"...the idea that you can kill innocent people, simply in order to enforce your values, is extreme by western ethics standards. That does not mean it never happened - there were many religious wars where it did - but the dominant (liberal) tradition in western philosophy rejects 'crusades'. The reason for this philosophical suspicion is simple. If Tony Blair may legitimately kill any person X, Y, or Z in Belgrade or Freetown, to enforce his values, then why is it not legitimate for them to come to London, and kill Tony Blair for their values? Blair says, more or less, that he may kill Saddam because there is a moral case for that killing: in doing so he is implicitly justifying his own assassination on moral grounds. Assassinations breed assassinations, crusades make holy wars."


more at...

That "historian" Irving writes history - Tony Blair must mean the kind of history written by that kind of "historian" that would judge His contribution to humanity and religion.

Amen

"You might just as well find us guilty a thousand
times, but the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear up the motions of the states attorney and the judgement of this court: for she finds us not guilty".

Not that i'd compare the two, obviously;)

And what they judge is that, as historians -

..... we are particularly disturbed by the misuse of history by those arguing in favor of starting a war. This misuse has taken many forms. Unwarranted analogies–comparing Germany in the 1930s to Iraq today, comparing Colin Powell urging war to Adlai Stevenson urging peace–abound. The actual history of U.S. involvement in Iraq, particularly our patronage of Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s, is forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant....


More from -

 http://www.historiansagainstwar.org