Tony Blair has given a notable interview to Al Arabiya News. It is notable partly for the editing out of the questions he is asked, which gives his monologue a frenetic tone. Nothing is lost by leaving out the questions, though, because they can be easily guessed from his answers, which rebut their deathly assumptions.
Blair points out that he was “the first prime minister to have Muslim ministers” and to allow Muslim state schools on the same basis as Jewish and Christian ones. In the most striking passage, he says of the bombers who killed 52 people on the Tube and a bus in London in July 2005:
Why do we think it’s our mistake that’s gone and caused them to kill totally innocent people on a bus in London? This the mindset we’ve got to get out of, Sahd [phonetic]. You see, it’s their fault they’re doing that. No one forced them to do it. They were given all the opportunities in Britain. Some of them were people who had got good jobs, good pay, free health care, free welfare benefits. What is making them go and kill wholly innocent people?
By the way, I can understand, as you say, an external policy that they think is wrong: right, come and get me. I’m the author of it. Don’t get totally innocent people on a bus just going to work. People with families who end up never seeing their children again. Children who never see their parents again. We’ve got to confront this for what it is and we’ve got to stop excusing it, or saying it’s because of somebody else that they’re doing that.
Worth watching it all. [If I can find a link, I’ll replace it – Ed]
Eagle Eye 