Monbiot on Tutu

Archbishop Tutu's feelings about the Iraq War of 2003 and that Bush and Blair should now go on trial in The Hague has led to a new "Comment is Free" piece in The Guardian by George Monbiot on Monday http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/03/tony-blair-the-hague-iraq-war?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038  It will come as no surprise that Mr Monbiot is fully supportive of the Tutu stance.

This is part of the article:

• Comment is free

We're one crucial step closer to seeing Tony Blair at The Hague

Desmond Tutu has helped us see the true nature of what the former prime minister did to Iraq and increased pressure for a prosecution

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• • George Monbiot
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 September 2012 17.30 BST
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Tony Blair arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London to give evidence on media ethics to the Leveson inquiry in May 2012. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend.
When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.

It may be that George Monbiot is being overly optimistic about the effect of Mr Tutu's utterances on Blair but it must at a minimum I would have thought made Blair's attempt at rehabilitation (at the upcoming Labour Annual Conference?) that much more difficult.

The effect of this heat on Blair in relation to the death of Dr Kelly may only be marginal.  But the lies about going to war with Iraq and the avoidance of an inquest into the suspicious death of David Kelly are issues that aren't going away.