July 23, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - The Chilcot Inquiry, which took seven long years to publish, finally pinned the responsibility on former British prime minister Tony Blair for acting on false evidence to attack Iraq. Former deputy prime minister John Prescott, who had remained silent until the report was published, admitted in an article in the British newspaper that the war against Iraq was illegal. Too late, Mr Prescott.

Prescott admitted his guilt with which he said he would have to live for the rest of his life. When taking the high moral ground, he had better let the world know why he remained silent when Blair used his antics to fabricate evidence to pulverize a defenseless country. Moreover, the former deputy premier apologized to the families of the 179 British soldiers who lost their lives in the Iraq war.

And yet his good sense didn’t allow him condole the deaths of about a million and a half Iraqi men, women, and children killed when their country was attacked. Prescott sympathized with the aggressors and not with the innocent victims blown to pieces in their own homes.

The Chilcot inquiry incriminated Blair for acting on false evidence that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and posed a real threat to Europe and world peace. And that Iraq had acquired the capability to deploy WMDs within minutes. Here’s the fine catch: acting on false evidence to destroy a sovereign country is one thing and fabricating false evidence with mala fide intent to destroy it is another. While the first possibility, even though remote, could be considered a misperception, the second was premeditated genocide.

Tony Blair, a high-wire performer, shuttled between countries to garner support for his sinister agenda. Justice demands that not only Blair, but also Jack Straw, his conniving foreign secretary at the time, be tried for war crimes. Similarly, across the ocean, G W Bush and his square-jawed defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should face the International Court of Justice for their crimes against humanity.

Whatever the Chilcot report revealed was no news to the world. To an extent, however, the British public deserves credit for exerting moral pressure on its government to conduct an inquiry into Blair’s war crimes, while bulk of the American intelligentsia and public at large remained manifestly unaware of, and disinterested in the war in Iraq and its consequences.

Now the Washington Post has commented that anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe is on the rise because the people in European countries think Muslims, especially the refugees, are involved in terrorist activities. Why peaceful citizens turn refugees? Did hundreds of thousands of Syrian men, women, and children leave their homeland at their own will or they were forced to leave to save their lives because of the US policy in Syria?

On the contrary, large populations in the Muslim world think that imperial powers invade them to change their regimes, divide their territories, and plunder their resources. Leave aside Iraq, consider Libya. Libya would not have been attacked nor Moammar Qaddafi murdered and sodomised if the African state had no oil. Of course, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have said on Qaddafi’s murder, “We came, we saw, and he died.”

Clinton happens to be the US establishment’s favorite candidate in the coming US elections. She reminds one of another former US secretary of state – Madeleine Albright. During a TV show when a commentator questioned Albright about the death of half a million Iraqi children because of sanctions against medical supplies to Iraq and if the price was right? She said, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” What a coldblooded calculus.

Clinton and Albright seem to have much in common. Both had remained secretaries of state and both didn’t mind spilling blood as long as it was Muslim blood. Clinton took sadistic pleasure in Qaddafi’s murder and Albright thought ‘the price was worth it’ when half a million Iraqi children perished as result of sanctions on supply of medicines.

Is it a coincidence that only Muslim countries have witnessed a bloodbath in the last decade and half? Is it also a coincidence that the US and the UK have been the major players in all wars in the Muslim world? When apportioning blame on these powers, the Muslim countries in the region – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, cannot escape from much of it. While Saudi and Qatari Sheikhdoms are responsible for financing wars against other Muslim countries, Turkey is equally responsible for acting as a conduit to these wars.

Saudi royals must understand that they have badly tarnished their image in the Muslim world by pushing their nefarious agenda to topple Bashar al-Assad. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and many more forced to flee their homeland. Instead of pursuing divisive policies based on sectarianism among the Muslim nations, the house of Saud had better follow the old dictum: live and let live.

Ifekhar A. Khan - Email: pinecity@ gmail.com