Quote:
Forget it – Blair will never be branded a war criminal
Opponents of the Iraq war are deluded if they think Chilcott will find the allied intervention was illegal
Consider the response of liberal Europeans to the last 40 years of Iraqi history. From 1968, an authentically fascist state confronted them, complete with the supreme leader, the unremitting reign of terror, the gassing of ethnic minorities and the unprovoked wars of conquest. America and Britain had, to their shame, been complicit in the oppression, but in 2003 they overthrew the tyrant thinking that he still possessed the weapons he used against the Kurds and the Iranians. He didn't and the occupation turned into a disaster as the followers of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Ruhollah Khomeini began a campaign of mass sectarian killing.
Anyone who believed what Europeans said about their determination to make amends for Nazism and communism would have expected a principled response. However much they loathed Bush and Blair, surely they would have offered unreserved support for Arabs and Kurds struggling to escape totalitarianism. The British bore a heavy responsibility, as our army was effectively defeated in Basra. With too few troops to fight, it allowed clerical death squads to take over the city. British commanders had to suffer the humiliation of seeing the American and reconstituted Iraqi forces charge in to stop the violence they could not control.
And yet mainstream public opinion has never been interested in offering solidarity to the victims of Ba'athism and Islamism. Instead of talking about what happened to Iraq either before or after the invasion, it has remained stuck in the groove of spring 2003, endlessly scratching the record for a conspiratorial explanation for Britain's decision to invade.
We are now enduring our fifth Iraq inquiry. Tribunals have called Alastair Campbell so many times he could imitate Sherman McCoy in The Bonfire of the Vanities and declare: "I am a career defendant. I now dress for jail, even though I haven't been convicted of any crime." They do not seem to know it but if they hold inquiries until the crack of doom, the war's opponents will never convict him or the Labour leadership. Their central allegation that the second Iraq war was "illegal" is unsustainable and not only because no competent court has validated it.
I am growing old and grey waiting for John Humphrys or Jon Snow to show a spark of journalistic life and ask Nick Clegg, Philippe Sands and all the rest of them the simple question: "What do you mean by an 'illegal war'?"
However vigorously they seek to parse UN resolution 1,441, the use of "illegal" demonstrates that Tony Blair's lawyerly critics believe that the Ba'athist regime, which was guilty of genocide and under UN sanctions, remained Iraq's legitimate government, entitled by law to treat the country as its private prison.
After the war, not even Saddam's business partner Jacques Chirac went so far as to say that the Ba'athists should have their "illegally" stolen country restored to them. The UN, instead, recognised the occupation and the democratic government that followed and lost some of its bravest workers in the struggle for a freer country.
The inability to accept that a policy they honestly opposed still had moral virtues is producing levels of dementia unusually high even by the standards of British public life.
Last week, the media convinced themselves that Campbell made an astonishing admission to the Chilcott inquiry when he said that Blair had sent Bush notes saying that he would support removing Saddam by force if America could not remove him any other way.
Much of the supposed exclusive had been "revealed" in the Campbell diaries, published as long ago as 2007, but the venerable age of the scoop did not matter because it supported the dominant narrative that Blair was determined to go war come what may. I am sure you can spot the difficulty with the conspiracy theory. Blair was not a dictator and could not commit British troops to battle on a whim. But his opponents are trying to get round it by maintaining that he won the support of the cabinet and Parliament by lying to them.
As someone who approved of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein at the time, and still does, I suppose it's not my place help them out. But the polemicist in me is offended by the gaucheness of their efforts. As a matter of low tactics as much as high principle, they ought to know that you never level an accusation you can't substantiate because you make life too easy for your targets when you do.
No one who opposed John Major claimed he was lying when he said that taking the pound out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism was in Britain's best interests. We confined ourselves to the truthful charge that he had made a monumental policy blunder.
Go beyond alleging the same about Blair and he will reply that he personally interviewed intelligence sources, knew the bloody history of Ba'athism backwards and in any case was not prepared to take risks with WMDs after the 9/11 atrocities the intelligence services never saw coming. The best his opponents are likely to get from the Chilcott inquiry is a mild condemnation of the former PM for relying on flimsy evidence (although I hope and expect it to be tougher about the calamitous occupation of Basra).
The fifth disappointment in a row will drive them closer to the edge. Sir Oliver Miles, former ambassador to Libya, has already predicted that the inquiry will be open to accusations of "whitewash" because two members of the Chilcott panel are Jews. He's not alone. I have had an allegedly left-wing journalist say the same to me. Once, he would never have allowed Jew obsessions to infect his thinking. Now, his battered mind was wide open to racial fantasies.
The mental deformations appeasement brings should not be underestimated. People don't just placate their enemies, but become them by adopting their ideological mannerisms and foibles. For years, we've had the notion that democracies are the "root cause" of every Islamist atrocity accepted in polite society. You must now prepare yourself for the return of the Jewish conspiracy theory to supposedly honourable discourse. Indeed, if you look around, you will find it is already there.
i commend the author on his article, almost enough to make me consider reading the Guardian regularly.
