Tony Blair and the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War – An Astrological Look
Many of my friends marched in London hoping to prevent the Iraq War, and I did write a letter to Tony Blair which he ignored. I never bought into the Weapons of Mass Destruction idea! I have to document the 10th Anniversary which occurs on Wednesday 20th, because I believe the Iraq War was a collective wound and we are still suffering collective post-traumatic stress syndrome from it.
The media started to document the anniversary at the beginning of March, and Kirsty Wark brilliantly presented a huge debate on the subject, and a searching interview with Tony Blair. On 5th July 2009 I wrote a blog about the two Bushes, Senior and Junior, and now would like to focus on Tony Blair and his role, to balance out the karma of my writing.
I observed then:
“He enlisted the help of the sympathetic U.K. Prime Minister of the time, Tony Blair, through the magnetic attraction of Tony’s Pluto being exactly conjunct with George’s Venus. The extra karmic and compulsive element was provided by Tony’s Pluto sextile George’s North Node.”
One of George W. Bush’s influences, I argued, was his father. Here I would like to look at one of Tony Blair’s influences, his wife Cherie.
But first, a basic look at Tony Blair’s own chart:
In case you were in any doubt, Tony Blair does have a Warrior’s chart, with Mars one degree away from the Ascendant in Gemini. Some Prime Ministers, such as Margaret Thatcher, feel they need to make their mark through a successful war. If they thought it would not be successful, they wouldn’t try it, of course. Even now we see Cameron and Hollande pushing for intervention in Syria. Buoyed up by his success in the Balkans, and his firm alliance with George Bush, Tony Blair’s Sun in Taurus was resolute in 2003 about going to war in Iraq despite a lack of backing from the U.N. and a lack of evidence regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A characteristic of Tony Blair’s policies throughout his period of government, was a lack of psychological depth or understanding, and a tendency not to think things through: with the main spread of his planets being in the early signs of Aries, Taurus and Gemini he needed some more emphasis on the outer planets in order to come from a more spiritual understanding. He has a Uranian ruled Moon conjunct North Node in Aquarius, which does provide some outer planetary influence – this gave him some flavour of a man of the people, but the conjunction was in his 9th House of Foreign Lands, so it was channelled more through interests abroad.
Cherie Blair
His wife Cherie has always had money as a priority, having had a desperately poor background. A successful woman in her own right, she has the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus (“The Entrepreneur”) on her Ascendant, and has provided a financial drive (her urge for property), which Tony has certainly fulfilled since he left office. She also brought a Roman Catholic investment and inheritance into their life, and he later converted to Roman Catholicism. He must have a weighty conscience, so the conversion may have been an attempt to balance his karma. Kirsty Wark actually asked him if in his role as Middle East peace envoy he was trying to atone. Cherie has the Warrior Archetype in the form of her North Node (karmic mission) conjunct Mars, and may well have been a strong influence in the direction of war. She is not likely to have been an influence towards peacemaking, though she does have Mercury in Libra (which is itself conjunct Tony’s serious and heavyweight Saturn-Neptune conjunction). She channels the Mercury in Libra through her work in the field of Law.
The Time of the War
At the time of the onset of the Iraq War, Saturn was trine Tony Blair’s Saturn (firm resolution) and Pluto was trine his Pluto (self-empowerment), so his state of mind was resolute, firm and determined, just as the impression he gave. Tony Blair’s serious and heavyweight Saturn-Neptune conjunction sits on the top of the Jupiter of Iraq’s chart, and at the time of the war Pluto was transiting Iraq’s Saturn and opposing its Moon/Venus (way of life). Tony Blair’s nodal axis connects with Saddam Hussein’s Sun and Moon, so there may be personal karma between them.
The Legacy
Iraq was destroyed, with no planning having been given to its reconstruction. The way of life, both good and bad, for the Iraqi citizen was destroyed. The fine antiquities of ancient Mesopotamia were also destroyed. That is on top of all the lives lost…Tony Blair certainly continued his interests in the Middle East, having a special peace envoy role, and many have wondered what he has done with that. It is also the second anniversary this week of the Syrian uprising (15th March), and the Middle East is still in turmoil, with the added threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and the lack of counterbalance to Iran which was formerly provided by Saddam Hussein. Now of course we face the dilemmas over intervention in Syria, and further afield in Africa.
The Interview
Kirsty Wark challenged him on the issue of intervention:
“…after Iraq do you think that you could ever make a case for moral intervention? I mean you talk about Iran and you talk about Syria…”
One of the fascinating features of the interview with Kirsty Wark was Tony Blair denying that his role in the matter was relevant:
Kirsty: But do you think you’ll be redeemed?
Blair: I’m, I’m, I’m less interested in you know my personal position in this.
That may be a debatable point!
A different viewpoint
In the Big Issue (February 25th edition) Brendan O’Neill paints a different picture of Tony Blair’s role in relation to George Bush. He does not see Tony Blair has having been Bush’s “poodle”.
He writes “from the time he was elected in 1997, four years before Bush entered the White House, Blair was devising new forms of military interventionism and warfare that had a huge influence on the neocons around Bush who were then waiting in the wings of American power.”
He sees Blair as an imperialist, and that does chime with Blair’s Moon/North Node karmic mission in Aquarius (“I know what’s good for you!”) in the 9th House of Foreign Policy.
Related post:
March 17th, 2013 at 11:06 am
I think the key question is, Lana, should the West have sat quietly while Saddam Hussein committed genocide and horrifically tortured those who disagreed with him. If the Iraq football team did not win, they were whipped on the soles of their feet. (think of Kennedy’s quotation that the worst thing good men do is to do nothing). I read the early chapters of Blair’s biography while working as a civil servant in his Government, and was struck that at a very early age he was inspired by an Australian Anglican priest who instilled in him the idea of ‘doing the right thing’ (the equivalent of the Buddhist striving for Right Action). I have to stand up for his sincerity in attempting to ‘Do the Right Thing’, which his warrior aspects of his horosceopt dovetail with. We all try to ‘do the right thing’ not aware of how things will turn out in real life.
March 17th, 2013 at 1:10 pm
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March 18th, 2013 at 9:48 am
Dear Asia
Thanks for balancing the picture. Apparently half the country thinks we shouldn’t have gone to war and half thinks the opposite.
I am extreme in being a pacifist (I recall this goes back to the age of 6 in this lifetime, and can remember being on that path in other lifetimes) and do understand the arguments of the other side.
Warriors and Peacemakers do need to have a dialogue, to find the right ways to wage peace and wars.
Senior military figures are reported in the Guardian this morning as saying they were not happy about how we were led into war. They quote Douglas Alexander in the New Statesman as saying: “Today the British public are more sceptical of the principle of committing British troops abroad, because they are more critical of the circumstances in which it could be justified.”
It is important for each of us to be able to say what we really think, in order to find the balance of truth.
Love and Light
Lana
March 20th, 2013 at 8:33 am
Lana – I think we listened to the same Blair interview. Wanting to drop Tony Blair himself into the middle of a warzone, I found my own pacifism stretched to breaking point.
Ten years ago, as a middle-aged-nobody-in-particular I KNEW for certain that there were no great productions of weapons of mass destruction. Simple logic told me that Saddam Hussein, being the man he was, would have already used them more widely, more visibly and even more indiscriminately if they had existed in such number. And I had enough confidence to express this view from the start
Asia ….. there were alternative methods of removing Saddam Hussein. Far from the desire to “do what was right” I always had the suspicion that Tony Blair “Wanted to be seen, in a blaze of self glory, to be doing what he pronounced to be right”
Lana’s assessment of Blair’s lack of “depth and understanding” and tendency not to think things through” sounds spot-on to me.
Before the final decision was made to invade, Robert Fisk wrote a lengthy analysis and assessment in the Independent in which he described exactly what would happen in Iraq and the wider middle east in the mid and long term if we invaded with such lack of forethought. Sadly, it all came to pass.
March 20th, 2013 at 10:48 am
Janet, I think you’re spot on there. I have nothing but contempt now for Blair, especially for the way he felt entitled to withhold the truth from the rest of the country (including parliament) and take us into war. I’m afraid my feelings at the start of the 2003 war were not clear cut though. I was certainly not gung-ho but felt cautiously optimistic on balance. I stupidly assumed that the government had some genuine proof of WMD which they were not in a position to reveal publicly, and that they had put some thought into the long term plan – after all, they had had long enough to consider it. Normally I am very sceptical, but I was haunted by an image which stayed with me from the previous war, when Iraqi soldiers gladly surrendered to the ‘liberators’, thinking they were going to be freed from Sadaam. One particular soldier I remember put his hands in the air and beamed at the camera. He shouted in relief ‘Halas!’ (It’s over!). The West let him down, and in the years that followed I have often thought about him.
March 21st, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Dear Janet
Thank you for your lucid analysis…
I think you have confirmed to me that many of us needed to take stock at this point in time and process how we feel about it.
Love
Lana
March 21st, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Dear Daph
Thank you for your sharing…
I think your feelings are identical with my Hubby’s – especially your reactions to the information coming up to the war.
All the comments to this blog have made very interesting reading.
Love
Lana