THE British queen is about to award a knighthood to Tony Blair, an act that starkly exposes the hypocrisy of the West in its stance on the Ukraine war. In their outrage over the Russian incursions into Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, Western countries have invoked international law, imposed sanctions against Russia, welcomed mainly white refugees and cheered on Ukraine’s armed resistance.
Stop the War Coalition has called for an immediate cessation of the Ukraine war, which they point out has been going on since 2014, and not 2022. What is not generally highlighted in the current news is that between 2014 and early February 2022, more than 14,000 Ukrainians, most of whom were Russian-speaking, had already been the casualties of conflict.
And 31 years after the formal dissolution of the Warsaw Pact on March 31, 1991, and thus the end of the Cold War, Nato has not dissolved as promised but has continued its eastward expansion. Nato has now become an instrument to maintain the US’ military hegemony. The war in Ukraine has turned into a proxy war between Russia and Nato and it is the Ukrainian people who are suffering the consequences.
Rather than sending extra missiles to Ukraine and fuelling the conflict, the British government ought to be encouraging a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, and the recommencement of peace talks, although they have not yet shown any sign of doing so.
Has the West forgotten, in the British queen’s imminent bestowment of a knighthood for Blair, their hypocrisy and culpability in their actions in other parts of the world? Remember that the US-led war in Iraq, which began 19 years ago, was widely seen as an unlawful invasion of one state by another.
But Iraqis who fought the Americans were branded as terrorists, and refugees fleeing to the West were often turned away, treated as potential security threats. Yemen has suffered years of war between a US and UK-backed Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which has left 13 million people at risk of starvation.
While the Western media have covered the Ukraine war meticulously from the Ukrainian side, they have not brought these detailed accounts of starving infants in the Middle East to international attention. Israel’s occupation of lands the Palestinians claim for a future state is well into its sixth decade, and millions of Palestinians still live under military rule. While the Western world has cheered Ukrainians as they stockpile Molotov cocktails and take up arms against the Russians, Palestinians and Iraqis are branded as terrorists when they resist in the same way.
The Biden administration has alleged that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine and would work with others to prosecute offenders. But the US is not a member of the International Criminal Court and staunchly opposes any international probe of its own conduct in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan.
The record of Blair’s time as prime minister is paved with so much destruction and injustice that the decision to award him such an honour is an affront to peace-loving people all over the world. His most despicable role was in signing the country up to the US-led Afghanistan and Iraq wars, by lying repeatedly to get Britain into the war on the false pretence that there was a direct connection between 9/11 and the Taliban regime, as well as the fabricated claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Blair’s wars left devastation and destruction in their wake, a refugee crisis and millions dead.
In 2004, the then United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal. Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN’s founding charter.
Blair should be held accountable for war crimes. Honouring him with a knighthood is a disgrace and demonstrates that the queen has not shown remorse for the British colonial legacy of occupations and exploitation that includes Malaya. – The Vibes, June 13, 2022
Kua Kia Soong is a member of Stop the War Coalition
