July 08, 2016
Source: Bigstock
Yet it should be remembered that the American intelligence services were pretty sure that Saddam did have WMDs, and indeed the French intelligence services were of the same opinion. President Chirac didn”t refuse to participate because he didn”t believe the intelligence, but because he believed that the war required U.N. authority. I don”t think Blair lied to get parliamentary approval for the war, because I think he believed what he told the House of Commons.
The war divided public opinion in Britain. There were antiwar demonstrations and marches with banners proclaiming “Not In My Name.” But at the time, opinion polls showed a narrow majority approving of the war. If that majority crumbled, and most came to believe the war wrong, this was partly because no WMDs were found, and partly because of the chaos that followed President Bush’s premature claim of “Mission Accomplished.”
For that was the most important failing, the absence of any plan for the future government of Iraq after the successful invasion. If Iraq fell into anarchy and civil strife this was partly because of the abrupt disbandment of the Iraqi army and the removal of Ba”athist civil servants from office. President Bush”with naive optimism”proclaimed the restoration of democracy, when there were no effective democrats to deal with.
And this leads to the second reason Alex Salmond and others want to see Blair charged with war crimes, or alternatively impeached by the House of Commons: that he bears responsibility for “the deaths of 179 British servicemen and women, 150,000 immediate dead Iraqis, the Middle East in flames, and the world faced with an existential threat of terrorism…”
It sounds a powerful indictment. Yet much of it falls apart on any examination. The threat of terrorism was a reality before the war, not only in the U.S.A. (9/11) but in France, where there were Islamist terrorist acts in the 1990s. That the Middle East is in flames is more the consequence of the failed Arab Spring than directly of the Iraq War. As for the 150,000 dead Iraqis, any impartial observer might, having admitted that the absence of effective plans for postwar reconstruction is one reason for the anarchy, point out that it is Iraqis who have been killing Iraqis, and that the incompetent, corrupt, and sectarian Iraqi politicians must shoulder most of the blame.
As for the deaths of 179 British servicemen and women, it is difficult to speak the truth without sounding callous. Every such death is a tragedy to family and friends, but young men and women choose to join the armed forces, and, doing so, know the risks they run. The anger and resentment of the bereaved are sharpened if they come to think the war wrong or pointless. But you can avoid deaths in action only if there is no action, and indeed the only way to ensure that no soldiers die young is to have no army.
I repeat, I thought the war mistaken. I never voted for Tony Blair and never had a high opinion of him”unlike many who upbraid and vilify him now. But I don”t think he lied to the House of Commons. I think he believed what he said. I think that, knowing that the American government was determined to go to war, he believed it was in Britain’s interest to stand by our closest military ally. I think the suggestion that he should be charged with war crimes is absurd. If he deceived anyone he deceived himself first.
I would add only one other thing. War, as General Sherman, the most ruthless commander in the American Civil War, said, “is hell.” But while the prospect of war may appall”even frighten”politicians, it excites them, too. It excited Churchill and Kennedy and Thatcher, even though all were also aware of its horrors. If the prospect of the Iraq War excited Blair”and may have appalled him, too”that’s the way things are. Moreover, it excites much of the public also. I”m old enough to remember enthusiasm for war at the time of Suez and the Falklands. And in the early years of the Vietnam War, millions of Americans were all for it, just as I have had French friends who fervently supported the French wars in Indochina and Algeria. War is hell, but when the trumpet sounds, an awful lot of us respond to its music.
