Blair the dictator bulldozed us into war

<> 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.