Invasion of Iraq 2003: A Hideous Mistake

"SIR MARTIN GILBERT: Was it then a weakness in the pre-March 2003 discussions that somehow voices weren't raised, and experts and knowledge weren't put on the table that there could be this massive deterioration [in the security situation in Iraq post-invasion] ?

RT HON TONY BLAIR: There was very much discussion of the Shia/Sunni issue, and we were very well aware of that. What there wasn't -- and this, again, is of vital importance and this certainly is a lesson in any situation similar to this -- people did not believe that you would have Al-Qaeda coming in from outside and people did not believe that you would end up in a situation where Iran, once, as it were, the threat of Saddam was removed from them, would then try to deliberately destabilise the country, but that's what they did, and there are some very important lessons in that ... "

- Tony Blair giving evidence at The Chilcot Enquiry, 29th January 2010, p.194 (http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/transcripts/oralevidence-bydate/100129.aspx)



"I mean the truth is what got really difficult, far more difficult than anyone imagined, was when you got external factors joining up with internal factors to try and cause chaos and instability; by use of terrorism, by suicide bombers, by, you know, roadside bombs ..."

- Tony Blair, referring to both Iraq & Afghanistan, interview for The Times, 9th September 2011, by Philip Webster & Richard Beeston (http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/ten-years-after-9-11-the-battle-is-for-an-open-world-not-a-closed-one/)


How governments are run, whether in theory (the constitution) or practice (the given particular administration) may seem a tiresome detail of interest only to political nerds and policy wonks. But in fact it is vital because how decisions are made crucially shapes what decisions are made, and those decisions often have very wide consequences. The decision by the US and UK Governments , with support from only Australia and Poland, to invade Iraq in 2003 is a perfect illustration of this point.

In the events running up to the invasion of Iraq, one critical similarity between Tony Blair's government and the Bush Administration is that they were both run by tight cabals who were contemptuous of disagreement within their own wider governments. This was a key structural feature, in fact a weakness, in both governments which first made the decision to invade possible, and second for it to happen without any adequate plans for the aftermath. Dissent was marginalised; caveats and those raising them excluded. Furthermore, Blair's cabal was contemptuous of public opinion in Britain, which was generally at best puzzled by the need for or at worst actively hostile to the invasion. The Bush cabal meanwhile were contemptuous of international opinion.

Invading Iraq at all was a dumb decision. But the error was compounded a thousandfold by the incredible incompetence of how it was carried out, particularly the complete failure to plan properly or at all for what would happen once Saddam's forces had been defeated. Their planning did not go beyond 'We'll go in there with overwhelming force, we'll knock Saddam over, then everything will be alright.'

Tony Blair's contention, made in his evidence to the Chilcot Enquiry in 2010, that: a) everything would have been alright but for the interference of Al-Qaeda and more especially Iran; and b) that interference could not have been foreseen, are both ludicrous coming from an intelligent man. Such feeble reasoning merely highlights how indefensible the invasion was. I found it staggering in 2010, and do so now reading over it again, that Tony Blair was not ashamed publicly to reveal such a flawed and limitted understanding of the country he was proposing to invade, and of the dynamics of the region. He was the Prime Mininster of the United Kingdom. He cannot have lacked for experts. One can only presume he was not listening to them.No one knows or will ever know the number of Iraqis who have died in the internal conflicts since the invasion of 2003. Estimates, which is all there are, vary greatly. You can see some for yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War. It is reasonable to say it is more than 100,000 people. The fact that we don't know is a kind of extra injury to the people of Iraq, and emphasises our recklessness in that country.


"I also think however that in the action in Libya we're able to learn from the experiences particularly in nation building in Afghanistan & Iraq, but we've also got to hope by the way that in Libya you don't get the same external forces as you got in Iraq particularly, and in Afghanistan, destabilising the situation. Now personally I'm pretty optimistic about that, I think there's every chance Libya will get on its feet, and that would be great ..."

- Tony Blair, 'The 9/11 Interview', with Jon Sopel, BBCNews, 10th September, 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14864513)

There is a constant implication in Tony Blair's remarks about the invasion of Iraq that I find infuriating. It is that the invasion itself took place in a kind of historical vacuum, in which none of what eventually happened could have been foreseen. In essence, saying that there had never been such a thing as a counter-insurgency campaign before and therefore there were no precedents or experience to help the invaders anticipate what might happen, they had to start from scratch. This is so obviously wrong that it is insulting, somewhat like Gordon Brown's claim that the banking disaster and credit crunch of 2007-8 came from nowhere and could not have been predicted. You have to have effectively no knowledge in order to believe either.

Here are a very few major counter-insurgencies that were available to serve as potential models, and provide warning of pitfalls:

British:

1. Malayan Emergency 1948-60

2. Aden Emergency 1963-67

3. Mau Mau Rebellion (Kenya) 1952-60, though this was a brutal & disgraceful campaign on our part.

4. EOKA in Cyprus 1955-9

French:

1. Indochina 1946-54

2. Algeria 1954-62

That's just for 2 countries fighting them in only a 20 year period and post-WWII. I'm labouring the point. There are innumerable examples. A two minute search on Google using the term 'Counter-insurgency' will start you off and direct you to all you need to know.

Come Back, David Miliband !

I have been extremely critical of David Miliband in the past, when he was a front-line politician in the last Brown Government, and widely regarded as the most likely next Labour leader. There was no question of his ability, either as a Minister or as a politician, but I found him far too smooth. He seemed to me the most successful of all the aspiring imitators of Tony Blair - Nick Clegg & David Cameron being among the others - with everything sinister that implies; for instance very powerful and infectious self-belief, the ability to persuade colleagues & voters to back highly dubious proposals. I found his ambition disturbing because it was so naked. Again like Tony Blair, he seemed to have a lust for power, a lust that if fulfilled would provide external confirmation of what he knew inside already all along, that he was right.

Now though I find my opinion of David Miliband has modified, and for the following reason: what he has not done since losing the Labour leadership election. Now, a majority of voters in the Labour leadership contest did what members of Parties often do when they have just suffered a bruising defeat and been turfed out of office after a long spell in it. They elect a leader who suits them, who they feel comfortable with (in this case Ed M), not the one who would most effectively make their case to the wider electorate (here, David M). This is because the latter kind of leader is necessarily suspect to them; because that leader by definition has a wider view of things than the majority of his party members; in the case of the Labour Party, he or she would be 'too right-wing'. Remember how the Tories elected that succession of no-hopers after John Major, their very own Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko sequence. I've had to look up what exact order they came in to make sure, but in a sense it doesn't really matter: William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith for heaven's sake !, Michael Howard. This is the same process at work. These leaders were sufficiently right-wing to suit the taste of the Party and activists, but too right-wing for the electorate at large.

Now Ed Miliband, after a stumbling start, is turning out to be a better leader of Labour than I had anticipated. I think he still has great difficulty coming over naturally in tv interviews. But it is not Ed I am concerned with here, it is David.

Think what has not happened since the outcome of the leadership election. There have been no stories of splits or tension or disagreement over policy between David and Ed. There has been no sniping at Ed, no critical running commentary, no secret hostile briefing to journalists from himself or from 'friends'. David retired from the front-line with the professed aim of avoiding stories of splits, and as it turns out has really done so. He has kept his own counsel, and been prepared to let Ed make his own way unhindered. Now - think of the amount of mischief David could have caused if he had wanted to, the civil war he could at least have tried to ignite, based on pique and wounded vanity; motives common in political disputes. That he has not done so is to me testament to his restraint. I infer that he has not done so from the absence of stories of conflict he could have generated had he wished, in a media only too eager to receive and amplify them.

Which all leads me to a position I never thought I would hold. What I would like to see is David Miliband returning to front-line politics. Why ? Because he knows what he's on about when it comes to foreign affairs. At this time of great turmoil abroad, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, where our interests and sympathies are involved and we face all sorts of choices and temptations over if and how to intervene (or put negatively to meddle), we need his voice, his expertise, his advice.

I think the recent check in his career has done David M good. It is in times of adversity and enforced silence that true character is both developed and shown. Think of Teddy Roosevelt in the Dakota Territory after his wife and mother died, or Churchill in his wilderness years. Lofty comparisons perhaps, but something akin to what David is undergoing now; his forty days and nights in the Desert.

One thing David may wish to contemplate during this time is his alleged complicity in Extraordinary Rendition while he was Foreign Secretary, one thing that remains a permanent stain on his reputation (http://bigthink.com/ideas/40079 via Graham Linehan, @Glinner on Twitter). Nothing could furnish stronger material for reflections on the responsibilities and morality of power. If it's true, it is a mistake he can learn from, learn not to repeat, even in another form. Not in any way to excuse him if he was complicit in Rendition, but the exercise of Foreign Policy always involves those doing it in dubious transactions. To take an obvious example, everyone is obliged to deal with the Chinese Government, because the potential market is so huge, and their influence on world affairs ever on the rise. This despite their human rights record, about which they are completely unapologetic and have no intention of changing. Indeed, their continued existence as a Government relies partly precisely on that abuse of human rights. Robin Cook's 'Ethical Foreign Policy' was a dream, or more accurately an only partly realisable aspiration. The thing in Foreign Policy is not whether you are engaged in actions that are wrong, but how do you limit the extent of that engagement. This is not a cynical excuse for unfettered participation in any and all abuses. It is a recognition of reality and a call for restraint. Even having the most severely limited foreign policy ('Splendid Isolation') does not free you from contamination, for several reasons. The first is that you end up commiting sins of omission, as John Major and Douglas Hurd did over former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early '90s. President Clinton has acknowledged his sorrow and shame over failing to act in the latter. The second is that States or foreign terrorists attack you anyway, regardless of your desire to keep well out of it. Think of the Axis Powers in the last '30s.

Aside from mulling over all that, going forward David M retains his skill as a communicator, but has a chance to discover his own more authentic voice, and his own true political identity to communicate. Again, an extremely extravagant comparison, but think of the political journey of Bobby Kennedy, another one of a set of brothers prominent in public life, over his lifetime. Because of where RFK ended up, we can forgive his origins as a hawkish Cold War warrior, among other things attacking Eisenhower during the 1960 presidential election for allowing the growth of the supposed 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union.

In sum what I am saying is, come back David, we need you !

Though whether our political-media system is mature enough to permit his re-emergence in the near future is another matter.

However any of the foregoing may be, one thing I can say with certainty is that we definitely have not heard the last of David Miliband.

Phone Hacking Latest

I was watching part of Tom Crone and Colin Myler appearing before the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee earlier today. They were really floundering.

They came across as incredibly shifty and evasive. They were consistently giving rambling and irrelevant replies to perfectly straightforward questions. The substance of their defence of their actions was a variation on a familiar one: 'Decisions were made above us. We didn't know the full extent of what was going on'.

But the essence of the Murdochs' defence was: 'Decisions were made below us. We trusted our employees and we were betrayed'.

Everyone involved in the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World, including those from the Metropolitan Police, seems to think what had gone on and investigating it properly was someone else's responsibility. When questioned, they're all saying, 'I didn't know ... I didn't ask ...' When they're put on the spot and they might perjure themselves, they say, 'I don't recollect ... I don't remember ...' That old one !

Someone from News International and/or News Corporation must have, and therefore take, responsibility for the hacking and other illegal practices such as paying police for information, and the subsequent attempt to cover these things up.