If you’re not British, you might not really care what Tony Blair is up to. After all, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we regard the man as nothing more than a puppet of the Bush administration (Nelson Mandela famously described him as “the US foreign minister“). Most Brits tend to believe that his actions and policies granted more police powers and eroded their civil liberties. Everyone I’ve ever talked to unanimously agreed that he’s a giant dick.
Like most retired politicians, he’s in legacy mode, and wants people to remember him as more than just Dubya’s puppet. He’s started an organization called “The Tony Blair Faith Foundation”, whose mandate is to:
…promote respect and understanding about the world’s major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world.
Even if Tony has good intentions with this foundation, he’s completely out of his depth here. All he can do is attract religious institutions that are already interested in peaceful dialog, and nothing more. Blair’s history in the Middle East is a liability more than it’s an asset. How are Muslims in Bagdad supposed to react to Blair’s words of peace when they have tasted so much of his sword?
In any case, if they truly want peace they will have to do more than appeal to people’s “faith”. Not every religion takes a kind attitude of tolerance towards other teachings. Most religions tend to have bloody conflicts over even the most minute doctrinal differences.
The National Secular Society seems to agree with me, and stated Blair is “profoundly wrong” in imagining religion is a peacemaking tool. If it was, we’d have a very different type of world right now. If we want human beings to see one another in the same way, we need to discourage people from believing in things without evidence. We live in a world with so many interesting and fascinating answers, and yet there are still people who kill one another over their genocidal mythologies.
Tony, the best thing you can do for world peace is to find a place to lay low for the next 30-40 years. Is there any nice way to tell this douche to get the fuck out of our faces?