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Iraq

My Lords, this House has an extremely good record for mounting excellent debates about Iraq and this one has been no exception. I recall the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, which was of a magisterial nature and appealed for an inquiry, and the moving speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, which we shall remember for a long time. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, was particularly interestingwhen he talked about government motives and preconceptions at the beginning of the war. I do not think that I make special pleading if I say that if Her Majesty’s Government had listenedmore carefully, or read more carefully the reportof the debates on Iraq on 28 November 2002 and26 February 2003, we might not be in quite such a bad position as we are today. Those debates and this one are one more good reason to suppose that this Chamber does a very good job. Perhaps that is what my noble friend Lord Jay referred to when he thought that the role of Parliament in these matters should be discussed more carefully. The fine speeches made by my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall and my noble friend Lord Skidelsky on 28 November 2002 provide an ample justification for a Cross-Bench peerage. I also recall, if I am not making a mistake, a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in which, just before the war, he said that if we were looking for monsters to destroy perhaps we should look—this is echoed in what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said a few minutes ago—towards Zimbabwe rather than to Iraq. The phrase ““monsters to destroy”” is a quotation from the fifth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams when he was Secretary of State, in which he advised the United States not to look for enemies and to be careful about entangling alliances—to use a phrase of the second president, President Jefferson. However satisfactory it is to recall how wise we were in the past, we have to deal with the present situation. In thinking what to say on this subject, I was tempted to recall the previous time when this country was deeply involved in Iraq in the occupation from 1917 to 1921, as a mandatory power from 1917 to 1929 and as the paramount power from 1929 to 1958. I thought that I ought to talk about that since a Member of this House revealed to me that the present United States Secretary of State did not seem to know that we had been in that position in Iraq before. That was the time when, in the words of a book by Christopher Catherwood, Winston’s Folly, we were creating modern Iraq. That was the time whenMr Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, said that we were the greatest Mohammedan power. I suppose that was probably true after 1919, recalling our role in what was then India. I was tempted to talk about the question of regime change, as touched on, interestingly, by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, recalling that President Theodore Roosevelt, in what was known as the corollary to the Monroe doctrine, thought that brutal wrong-doing was a justification for United States intervention in Latin America. Then I thought that perhaps this war in Iraq represents the Latin Americanisation of American foreign policy. I was tempted, too, to dwell on a point mentioned yesterday by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in the discussion on Iraq when he referred to Mr Peter Galbraith’s suggestion for the partition of Iraq. However, I thought better of all this. I decided that the best contribution I could make would be to talk about what we should do and what we are doing about the ancient history of Iraq and the ancient culture that made such a major contribution to all our lives. I say this because what we know of what is happening at ancient sites in Iraq disquiets me. Many sites appear to have been damaged recently. I say ““appears”” because the facts are not known. Much has been stolen from all places since the guards have been removed. The great museum in Baghdad appears to be secure, but that security has been achieved, it seems, by closing the museum completely, even to its own staff. The director of the museum, Dr George, having been threatened, is now in exile in the United States. A British embassy official who was in Baghdad for three years until recently, and to whom I spoke, told me that the idea of visiting Babylon or Ur was quite out of the question, even though Ur is in the United States airbase of Tallil. It is true that Mr MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, went to Baghdad soon after the fall of the old regime. It is worth while pointing out to the House that the British Museum has since then taken a brave and persistent attitude of interest at least in what has been happening in respect of ancient Iraqi or Mesopotamian culture. The curator of Iraqi studies at the British Museum,Dr Curtis, went to Babylon two years ago and discussed his findings, which were extremely disquieting, in the Guardian at that time. We in the western community, this Government and the United States Government, will have to take into account that this era will be judged on how we have carried out our mandate, which perhaps is the wrong word, to try to ensure that it will alwaysbe possible in the future for people—scholars, archaeologists and historians, not to speak of mere cultivated tourists—who want or need to be able to visit what remains of these ancient cultures. They inspired in their time things so important as the invention of bronze, the invention of the plough, even probably the invention of the wheel, not to speak of writing, which was first to be found on cuneiform in Sumerian script in what is now Iraq. Her Majesty’s Government therefore should take care as a priority to ensure that the British Museum in particular, among other institutions, as a leader in the world museum community, has all the support, both financial and logistical, that it may need to influence on the spot our allies, our forces and the Iraqi authorities to ensure that whatever can be is guarded and preserved for the long term benefits of humanity. After all, Britain played an immense part in discovering and preserving Iraq’s antiquities in the era of the mandate and in the era of Britain as a paramount power. The great name in this respect is Sir Leonard Woolley who, between 1922 and 1935—bad old days no doubt Iraqi nationalists would consider them—carried through an astonishingseries of discoveries, which he summed up in his magnificent book Ur of the Chaldees. Those considerations should be an absolute priority of the United States and Britain, who have taken on themselves responsibility for trying to create democracy in the country. To assist maintaining or creating such a concern or interest, Her Majesty’s Government might seek or might persuade some of their well-wishers to establish a series of lectures. I hope this does not inspire derision, but they might be described as the Hammurabi lectures, in honour of the king of Babylon who, in 1800 BC or so, inspired the first code of law. The lectures would be delivered by scholars who know not only about Hammurabi but know that democracy, such as the Prime Minister and the President of the United States seek to leave behind them in this territory, needs the rule of law as much as it does the art of counting votes.