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Iraq

The invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was, in my view, a strategic, political and humanitarian blunder of historic magnitude. It was a strategic blunder because the traditional aim of British foreign policy over the centuries, the maintenance of a balance of power in each region where we have a national interest, has been destroyed in the middle east. It rested on the balancing of the triangular animosities of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran—respectively secular, Sunni and Shi’a—each hostile to the other two. That is why when Iraq invaded Iran in the 1980s, and it looked as though Iran would win the war, Britain and the United States gave much support to Saddam Hussein, despite his being already a proven warmonger abroad and a murderous tyrant at home. The major beneficiary of the overthrow of Saddam and his secular tyranny has been Shi’a, theocratic, nuclear Iran, a far greater threat to western interests today than Saddam was in 2003, with his by then non-existent weapons of mass destruction—the excuse for the invasion so shamefully advanced in the House by our Prime Minister, to his everlasting disgrace. I did not believe him then, and I voted against the invasion. The occupation of Iraq by foreigners has made Iran the most potent political force in the middle east, as Hezbollah recently demonstrated in Lebanon, so the neo-cons, who had long been plotting an attack on Iraq, in the event achieved nothing for Israel, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are more than ever fearful of Iran. The invasion was a political blunder because the attack on Iraq divided the United Nations, divided NATO, divided the European Union, inflamed Islamic opinion against Britain at home and abroad, constrained British diplomatic influence and commercial success in the middle east and beyond, increased the influence of President Putin’s Russia, weakened the world economy by forcing up the price of oil and, at a significantly lower level of importance, has largely destroyed the political reputation of our Prime Minister. The war was a humanitarian blunder because of the tragic deaths of so many British and American soldiers and the many more whose bodies have been maimed and whose lives have been ruined, and the sadness and suffering that that has brought to their families, which will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It was a humanitarian blunder also because of the countless and largely uncounted tens of thousands of wholly innocent non-combatant Iraqis—Shi’a, Sunni and Kurds—who have been slaughtered, mutilated, orphaned or robbed of their homes and livelihoods by reason of the chaos into which the invasion has plunged the country that was Iraq, but can never be Iraq again. As a result of his tragic misjudgments in the middle east, our Prime Minister is, figuratively speaking, more deeply steeped in blood than any Scottish politician since Macbeth. We need an inquiry to tell us how he led us into this disaster, and to make sure that no vainglorious and ignorant Prime Minister can ever do so again.