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Iraq

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, started with an apology for drawing our attention to this matter again. It is not he who should be giving any apology at all. It is only right that we should return to consider, in a sober and sombre way, the grave situation in which we find ourselves and the even more grave situation in which the people of Iraq find themselves. Make no mistake about it—and I know noble Lords do not—not only it is a failing state that is splintering, with people set against each other, but many of those who have given support and assistance to us may be the ones who will suffer most in the days to come. For that, we bear responsibility—particularly those who took us into this ill-advised war. The noble Lord has directed our attention to the need for a serious inquiry—not a legal or political question, but a sober reflection on what has gone wrong and why. I and my colleagues fully support that. It is a matter that should be addressed, and he has described well today how we might begin our thinking towards that. Much of what that inquiry needs to address, however, is already perfectly plain to all of us. We do not need to wait for an inquiry to be clear about many of those issues. The state in Iraq is collapsed. Why? Because we brought it down. It is not enough to say that we did not create the terrorists, that they were there in any case. Anyone who goes into a divided country and removes the structures and institutions of the state has to bear responsibility for the fact that the existing fractures, with nothing to hold them together, will appear in a gross way. That is an inevitable consequence, and if one does not understand that, with all the experience of history and military intervention that this country has had, one simply has not been paying attention to history. Maybe that is indeed one of the issues our minds were beingdrawn to. In any situation where there are deep fractures and fissures—and we have seen it more recently on our own continent; I live in a part of the world where that is the case—they are held together not just by the bonds of personal relationships, but by governmental structures and institutions. If those are wiped to the side, and all of those who had power and responsibility are set to the side in the way that was done in Iraq, without any serious contribution to law and order being put in their place, what can one expect? It is also clear that we must be a great deal more careful, reflective and honest about the handling of our own intelligence. It is clear that both here and in the United States of America, considering the material coming forward in an objective and reflective way would not have led us into making the interventions that were made. There is a tendency to bend information and material in the direction one finds attractive or supportive of the decisions one has already made. I remember asking in this House whether decisions had been made well in advance of the invasion. I was told that the answer was no. It turned out that that was not the whole truth. Decisions had clearly been made, and intelligence and material were being pressed to support them. That is a clear lesson we can learn right now and begin to put into operation. We also know that in any of these situations, the fight for hearts and minds brings results in the long run. I recall watching the news and seeing planes meting out destruction on a regime which all of us abominated and which weapons and military interventions can destroy. That is all they can do—weapons cannot create something new. Only the commitment of people on the ground will achieve that. Anyone who had thought about it in advance must surely have realised that the notion that we would simply be welcomed in the streets and that everything would turn out well was at best naive and at worst intellectually dishonest. In that whole region, the wealth of this country’s influence and respect has been frittered away—no, cast away—over the years so that it is extraordinarily difficult for this country to exert the influence that it properly did in the past in a positive way because of this recent adventure and other related adventures. Something else that we know very well, because we have contributed to its creation, is the importance of the institutions and structures of the international community. These cannot be thrown to the side without deep fractures appearing in the global community. When, sometimes, our colleagues around the world take a different view, our approach should be not to disregard it but engage in diplomacy and to persuade people by the force of law, not the law of force. These are not new things; these are things we all know well in our heart. It is time for us to return to them. There are some small indications that this may be the case. We now have an indication of a drawdown of British soldiers from Iraq, and I hope that that presages a commitment to do it within a reasonable time frame. It will not be sufficient for them to stay there, to be a target for attack, giving an opportunity for insurgent groups to show their manhood by who can kill the most British soldiers. I hope that we will properly withdraw our soldiers in an orderly fashion and then begin the task of repairing their resourcing, morale and capability for the responsibilities they will continue to have. We must also seek to repair our own infrastructure in terms of diplomacy and foreign affairs. Much of our wealth and resource in that area has been dismissed and disregarded. Indeed, some have left of their own accord because they could not, with all integrity, continue to serve when they knew what they had been saying truthfully was being disregarded and they could not in all honesty continue to follow the instructions they were being given. It is time for us to pay attention to the repair of those diplomatic resources as well. This is not a time for us to engage in any kind of party political play, because our whole country has lost its place in that region. We must start to repair that. We must be prepared to be more critical of our long-standing friends. Again, there is an element of that when we see an indication from the Prime Minister that he is prepared to give the national unity government who are to be established in the Palestinian Authority more of a chance and the possibility of engagement rather than immediately dismissing them, as appears to be the position of our allies in the United States of America. I hope very much that that indicates a preparedness to take our counsel from our own experience and to share it with our friends and colleagues rather than to follow them into foolishness and danger. I have two or three matters that are very much to the fore in my mind which I wish to put to the Minister. First, on the question of withdrawal, we see some indication that British soldiers could be there for many more years. I appeal to the Minister to tell us that there is a definitive timescale for withdrawal—that we are not committed to stay there in some ephemeral ““there for as long as we’re needed”” way, but that there is a real commitment to precisely when we will go. Secondly, we must support the development of some kind of inclusive, semi-permanent conference for the region that will bring people together. I say ““inclusive””, because it is not sufficient for outsiders to be saying what should happen to the region. We should be engaging with Syria and Iran, not with a finger-pointing diplomacy that warns them of the consequences if they do not do what we say, but with a proper diplomatic engagement that listens to their views and then tries to explain ours, without the inappropriate and early threat of the use of force. On that question of the use of force, I ask for some reassurance for your Lordships' House that we will not be following into any kind of attack on Iran, whether by air or otherwise. We must learn the lessons of the mistakes that have been made. Our American colleagues did not learn the lessons of Vietnam and they are repeating them. It is not clear to me that our friends in Israel have learnt the lessons of the recent war in south Lebanon, and I are very much hope that they are not in danger of repeating them. Whatever our friends and allies do, we must not follow them into another mistake. Perhaps if we give them a clear indication that we would not follow them in the event of any kind of military attack on Iran, that might help to prevent another disastrous event.