It was a mixture of this now mature expectation and a dull pessimism over the interrogative abilities of Chilcot et al that greeted Blair when he began his six hour Q&A session on 29^th January.

            There were limited revelations on the day, and any answers of substance were largely ignored as the media scrambled for a few sound bites that demonstrated Blair’s defiance and lack of contrition in front of the assembled families of killed servicemen and women.  When John Chilcot signalled to journalists to get their pens ready by asking Mr Blair if he had any regrets over the saga, perhaps in an attempt to garner some Nixonesque concession, the former prime minister said he accepted responsibility for his actions but that he “genuinely believe[d] that the world is safer as a result”.

This is part of the problem with the Blair personality cult.  Tony Blair is a highly adept orator and lawyer, and he works hard to frame the war as a personal battle.  In comparison to his own personal choice the cabinet and parliament’s decision making role is incidental (check the footage, that’s literally how he describes them) and the media is disarmed as justification is presented through personal moral righteousness and hypothetical, unfalsifiable claims.   

Lead articles in the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Independent and coverage on the BBC concentrated on the issue of regret.  As long as opinion formers and commentators assent to this personalisation of extremely serious issues we will be unable to achieve the apparently modest aims of the Chilcot Inquiry.

Blair’s prized legacy may well be permanently tarnished.  Aside from the indictments of deception and illegality delivered in the inquiry by Clare Short and senior Foreign Office lawyer Sir Michael Wood; it has always been marred by the late Robin Cook’s masterful resignation speech in opposition to the war in 2003 along with the popular dissent so visible in the run up to the invasion.  Even though the few placards outside the QEII conference centre in January may have been supported by more politically eccentric types than the ones that flooded London in the build up to the war, they carry the memory of the massive opposition from mainstream Britain that Blair faced seven years ago.

At the end of the questioning Sir John Chilcot asked Tony Blair if he had any final comment.  Visible relief and an immediately completed smile accompanied the word “No”.  It’s time to forget Blair, and for Westminster to come to terms with how it allowed one man’s “genuine beliefs” to defy popular opinion and the UN.  As Alistair Campbell’s emotional defence of the “totally honourable” Blair filled headlines a week later, it doesn’t appear as though the national obsession with the former prime minister will be over for a while.

            In June 2009 Obama went to Cairo to ‘seek a new beginning’ in relations with the Muslim world.  Two months earlier Hilary Clinton had symbolically reset ties with Russia.  The ‘War on Terror’ was replaced with ‘overseas contingency operations’.  The emphasis, as we all know, was on change.  The problem is that change has been insubstantial.

            The priority has been Afghanistan, where the president faced a deteriorating situation and spent months deliberating over a potential increase in troops.  In fact, even before becoming president, Obama had made it clear that he wanted significantly more troops in Afghanistan “as soon as possible”.  The frequent, well publicised meetings in the White House were designed to contrast Obama with his gung ho predecessor as well as Obama’s celebrated new strategy from the previous plan.  Tough action was necessary, arrived at through intelligent discussion in a multilateral decision making process and deemed the surest way to peace.  Actual events have exposed the duplicity of these lofty claims. 

With a reluctant NATO, Obama has unilaterally expanded the war into Pakistan, resuming the controversial drone attacks condemned by UN Human Rights Council that undermine Pakistani attempts to combat insurgency and fuel anti-American sentiment.  One of the core tenets of the new strategy in the ‘AfPak War’ is the imperative to separate the enemy from civilians.  Daniel Byman of the respected Brookings Institute posits that 10 civilians are killed for every militant targeted by drone attacks.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian equipped by Al-Qaeda in Yemen who attempted to blow up an airplane over Detroit in December, has demonstrated that Obama cannot guarantee security by bombing Pakistan or inundating Afghanistan with soldiers.  Leaving aside the eerie similarities between Nixon’s doomed ‘Vietnamization’ and Obama’s plan to arm Afghans before leaving the country full of guns in the nominal power of a weak and corrupt government, the new strategy is as fundamentally misconceived as George Bush’s.

Optimists may defend Barack Obama’s liberal credentials on issues like his decision to close Guantanamo Bay.  It what sense could a Democrat president not have committed to end that horrendous experiment?

Obama has made synthetic changes to US foreign policy under the guise of overdue progressivism.  America is no more secure, its foreign policy no more liberal.  For people who endured ten years of Tony Blair’s spin, this should have been clear from the start.  The Labour minister Denis MacShane remarked on the US president’s election campaign “I shut my eyes when I listen to this guy and it could be Tony. He is doing the same thing that we did in 1997″.