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CounterPunch
March 5,
2003
Tony Blair, Moralist?
Killing in Defense
of Ideology
By TED HONDERICH
Edmund Burke, MP, author of the book Reflections
on the Revolution in France, said publishers deal in commodities
they do not understand. "True", said one Murphy, "some
of 'em deal in morality". Are politicians the same? Is Mr
Blair this way? It matters a lot more. A lack of moral intelligence
in a politician can get other people killed by the thousands.
Mr Blair is letting us know at the moment
that he wouldn't be going to war if he didn't think it was moral.
But I never thought he was being consciously immoral. Did anybody?
We didn't think he was entirely amoral either, untouched by moral
considerations, maybe just a cynic about international relations
or a proponent of what is sometimes called political realism.
But the irrelevance of Mr Blair's present disclosure about himself
is not the main point.
The question about Iraq is whether it
is right to attack, invade and occupy it. Whatever the right
thing to do is, it can be done out of good, bad or indifferent
personal motives. Saints can do the wrong thing and monsters
can do the right thing. It is not reassuring that Mr Blair seems
not always to concentrate his  mind on the issue of what
is right, or runs it together with his own sincerity and his
church-going.
A second thing hasn't been reassuring.
That was his seeming to discover a week ago, after some months
of ardent campaigning and presumably reflecting on Iraq, that
there was a moral case he could make -- presumably about the
right thing to do. It was about possible or probable effects
on Iraqis themselves of leaving Sadam in power. That raises a
question. What kind of case did Mr Blair think he was making
in connection with the war before then?
Maybe he'll say now that he was proposing
the right thing all along, for various reasons, but didn't think
of it in terms of morality. It won't be much of a reply. It will
still seem that he has been and is uncertain about what he is
involved in. Maybe uncertain of the fact that morality is absolutely
inescapable. You can be as amoral as you want -- it can't save
your from moral judgement, or indeed from your trying to put
yourself somehow in the right.
There's a third thing as bad. Does Mr
Blair have a grip on the nature of reasons, including moral reasons?
If you give something as a reason for attacking Iraq, you point
to a fact. Say the fact that it has gone against UN resolutions.
Any such reason, by its very nature, is general. If you run into
the fact somewhere else, or have your nose rubbed in it, say
with Israel and UN resolutions, you have the same reason for
action there.
If you say you haven't, certain things
follow as night follows day. Your fact isn't a reason with Iraq
either. It can't be. If it was, it would be a reason with Israel.
And, further and relatedly, it isn't why you are attacking Iraq.
It isn't any part of the explanation.
Of course Mr Blair says there are differences
between the two cases. Well, there are differences between any
two cases whatever. Whether they are relevant or powerful differences
is another matter. It is a kind of self-deception, not very bright,
to think you can always get out of things -- always make a distinction
that serves your purpose or interests. You can't. There's some
actual truth at the bottom of morality.
A fourth item also worries me about Mr
Blair as moralist. It has to do with that new argument a week
ago about the effects on Iraqis themselves of leaving Sadam in
power.
Mr Blair says we can attack Iraq because
if we don't, Sadam will be free to do terrible things to his
own people. This is about as alarming as an argument can get.
There is no parity between our doing something with the dead
certainty of killing and maiming thousands, and not doing it
with only some probability that some people will suffer. Sadam
may not have changed, but his world sure has.
One more thought about Mr Blair as moralist.
If Iraq is attacked, it will not just be about fear of terrorism,
let alone a clear and present danger. It will not just be about
oil. It will not just be about American imperialism. It will
not only be about leaders not up to their jobs. It will not even
be just about Israel. Nothing of any interest, no war in particular,
is the result of a single cause. This complexity is close to
the fact that there are many possible reasons for war, as there
are many against.
To fail to see and to put each of them
clearly, and to show how you weigh each of them, is to fail in
your obligation as a leader. It is to let down democracy.
One particular way you can fail, and
fail morally, is cant. It is cant to say that the UN is in danger
of destroying itself when you yourself are trying to lead the
world against its legitimate conclusion and may act to weaken
or destroy it. It is cant to say that it is Sadam who is responsible
for a war about to happen, and you are not, when you are massing
armies, condemning every concession as fraud, about to attack,
and so on.
Cant is no part of moral intelligence.
It can turn the stomach. It should. It does.
What is about to start is not a moral
war, but in good part an ideological war. That is as important
as any other cause of it. It is a war owed to an American realization,
produced by the monstrous act of September 11 and then the mixed
reaction to it, that much of the world is against or half-against
our way of life, and also what we are doing to theirs. They are
against the way of life about whose moral basis Mr Blair has
not been much troubled. What we are about to do is to defend
our ideology, by killing people.
Do you say this is moral philosopher's
stuff? Well, a million people marched in London for something
like it. A lot of Labour MP's voted against their leader, most
of the ones without something to lose. A million people and a
few MP's, for the same reason, may be in the streets not standing
shoulder to shoulder with our army when it starts killing people
in Mr Blair's moral mission.
Ted Honderich
is Great Britain's outstanding progressive philosopher, recently
interviewed for CounterPunch by Paul de Rooij. One of his past
books was Punishment, The Supposed Justifications. Another
was the funny and deadly examination of a political tradition,
Conservatism, and a third Violence for Equality: Inquiries
in Political Philosophy. His new book is After
the Terror (Edinburgh University Press, Columbia University
Press). He can be reached at: honderich@counterpunch.org
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