Why Cameron was right - and Blair wrong - about Colonel Gadaffi
As much as it pains Paul Linford, he admits that Cameron got it right on Gadaffi and Libya.
27 Sep 2011, 17:15
Blair: Wrong on Gadaffi
Once more, we were off on a misguided crusade to foist Western-style democracy on an Islamic country in what would, in all probability, end up in an al-Qaeda takeover.
But in retrospect, I was wrong, and not just because the supposed "threat" from al-Qaeda turned out to be merely pro-Gadaffi propaganda.
The really crucial difference between David Cameron's successful intervention in Libya and Tony Blair's disastrous intervention in Iraq was that, this time, British interests were actually at stake.
The involvement of the former Libyan regime in the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 and the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 is of course well-documented, even if only one person has ever been convicted of either crime.
What was less well-known, certainly to the wider public, was Gadaffi's involvement in the civil war that was fought on these shores from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, between the British government and the IRA.
Although some aspects of this story were already in the public domain, last night's edition of the ITV documentary series Exposure tied the threads together superbly.
As well as detailing the extent of Gadaffi's provision of weapons to the Provos in the 70s and 80s, it also revealed he was still arming present-day Irish dissident groups right up to the moment of his overthrow.
The definitive statement of the principles, which should, to my mind, govern British foreign policy, was made by possibly our greatest-ever Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, in the 19th century.
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." he said in 1848.
When Tony Blair joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he ignored those timeless principles.
His alliance with President George Bush overrode the more important question of whether British interests were at stake, which despite all the dodgy dossiers which claimed otherwise, we now know they were not.
Furthermore, Blair doubly betrayed British interests by sucking up to the Gadaffi regime in the risible belief that this purveyor of state-sponsored terrorism was somehow on the side of the angels in that greater struggle, the 'war on terror.'
From the man whose government once promised an "ethical foreign policy," it was as classic an example of the old playground principle of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" as can be imagined.
Whether consciously or otherwise, David Cameron has avoided the mistakes of his predecessor-but-one and stayed true to the old Palmerstonian doctrine.
I don't make a habit of praising Conservative Prime Ministers at the expense of Labour ones, but on this matter, at least, I am happy to do so.
Comments (1)
Subscribe to this posts's comments feed
I thought exactly the same, it was an adventure we shouldn't have got involved with.
I still think it was a very dangerous thing to do and just because it seems to have come off doesn't mean we will get off lightly the next time and there will be!
29/09/2011 16:58