Tony Blair and yet more apologism for illegal wars of aggression

It seems, having generated a fair amount of media coverage for his memoirs, former Prime Minister and war-criminal Tony Blair is determined to foist himself upon us again. Sit tight for more neo-liberal, imperialist propaganda.

This is his latest offering;

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world today.

He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs.

Mr Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Mr Blair, who led Britain into war in Afghanistan and Iraq, denied that his own policies had fuelled radicalism.

Asked about the argument that Chechens, Kashmiris, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans were resisting foreign occupation, he said Western polices were designed to confront radical Islamists because they were "regressive, wicked and backward-looking".

The aim of al-Qaeda in Iraq was "not to get American troops out of Baghdad [but] to destabilise a government the people of Iraq have voted for", he told the BBC's Owen Bennett Jones in a World Service interview.

As anybody who has read my blogs regularly will know, I'm no fan of militant Islam. It is an inexcusable an abhorrent world-view built upon bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, and fear-mongering. I am more than happy to advocate dealing with Islamists as militantly as we do fascists.

But, for all that, organised Islamism is a joke. Those in charge of the movement are cowards who flee confrontation and have no coherent strategy to achieve anything tangible whatsoever.

Blair is right when he says that militant Islamists are "regressive, wicked and backward-looking," but the idea that they pose the "greatest threat" in the world today is utterly laughable. Moreover, to conflate that ideology with every single person and group resisting occupation in Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan is dishonest at best.

But then, that's Tony Blair for you. Short of indictment at the Hague for war crimes, let's hope that, once his book tour is out the way, he vanishes firmly and finally into obscurity.