Until the day Bill Clinton left the White House, Tony Blair was on a roll. Then a screwed-up little Texan took over and Tony fell in with a bad crowd. The rest is history - unless you're an Iraqi living with the consequences but that chapter of the Blair story won't be finished for years.
Discredited and reviled, Blair likes to fall back on the line about how he did what he believed was right. Martin Samuel, writing in the Times, says that's a weak foundation for a legacy:
"For Mr Blair, Iraq is [everything]. All pales beside that one action, which is why so much of the encomiums around his departure were plain schmaltz. He did what he thought was right for his country, bless him. Big deal. So did Joe Stalin. So did Neville Chamberlain. So did John Wilkes Booth. Sincerity is no excuse. The world is full of people doing what they feel is right, which is why we judge on consequence not intent. Guess what? Every bankrupt business really believed in the product. Every referee that pointed to the penalty spot was absolutely convinced there had been a foul. And every leader that committed his country to a bloody and disastrous war was convinced of the opposite outcome.
"Marshal Francisco Solano López, President of Paraguay from 1862-70 and provocateur of the War of the Triple Alliance (a coalition of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina who, after years of conflict, managed to agree on one thing, which was that Paraguay deserved a good hiding) was, like Mr Blair, doing what he thought was right for the nation. That by the end of the exercise half of it was dead and 58,000 square miles annexed suggests this was a rotten call. Maybe, looking back, the marshal would have done things differently. He may not, for instance, have decided to inflame bigger, more powerful nations in the first place, or execute the majority of his Cabinet, family, the judiciary, military, clergy, foreign diplomats plus nine tenths of his civil service half way through. But we can guarantee one thing. When he did, when he made the insane decisions that killed 80 per cent of Paraguay’s male population, by God he was sincere.
"Yet history judges López on how his plan went, not on how it was supposed to go. Mr Blair is no different. Of course, the daily catastrophe that is postwar Iraq was not part of his equation; the reason his legacy is holed permanently below the waterline, and the good is overwhelmed, is that so many had his nightmare in plain sight. Mr Blair misjudged it all: the threat of galvanised insurgency; the divisions within Iraqi society; the unpopularity of an invading army, no matter its mission; the ineffectiveness and corruption of his partners; the reaction at home; the impossibility of the predicament, which is his true bequest to the country.
"In any summation of the Blair years, all bar Iraq should be a footnote. One commentator even wittered on about Tony Blair’s Olympics. Get one thing straight. When our six billion quid sandpit lies dormant after the 2012 circus has left town, this country will still be knee-deep in the Middle East. Even when the military exercise is over (we can no longer suggest it will be completed, for if we leave with Iraq in civil war, as it will be for many years, we depart with the job unfinished), the ramifications of cultural division at home will echo."
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