DOES former British prime minister Tony Blair deserve to be knighted or to be locked up in The Hague for the countless deaths that his illegal war in Iraq has caused?
The answer — Blair's place is in The Hague's cell — is obvious to a growing number of Britons, especially to those who have seen their loved ones die there in a war that should never have been.
As this Leader goes to press, the petition to get the Queen to rescind the knighthood is adding names in the thousands. London has not seen such national anger at a former leader for a very long time. But this question has long been answered by no less than the then United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, who declared the Iraq war to be illegal in a BBC interview.
So London can't pretend to have not known the illegality of it all. If Blair deserved a "Sir" for anything British at all, this illegal war that killed thousands of innocent Iraqis, and innocent British soldiers, too, should have prevented the knighthood from being bestowed on him.
In fact, Britain would have been held in high esteem if it had surrendered Blair to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to be investigated for the war crimes he has been alleged to have committed.
Sadly, Britain, then and now, has given the rule of law a miss. Like America and the rest of Europe, Britain has decided to be a "pick-and-choose" practitioner of international law.
Malaysia, or to be more accurate, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, chose to show the world how the Rome Statute can be made real. After two long years of investigation, a panel of five judges of international repute found Blair and his partner in crime, former American president George W. Bush, guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace on Nov 22, 2011.
The world, especially Britons, must thank former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for putting Bush and Blair behind "bars". He may have failings — like all men — but his anti-war effort isn't one of them. He has the courage to stand up to the West and speak his mind. "Meek Malaysia" isn't a phrase in Dr Mahathir's dictionary. Mind you, the dictionary is a big, fat one. Large and lovely, they say.
Malaysia has not produced a leader like him since. Perhaps, it never will. Intimidation looms large in their political horizon. Mercilessly, the West hasn't produced one either.
Look at Washington. War criminals come and go like they do in a rogues' gallery. Yet no convictions. Look at London, too. No. 10 Downing Street is a bad address when it comes to rules-based world order.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not only unwilling to get Blair investigated by the ICC, he is even stopping it from investigating its ally, Israel, where most of the world's war criminals reside. Nay, Johnson has gone one up.
He has made sure the chief prosecutor of the ICC is a Briton. The world can forget seeing a Briton or an Israeli imprisoned in The Hague unless the prosecutor does a Dr Mahathir. Brussels? Best left unmentioned. Britain, like the rest of the West, has "a lot to learn". "Right from wrong, weak from strong." Just as British Lulu sang James Clavell's To Sir, with Love.
