Feature: Left wing Tariq Ali's take on Tony Blair and Barack Obama

Published: 28 January 2010
by MATTHEW LEWIN

TONY Blair is a war criminal; Barack Obama is just another politician trying to get re-elected; Hugo Chavez is a great social democrat in the European mould, Israelis and Palestinians are going to have to learn to live together, and British elections have become like musical chairs where the incumbent is punished no matter who they are.
There was no shortage of such trenchant views when Tariq Ali, the famous firebrand of the 1960s turned distinguished left-wing intellectual writer and lecturer, appeared at the latest Lifelines evening at Burgh House in Hampstead. Earlier this month he was given the prestigious Granadillo award in Granada for his four novels known as The Islam Quartet.
Ali, who lives in Highgate, had no hesitation in describing Tony Blair as a war criminal.
“When [Slobodan] Milosevic was accused of war crimes at The Hague, the figures they gave were that 2,000 people had died in Kosovo. Okay. That’s awful, but the figures for Iraq – after it was occupied – are truly horrific,” he said.
“Over a million Iraqis are dead, there are two and a half million refugees, and the entire social infrastructure of the country destroyed – and no one is going to be charged with war crimes?
“And not only is he not tried, but Blair is given this totally fake job with a big office in Jerusalem and a mega-salary! That’s all he is obsessed with now – money.”
On Obama, Mr Ali said: “He certainly is a great orator. One speech I heard in New York, when he defended his pastor, was the first time I had heard an American politician speaking to the population and treating them as adults, as intelligent people who might actually understand.
“But that was the last time he did it, and then the Democratic Party leadership got their hold on him, and he became like any other politician.
“He hasn’t done anything all that is different from what Bush did. All that has changed is the diplomatic music, which is more pleasant nowadays. If he carries on like this he could well be a one-term president, like Carter.”
On the Middle East he said: “What I am saying is that they are all going to have to learn to live together. I don’t believe that the two-state solution is viable any longer, for the reason that successive Israeli regimes have built more and more settlements on occupied lands, so that to remove settlers from living there would create mayhem inside Israel.
“So the notion, that the PLO used to embrace, that they should be moved back to the 1967 frontiers and give the Palestinians a separate state which is continuous and contiguous and without a permanent Israeli presence, is just not going to happen.
“What is on the table for the Palestinians, and what [Binyamin] Netanyahu and Obama are discussing at the moment is essentially Palestinian Bantustans.
“So how is this going to end? I think they should just dissolve the Palestinan Authority and say that they are citizens of the entity that is around them, whatever it’s called, Israel or Palestine or whatever.
“It sounds utopian, but what other way is there? People thought it could never happen in South Africa, but it has happened.”
On the state of Britain: “The political condition in this country is pretty dire. This current election is not exciting too many people because elections have just become something to punish the incumbents – no matter who or what they are, they have to be punished because they have let us down.
“Then the other ones come in and behave in the same way, and they get punished. It becomes a sort of musical chairs.”
Ali said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s social democratic programme was the same as Clement Attlee’s programme in this country after 1945.
“And he has been elected democratically six times because he did what politicians don’t do anymore – which is carry out their promises,” said Mr Ali.
Asked whether he felt he had achieved his own potential, Mr Ali replied: “It depends on what one thinks one’s potential is. I am quite happy with what I have done. What I enjoy most is writing and at the same time I speak my mind. I am not interested in power, and haven’t been since the 80s. So I think the answer to the question is: yes.”