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Blair’s legacy: an Iraq shattered by invasion
Matthew Carr: Why the Chilcot inquiry should apportion blame
The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war reached its dramatic apotheosis today with the much-anticipated appearance of Tony Blair. As predicted, he still insists that invading Iraq was "the right thing to do" regardless of the manipulations that made it possible and regardless of the consequences. In these circumstances it is worth recalling the impact of the Anglo-American invasion on the country it intended to liberate.
No one knows how many Iraqis have died as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom and its calamitous aftermath, but estimates range from 100,000 to more than 1 million. Last week the Iraqi Health Ministry reported that 2-3 million Iraqis are mentally and physically disabled: a legacy that includes victims of all Iraq's wars going back to 1977.
According to the Iraqi government, 1-2 million Iraqis are widows and 5 million are orphans. Since 2003, according to the United Nations, more than four million Iraqis have become refugees or 'Internally Displaced Persons' (IDPs). All this in a population of 30 million.
Today whole areas of Iraq are saturated with radiation and dioxins, which some Iraqi doctors attribute - at least in part - to depleted uranium (DU) weapons used by the Anglo-American coalition. In Fallujah, the target of two major US assaults in 2004, doctors reported last November an "unprecedented and at present unexplainable" rise in deformed births, including babies with two heads.
Iraq's health and educational systems are shattered. According to Unicef, 40 per cent of Iraqi children have no access to clean drinking water and more than two million primary school-age children do not go to school.
On the plus side, Iraqis now have the formal trappings of parliamentary democracy and are able to vote for a corrupt and authoritarian government whose security forces are riddled with sectarian militias and former death squad members.
The daily death toll has subsided since the bloody peak of bombings and death squad killings of 2007. But a leaked memo from a senior US officer in Baghdad last July noted that "political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as political and legal institutions".
Blair and his fellow conspirators have tended to ignore this legacy or else they have blamed it all on "foreign" terrorists or Iran.
Earlier this month Alastair Campbell told the Chilcot inquiry of his pride at having overthrown a "barbaric dictator" as though the war was a personal moral mission. Whatever can be said about Saddam, there is little evidence of morality or honour among Campbell and the other men who plotted the Iraqi leader's downfall.
Their dominant motivation appears to have been one of servile deference to the powerful and the 'special relationship' in particular - rather than any concern for the Iraqi people.
Some have gone on to more lucrative activities. Jeremy Greenstock is a director with De La Rue, the company which produced currency for the Iraqi government. David Manning is a non-executive director with the BG Group. Jonathan Powell is a senior managing director with Morgan Stanley. No one has done better than Blair himself.
The calamitous legacy of Operation Iraqi Freedom has tended to receive muted treatment in the Chilcot's clubby, genteel atmosphere. At times the polite discussions of "mistakes" and "inadequate planning" have resembled a post-mortem into an unsuccessful England cricket tour rather than the greatest moral and political disaster in British history.
There is nothing surprising about this. The government did not set up the Chilcot Inquiry in order to indict itself. Its declared remit is not to "apportion blame" but to "identify the lessons that can be learned... if we face similar situations in future" with its alarming suggestion that this grisly debacle might one day be repeated.
And yet almost in spite of itself, the inquiry has now brought the sleazy manipulations and outright lies that made the war possible to the surface. In doing so, Chilcot and his team have the historic opportunity to hold those responsible to account.
Whatever happens today, this is not just about Blair. It is ultimately about the kind of society we wish to be. To launch an aggressive war based on false pretences is not only a corruption of democracy, it is a breach of international law and therefore a crime.
So the Chilcot committee really should "apportion blame" when it finally reports later this year. Anything less, to paraphrase Clark Gable, would be tantamount to saying that we frankly just don't give a damn not only about Iraq, but about ourselves. ·
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We've seen such commissions before, here in the US, during King Bush's reign. Both the House and Senate established committees to examine evidence on the lead up to the Iraq war. Both committees and their sub-committees fell flat on their faces, or were called off before they could complete their work. Likewise with the dis-reputable 9/11 Commission, another white wash committee, that, instead of examining the underlying reasons why we were attacked, was obsessed with the question, "How come we didn't kill them before they killed us?" Bush and Cheney were politely interviewed behind closed doors, not under oath. Condi Rice was allowed to lie as much as she wanted, and so on. Mr. Carr is correct in saying that Government isn't about to expose the truth about itself.
Before 2003 Iraq was by this account a model state in which whose citizens luxuriated in the freedoms handed down to them by the great leader Saddam Hussein and family. Of the oppression, mass deaths and the rapes at that time we are, apparently, sanguine. I have met women and men who are anti-war and for whom I have great respect. Unfortunately, I see many more who are not. They support the war aims of al Queda in Mesopotamia which 'executes' the wrong sort of Moslems, drove the United Nations and aid agencies out of Iraq by suicide bombings (which continue) and which today encourages violence against women and 'collaboraters' otherwise known as democrats. This could have been avoided as long ago as 1991. Step forward George Bush â?? senior! â?? and John Major. Instead, the sight of infidels in the 'Moslem lands' there to liberate Kuwait kicked off Bin Laden's franchise, and the steady journey of the various flavours of the anti-western left towards embracing fundamentalist Islamic jihad as part of their own 'trappings'.
Even by the standards of the 'string up Tony Blair' brigade, this is a remarkable piece. To write at length about the state of Iraq and only mention Saddam once, and in passing, is quite an effort. Saddam Hussein tortured and murdered huge numbers of his people, and his Iraq was rightly described as a 'prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it'. Just yesterday I watched an interview with an Iraqi commentator, and she was trying to emphasise how grateful the ordinary Iraqis she speaks to are to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and how they feel their lives are so much better. But let's just ignore them, because if there's one thing this unpleasant mob in the west aren't interested in, it's the views of ordinary Iraqi people. I can't help but feel that people like Matthew Carr are dismayed by the success of elections in Iraq, as they want it to fail so they have another stick with which to beat Bush and Blair. Stop massaging your egos, there will never be a trial in the Hague, nor should there be. Saddam was in material breach of 16 binding UN resolutions on WMD, and it was high time he faced the consequences of his actions. It's time to concentrate on doing everything we can to help Iraq become a stable, successful democracy - something that the people of Iraq (yes, them again) desperately want.
Agree with Bill S. You can't throw around such a fact as 'two-headed babies' without ANY evidence. I'm totally willing to accept this as true, not least because I know Mr Carr to be an excellent and truthful journalist, but you MUST provide proof for a statement of such gravity.
"...cricket tour rather than the greatest moral and political disaster in British history. "
really? How about slavery, that was pretty bad. Or the enforced colonisation of 3/4 of the world? that wasn't great.
Whilst I realise the aim is to be as incendiary as possible that statement really is a bit much even by your standards.
"Today whole areas of Iraq are saturated with radiation and dioxins, which some Iraqi doctors attribute at least in part - to depleted uranium (DU) weapons used by the Anglo-American coalition."
Depleted uranium is, as the name suggests, uranium with the active radioactive component largely removed. Depleted uranium is toxic, but only weekly radioactive.
Quite what dioxins have to do with depleted uranium is a mystery. Dioxins are more likely to come about by people burning trash in their back yards.
Yes, we really should apportion blame - and prosecute all those culpable in Den Haag.
With this inquiry, the thing that boggles me is "why then are we still keeping our boys there, in Iraqi, when we can now realise that this was a mistake in sending them there in the first place?" Seems the invasion was done on false pretences and in adequate planning by certain political gurus.
"In Fallujah, the target of two major US assaults in 2004, doctors reported last November an "unprecedented and at present unexplainable" rise in deformed births, including babies with two heads."
Two things; if 'unexplainable' why the proximity to the premise of the piece?. And, two, without pictures...it didn't happen. Someone here needs to "go back to work".