LONDON, 11 May 2007 — In July 2003 the US Congress voted to award Prime Minister Tony Blair a Congressional Gold Medal for being “a staunch and steadfast ally of the United States of America.” Nearly four years later, Blair has not picked up his prize — the legislature’s most prestigious award.
“He is a very busy guy,” said a spokesman at Blair’s 10 Downing Street office.
But critics, and even some supporters, contend that Blair is unwilling to drape a shiny US medal around his neck just now because it would be too glaring a reminder of his extremely close — and poisonously unpopular — relationship with President Bush and the Iraq war, for which his critics dismiss him as “Bush’s poodle.”
While he led his Labor Party to three national election victories, resuscitated the British economy and helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Sierra Leone, most analysts here agree that the charismatic prime minister will be remembered mainly for his shoulder-to-shoulder stand with Bush on Iraq.
Blair and Bush have always seemed an unlikely pair: A European leader from a left-of-center party with socialist roots, and a conservative Texas Republican with open skepticism of European elites. But Blair’s alliance with Bush over Iraq fits a pattern dating back a decade, according to people who have worked closely with Blair and authors who have written about him. Since he took office in May 1997, Blair has argued that military intervention in sovereign nations is justified to stop atrocities. And long before Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, Blair repeatedly identified Saddam Hussein as a serial human rights violator and threat to the world.
At the same time, those who know Blair well said he believes that Britain is best served by a prime minister who keeps an airtight relationship with the US president and stays “inside the tent” with him to influence policy. He established such a close relationship with President Clinton that many American observers were surprised when he hit it off so quickly with Bush, Clinton’s political opposite. But Blair was just being consistent.
Those core beliefs led Blair to stand by Bush when other world leaders distanced themselves. But they also cornered Blair at times when he and Bush disagreed, especially over the need for broad international backing for military action in Iraq. Blair had been so passionate and public in his promises to stand by America and his view that Saddam needed to go, they said, that it became virtually impossible for him to change tack.
Blair failed to challenge Bush on fundamental strategic questions — chiefly whether military action in Iraq was being rushed and whether there had been proper planning for the aftermath, analysts said. “At no stage did he say, ‘Hang on, are we sure this is the right thing to do? Is war the right option?”’ said Peter Riddell, author of three books about Blair. “He believed Saddam was bad, and he didn’t want the United States to be left to go it alone. Effectively he was trapped, and he had to go along with whatever Bush wanted to do. He wasn’t being a poodle, it was an embrace.”
Blair maintains that he has no regrets about Iraq. Blair’s support of the United States after Sept. 11 attacks was immediate and instinctive; he said Britain would stand by America “without hesitation.” Blair became Bush’s chief foreign ally in the war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. He was essentially Bush’s ambassador, trying to make the case for armed intervention in Iraq to European leaders hostile to the idea.
Even as Blair’s stature was growing in the United States, it was rapidly eroding at home. Anthony Giddens, a prominent social scientist and author who has advised Blair, said Blair’s partnership with Bush and the “disaster” of post-Saddam Iraq has overshadowed ten years of achievement. Blair led Labor to three straight elections, oversaw a stable economy, steady economic growth and low unemployment, Giddens said.
“The thing I don’t understand about Blair is why he stayed so close to Bush,” Giddens said. “I think Bush just used him, actually.”
Last summer, Blair again sided with Bush against world opinion during the monthlong war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. As foreign governments demanded one after the other an immediate cease-fire, Bush and Blair declined. Lebanon, Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003, said, “is as near as he gets to being a poodle.”
In September 1997, Blair’s approval rating peaked at 75 percent. As he prepares to leave office it stands at 28 percent.
