Tony Blair claims that he joined the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq because it was God's decision. While, if true, this proves that God is a war criminal, the outcome of the Eichmann trial suggests that the "I was only accepting God's decision" defense would not likely absolve Blair of criminal responsibility in a court of law.
Moreover, Blair cannot cite the Lord's past record of benevolence as a reason for accepting His decision to wage war on Iraq, for as anyone who has read the Biblical account of the Canaanite genocide knows, God is a confirmed war criminal.
And beside criminal acts of war, including the destruction of the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites, there have been many terrorist incidents involving the Lord's use of weapons of mass destruction.
The holocaust of Soddam and Gomorrah, for example, inflicted as punishment for sins known, it appears, solely on the basis of hearsay; the flood; the use of the Red Sea to destroy the Egyptian army as as it pursued the Israelites -- this last, a particularly vicious act, since the Lord Himself instigated the Egyptian pursuit having first "hardened the heart of Pharaoh" against the fleeing Israelites who had just despoiled the Egyptians of their gold and silver.
The imposition of punishment by the Lord for acts he himself instigated or provoked, is particularly interesting in the present context because of the parallels with the the attempts by Bush and Blair to provoke Saddam to acts that would justify the invasion of Iraq.
First both Britain and the U.S. upped the frequency of (pre-war) bombing missions against Iraq, in the hope of eliciting a violent reaction that would provide a pretext for an open declaration of war. Then, this ploy having failed, Bush and Blair plotted to provoke Saddam with a spy plane painted in U.N. colors.
Other incidents involving the Lord in the use of weapons of mass-destruction, include the repeated deployment of bio-warfare agents, especially plague, but also including frogs, locusts, snakes, etc. mainly against the Egyptians, but on occasion also against the Israelites too.
And among other crimes against humanity, there was the slaughter of every first-born child in Egypt, a massacre known as the Passover and faithfully celebrated by Jews to this day. This last act of mass murder, as with the destruction of the Egyptian army, this was punishment for an action the Lord imposed on Pharoah: "and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land."
It would appear, therefore, that Tony Blair's only hope would be to plead not only that "the Lord hardened my heart against Saddam," but that "the Lord scared me a damn sight more than Adolf Hitler could ever have scared Eichmann." The trouble for Blair is that, as the Lord has amply demonstrated, merely because He causes a person to commit a crime is no reason why that person should go unpunished.
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