...and yet, somehow, Tony Blair's the only worldwide leader who says such things anymore. In an interview with Haaretz, he's asked why the Brits are so anti-Semitic.
"Look, there's criticism everywhere, I think, but that's partly because people don't understand how difficult this situation is when you come under attack, your civilians come under attack, and you're a democratic government and you're expected to respond. I mean, we face this continually. We face it now, actually, in places like Afghanistan."
We'd do the same in their shoes, he means. He doesn't say this is aimed at Obama, but I think it is:
"People sometimes say to me, no, it's not really Iraq, it's Afghanistan," Blair says. "Someone else will say, no it's Pakistan, and someone else will say it's Iraq, and someone else will say it's Yemen. But actually it's all of these because in different ways, they represent different challenges that are unified by one single movement with a single ideology. And this is going to be resolved, in my view, over a long period of time. But what is important is that wherever it is fighting us, we're prepared to fight back. And actually if you take the situation, for example, in Iraq, what began as a fight to remove Saddam was over in two months but then what occupied us for the next six years was fighting external elements - Al-Qaida on one hand, Iranian-backed militias on the other, which are the same elements we're fighting everywhere. Now, ultimately we've got to understand that, unfortunately, we can't say: 'Look, let's concentrate it here, but not here, and here, and here,' because that's not the way this thing's working." Blair's equation doesn't end there. "Actually there is a unifying theme, in my view, between what's happened in countries like our own country with terrorist activity, and what's happening in places like Yemen or Afghanistan or Somalia or, I'm afraid, other countries. The key to understanding this is [that] this is a global movement with a global ideology and it is one struggle. It's one struggle with many different arenas."
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