Andrew Marr reveals he feels ‘ashamed’ of a ‘terribly misjudged piece to camera…’
Recalling back to his BBC days when covering the Iraq War.
On last evening’s edition of Tonight with Andrew Marr on LBC Marr revealed he feels ‘ashamed’ of a ‘terribly misjudged piece to camera… hailing Blair as a great Prime Minister’ following the fall of Saddam Hussain’s statue at the beginning of the Iraq War.
LBC’s Andrew Marr reflected on views he made in 2003 at the beginning of the Iraq War. Speaking on his primetime radio show, the broadcaster shared, ‘In my diary I find that I went to bed perplexed, unsure and exhausted. And twenty years on there is plenty of shame and embarrassment still to go round.’
‘Good evening. There’s a ghost hanging over Westminster, one we mostly ignore but which today – the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – we really can’t. That war changed so much, mostly in Iraq, of course which descended into a kind of hell afterwards – you may have heard a prominent Iraqi journalist describing the circles of hell on this show a little while ago.
‘If you want numbers, there are plenty of numbers. The Public Library of Science Medicine survey, a middle road between other assessments, suggests there were more than 460,000 excess deaths as a result of the war and its aftermath – nearly half a million dead who might otherwise be alive today.
‘The Middle East was supposed to have become more peaceful and more democratic. The opposite happened. This was supposed to be when the West imposed moral authority. But by invading a country, albeit one in the hands of a brutal and dangerous dictatorship, without the explicit authority of the United Nations, Britain and America lost huge authority. All along our enemies were watching and drawing their own lessons about military force.
‘As a journalist I remember vividly flying into Moscow before the war with Tony Blair as he tried to get Vladimir Putin’s backing for the invasion. I remember the Prime Minister’s spokesman telling us what a great statesman Putin was, and how this was going to lead to a wonderful new era in British-Russian relations. But Putin was drawing, shall we say, other conclusions. I’m not saying there was any moral or other equivalence between his invasion of Ukraine – that of a country with a democratically elected President which has never threatened any of its neighbours, as Blair has recently pointed out – and the Iraq War. But 2003 was a year in which we lost, not gained, respect around the world’
Andrew Marr in his BBC days. Image: BBC News
‘Without the Iraq war, Tony Blair would be remembered by history very differently. There would probably have been no rise of the anti-war Jeremy Corbyn. I reckon the Tories would have found it much harder to dominate the past dozen years – So perhaps without the Iraq War, less austerity, no Brexit, no Boris Johnson premiership? But of course – that’s how history works. You go down one corridor, not the other… and everything is changed, and you can’t really know those changes as you make the decision.
‘I remember giving a terribly badly misjudged piece to camera after the fall of Saddam’s statue in April 2003, hailing Blair as a great Prime Minister as a result. It came after months when I’d sounded pretty hostile to the war, as I was – I had expected a bloody battle outside Baghdad involving British troops; and I’d never thought that invading Iraq would somehow produce a calm desert democracy – Minnesota with palm trees. And also, I think people today forget the intense emotion after 9/11 – the absolute determination to stand alongside the Americans following that moment of spectacular horror. All that said, I frankly feel ashamed of what I said on that particular day – In my diary I find that I went to bed perplexed, unsure and exhausted. And twenty years on there is plenty of shame and embarrassment still to go round.
‘I want to finish by reminding you of words from a famous speech Tony Blair made at Labour’s 2001 conference, that is, before the war, but after the Twin Towers attack: “The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause. This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.” I quote those words not to mock but to point out that we did reorder the world, just absolutely not in the way intended.
‘The true message, 20 years on, is: be modest. Let us be cautious, embarrassed, reflective, humble. Let’s remember not just wars… but what happens after wars. We can still have ideals and hopes. But we also have, all of us, feet of clay.’
LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr.
