Tony Blair

Peace out. No joke. Tony Blair has handed off the baton of British national politics, so he can leverage the litany of world power contacts he amassed over his years as Prime Minister. His mission? Solve global problems.

Natalie Orfalea introduced this UCSB Arts & Lectures presentation, generously made possible in part by the Ofalea Foundation. The last similar such presentation I saw was here in this theatre when Bill Clinton was interviewed by Natalie's husband, Paul Orfalea (aka "Kinko") in Nov 2006.

Paul's cousin, Tom Barrack, introduced Blair, who so eloquently delivered a sort of "state of the globe" address from his perspective as former 10 year Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Tom Barrack

Barrack, himself, has quite a set of accomplishments, stringing from his role as Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of the Interior in the Reagan administration to his current position as CEO of Colony Capital.

One theme resonated clearly during Blair's presentation: we must curb extremism if we are to have peace. This isn't to say that religion cannot exist in a global society. Quite the contrary. There are positive and negative aspects of faith, but we must focus on those aspects that might be used towards solidarity and as a source of reconciliation. The bottom line: stand up for moderation. Blair believes that this is the only way to peacefully coexist.

This thing on fundamentalism in Islam has to be won by Islam. We can only help or harm."

Muslims in England and the US have more freedoms than those in many Muslim regions. Blair stresses that we should use this sense of freedom to make a case for moderation. We have to empower the moderates and commit. We can persuade by winning hearts and minds, and we must never give up this mission.

In reference to prior strategy backing Iraq in order to hold Iran in check, Blair suggested that we can't just back a regime because it's tactful. Arming Iraq was convenient at the time, but it obviously had disastrous future consequences. We must choose good allies and go after problems at the root. He stresses that the relationship between the US and UK is paramount.

People would come up and say to me, ‘thank you for being such a good ally to the US.' I'd say to them, ‘I didn't do it for America, I did it for us.'