Is the destruction and chaos in Iraq really the fault of Tony Blair?

‘THEY have sown the wind and shall reap the whirlwind’ (Hosea 8:7). Labour sowed the wind, with Bush and Blair’s illegal revenge attack on Iraq. By destroying the Iraqi army and the country’s civil service without replacing it with an effective authority, they allowed the development of internecine warfare between Sunni and Shia, encouraged by the Saudis, whose nationals were largely behind 9/11. And they have given to jihadists the motivation to punish the West for ‘persecuting Islam’. Labour was obliged by our EU membership to let in immigrants from Eastern Europe, who mainly share our religion and traditions. But we were not obliged — except that Labour wanted their votes — to let in two million immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh, who brought with them their own traditions including forced marriages, honour killings, female subjugation, an acceptance of fundamentalist Islam and Sharia law. The Left encouraged multi-culturalism, leaving these communities isolated and anti-integration. Dissenters were stigmatised as bigots and racists, so fundamentalist preachers were allowed to spread their poison in UK mosques and communities, and we now have British-born jihadists

fighting in Syria and Iraq, threatening to bring jihad back to the UK. Thanks, Labour. We are reaping the whirlwind.

IAN HARRIs, Bognor Regis, sussex. Why do Tony Blair and the U.S. insist on denying responsibility for what’s happening in Iraq? We can only speculate as to what the situation might be if they hadn’t invaded or if, having occupied it, they had left it in a stable condition. Their only achievement was that Saddam hussein was captured and hanged. But with so many dictators in the world, why was Iraq singled out? It seems Saddam understood the country’s sectarian problems better than Blair. he had no weapons of mass destruction and no intention of attacking the West. Blair showed no respect for his fellow MPs, knowing they were gullible. Is this what he assured George Bush in the letters which aren’t to be published by the Chilcot Inquiry? Bush needed Blair’s support and Blair said: ‘Leave it to me, George.’ The puzzle is: why?

D. W. WATHEN, Oakfields, Worcs. THERE’S a passionate campaign to blame Tony Blair for the situation in Iraq, but I’m not sure it can be laid at his door. The real threat is different. At the time, I thought the U.S. and Britain would not have invaded unless they had a plan to bring stability to the country once they’d rid it of Saddam. How wrong I was. But even if Blair hadn’t backed the war, events might not have been different. Saddam would have been subject to an ‘Arab Spring’ uprising and would now be suppressing it with his customary savagery. The West would be wringing its hands and berating Blair for not taking the initiative and getting rid of Saddam when the opportunity was there. There is no reason to assume civil war as seen in Syria would not have been repeated in Iraq. The contagion from Syria to Iraq would have occurred in exactly the same manner. The gradual build-up of a fundamentalist jihadist movement to install a world Muslim caliphate has been growing for decades. It aims to provoke its enemies by terrorism into aggressive acts of self-protection which can then be presented as attacking the Muslim people. Whatever is done by any nation to protect itself against such terrorist activities will be used as propaganda to radicalise more people. Whatever Blair did or didn’t do wouldn’t have made much difference. Blaming him is just a way of hiding from the real threat facing us all.

DAVID CHAPMAN, Worthing, sussex.