuals are rarely the problem; it's the movements they front.

As for the Hitler comparison: when Blair liquidates parliament, has hundreds of his political enemies murdered and starts to systematically murder an entire race of people, then, and only then, do they hold up. (I don't care for Godwin's Law, but it's mighty tempting to invoke it right now. ) The only people who thought he was quite the lad for invading Czechoslovakia counted synchronized marching and jackboot arranging amongst their hobbies.

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by Byron
(quotes)
I believe letting hatred drive you into becoming the very thing you oppose is self-defeating, yes.

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Hatred, loathing, contempt, tomayto, tomahto, different universes. I will never be Blair. I take responsibility for what I do.