Tony Blair – 2parse

[digg-reddit-me]Yet again, Jon Stewart asks the questions no one else does and confronts another architect of the War in Iraq, the noted British liberal and former prime minister, Tony Blair.

Tony Blair: None of this is easy…

Jon Stewart: Look I know, and I do appreciate even having the conversation. No one believes they took the decisions lightly. The only point for me is: nineteen people flew into the towers; it seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn’t want to do harm to us. So it seems we need to re-think a strategy that is less military-based and more [unintelligible].

This exchange comes towards the end of the interview with Blair, which overall, I don’t think was not one of Stewart’s best.

But the catharsis that comes when Jon Stewart confronts these powerful men and speaks common sense to these once formidable powers – it’s hard to describe. Somehow, it is as if he is doing more than anyone to hold the men and women who made the disastrous decisions that led to war in some way accountable.

Part 1 2 of interview with Blair

Part 2 1 of interview with Blair

As I wrote about Stewart confronting Douglas Feith earlier this year:

I’m not sure if it should be so cathartic to see one of the planners of this misbegotten gamble scolded by a comedian. But it was.

As we remember the beginnings of Western civilization on this continent, we almost must look to our legacy:

“Tell the world why you’re proud of America. Tell them when the Star-Spangled Banner starts, Americans get to their feet, Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers and those whose English is the same as some New York cab driver’s I’ve dealt with … but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress.
Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That’s why they’re proud.

As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in fact, it is transient.

The question is: What do you leave behind?”

Tony Blair to the United States Congress in 2003.