Max Richter Condemns Tony Blair for Iraq War in Guardian Op-Ed

Max Richter heavily criticized Tony Blair for his 2003 decision to enter Britain into the Iraq War, and how that decision led to current political problems, in a new op-ed published today in The Guardian. Richter’s essay was written in response to Sir John Chilcot’s recent report that concluded a years-long investigation into Britain’s involvement in the war, ultimately condemning Blair for his actions. Richter writes that the war created “a gigantic political disaster” comparable to a “all-consuming black hole” that “has devoured everything in its path including the credibility of our democratic process and any moral capital the west had. The human cost is staggering.”

Richter connects Blair’s specious handling of the facts of the Iraq War to the current political climate surrounding Brexit, and the U.S. election. He writes, “Blair’s creative way with the facts seems in retrospect to be the beginning of the sort of post-truth politics we have seen in the recent Brexit debate, where fiction and reality were treated by Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and their like as essentially interchangeable. Donald Trump does the same.” 

Richter also describes how, as a result of his frustrations with the debates about the war in 2003, he composed his 2004 album The Blue Notebooks. He describes it as “a protest album about Iraq, a mediation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict.”

Read the full op-ed here. 

Read our feature “Glastonbury in the Time of Brexit” and “The UK Leaving the EU Would Change the European Music Industry.”

Listen to an excerpt from The Blue Notebooks: 

 

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