Desmond Tutu: George Bush and Tony Blair Should Be Tried For War Crimes in Iraq Invasion

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu withdrew last minute from the leadership summit held two  weeks ago in South Africa because he said he could not be seen on the same stage with Tony Blair who Tutu said should be tried in the Hagues with George W. Bush for “illegal” invasion of Iraq.

 

Tutu was supposed to attend the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg with Blair fort-night ago. He apologised to the organisers for withdrawing so late. He exclaimed that as the date drew near he felt  “an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on ‘leadership’ with Mr. Blair.”


Archbishop Tutu in an editorial in The Guardian held Blair and Bush responsible for the crisis in the Middle East.

Adding that instead of using there their sophisticated technology to unite the world, they succeeded in using it to tear the world further apart.   

Tutu argued that the world is not impartial rather selective and hypocitical in its response to international tyrants.  
 

“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.”

“Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. “They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand—with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”

“On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers’ circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr. Bush’s chief supporter, Mr. Blair confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?”

Tutu said that according to Iraqi body Count project, an average of 6,5 innocent people died every day in Iraq last year from suicide and vehicle bombings . over 110,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since 2003, while nearly 4,500 American soldiers have been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

“On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague,”

 Blair disagreed with Tutu and responded  by saying that Tutu's reasoning was "bizarre" and defended his role and that of Bush in a  statement insisting  “This is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say, But surely in a healthy democracy people can agree to disagree.”

 

And he argued that SadamHussein’s murdering of his political opponents and cruelty against his own people made the case for removing him “morally strong”     

 

Maintaining that evidence had shown that Iraqis had a better quality of life now than they did under Saddam Hussein. ( I was wondering how many Iraqis can testify to the trueness of this claim).

“To repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence [on weapons of mass destruction] is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown,” Blair said in his statement. “And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre. We have just had the memorials both of the Halabja massacre, where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million, including many killed by chemical weapons.”

This is a matter of when two elephants are fighting, the grass suffers. In as much as the archbishop wants to make a statement by pulling out of the summit, I felt he would have attended the summit and use the platform to make his feelings known to Mr. Blair and make some suggestions on how to end the conflict in Syria and on  other current pressing issues.

The wrongs cann’t make it right.  Having said that, I respect his decision not to attend the meeting. Sometimes one has to stick to his principle no matter what.