Tony Blair Meet The Press. On Meet the Press Sunday morning, host David Gregory challenged former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to defend his and former President George W Bush's decision to switch focus from the war in Afghanistan to the one in Iraq, asking if that simultaneously diverted resources from fighting the Taliban while radicalizing terrorist groups in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. "Isn't the legacy of your leadership and that of President Bush in part responsible for the reality today?" Gregory asked. "Did the west fail to deal with the extremism you talk about today appropriately in Afghanistan in a sustainable way?" "I think we did," Blair said. "But I think we've got to recognize something very, very seriously. This is a long battle...This ideology is not going to be defeated by an engagement in Afghanistan, in Iraq, or even in these individual arenas. It's going to be defeated over a long period of time." "We make a huge error when we end up thinking somehow it's our actions that caused this," Blair said. "In Afghanistan and Iraq, we removed brutal dictatorships, allowed the people a chance to elect their government, they came out in both cases and voted, showing that they wanted such elections, gave them massive financial support. What was the disruptive effect? The disruptive effect was that very Islamist ideology I'm talking about on the one side being pushed out of Iran from the Iranian theocracy, on the other side al Qaeda and other groups, and they combined to try to destabilize the wishes of the majority of the country. Now, when we weren't involved, as in Syria, they're still going to fight jihad there." Watch the clip below, via NBC News:Tony Blair on Obama's handling of Middle East, "I'm not criticizing President Obama over this... I went through these types of decisions."

• published: 27 Apr 2014
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