<> There was one revealing moment in Mr Blair’s evidence. He said that he had taken Britain to war on four occasions. As he said it, he seemed to realise it was not a popular claim. He paused, and then gave his list: Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The question of legality arises both in respect of Kosovo and Iraq. Like Lord Goldsmith, Mr Blair regards the lawfulness of the Iraq action as turning on the absence of a second UN resolution, and the reliance on Resolution 1441.<>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article7010321.ece From The Times February 1, 2010 Blair the dictator bulldozed us into war Not since Churchill was a leader so determined to get his own way. But he was fatally misguided William Rees-Mogg We have been told by Sir John Chilcot himself that the Chilcot inquiry is not a trial, and that nobody will be either acquitted or found guilty; we all know that is not true. A public judgment is being made as each section of evidence is given. In particular a quiet judgment has been made of Tony Blair’s conduct. It may never lead to his being tried in any court, but there is nevertheless a public verdict of his responsibility for the British action in Iraq. It was Mr Blair who was responsible; his evidence shows it. He was the Prime Minister who had won two landslide elections. He could cajole, coax, threaten, anger and flatter to get his own way, a war leader who was the nearest thing to a parliamentary dictator since the wartime Winston Churchill. Mr Blair’s major speeches, among which his Chilcot evidence must be judged, tend to follow the same pattern. As one listens for the first time one is likely to find a speech convincing. Yet there are always loose threads, and one is likely to start picking at them in one’s mind. In his Chilcot evidence, there were arguments that seemed convincing on Friday, but became more doubtful as the weekend passed. He has certainly raised more doubts than certainties in my mind. I would accept Mr Blair’s important assurance: “I believed beyond doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.” He supported this with the argument that “no one disputed that Saddam had WMDs”. Even that needs scrutiny, since Saddam himself was claiming to have got rid of his WMD capacity. On the historic record, it was natural for British Intelligence to discount any claim made by Saddam. At the time the Western governments, including those most opposed to the use of force, assumed that Saddam still had his chemical weapons. It would have been natural for Mr Blair to share that belief, though he seems to have relied on low-grade intelligence sources, without being frank with his Cabinet, Parliament or the public about the possible weaknesses. He should have corrected the report of a 45-minute missile threat more promptly. However, this does not answer the question: “Why Iraq?” Mr Blair argues that the previous policy of containing Iraq, enforced by sanctions and overflying, had been overtaken by the attack on the twin towers. He expressed his argument in a passage that itself calls for analysis. “Up until 9/11, [those pursuing the policy of containment] were doing their best”; after 9/11 “the calculus of risk had changed. Over 3,000 were killed, an horrific event. If these people could have killed 30,000, they would have done.” Mr Blair went on to say that 9/11 “completely changed our perception of where risks lay”. It is obvious at this stage of his evidence that he still does not answer the central question: “Why Iraq?” It is true that al-Qaeda had murdered 3,000 people in the United States; it was honestly but mistakenly believed that Iraq possessed WMDs that might be a threat to Western nations. There was no evidence that “these people” who would have liked to kill 30,000 Americans had anything to do with Iraq or with Saddam himself. Historically the secular Baath party had seen Islamic fundamentalism as one of its chief enemies. Later, Mr Blair made the reasonable point that one should look at the character of the regime and not just at the nature of the weapons. The Blair doctrine is that “the assessment of security intimately relates to the nature of the regime”. He believed, justifiably, that Saddam was a “profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic, man”. It is an unacceptable risk to leave weapons of mass destruction in the hands of such a person. That is true, but it was equally true before 9/11. It is not clear that 9/11 altered the calculus of risk. If anything it put greater pressure on Iraq to make concessions. Mr Blair also applied his doctrine to the current issues of Iran, where he sees the same dangerous conjunction of WMDs and a “highly repressive or failed” state. He does not specify the policy he would adopt towards Iran. He did state that his judgment is “we don’t take any risks with this issue”. He does not tell us which are the greater risks, taking action against Iran, if feasible, or taking no action. Iran is more powerful than Iraq. There was one revealing moment in Mr Blair’s evidence. He said that he had taken Britain to war on four occasions. As he said it, he seemed to realise it was not a popular claim. He paused, and then gave his list: Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The question of legality arises both in respect of Kosovo and Iraq. Like Lord Goldsmith, Mr Blair regards the lawfulness of the Iraq action as turning on the absence of a second UN resolution, and the reliance on Resolution 1441. Broad questions of international law are also involved. They concern the monopoly of the use of force given to the United Nations in the UN Charter. Since 1945, the conventions on torture and genocide have opened a wider right to use force; there is a general right to arrest those responsible for torture or to intervene to prevent genocide. That was the justification for the Nato intervention in Kosovo. There are still too many failures of the Iraq policy that have not been justified. Saddam was deposed, but at high cost in allied and Iraqi lives. We did remain loyal allies, but to an increasingly unpopular American administration. International law has not been clarified. Brave troops were not given the right equipment. As General Douglas MacArthur told the US Senate in 1951: “In war, there is no substitute for victory.” In the end, Iraq was no victory for Britain. Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
