Why bomb Iraq?

Written by Stephen Williams and published in Bristol West End News on Mon 13th Jan 2003

I am by nature an optimist. The 21st century could be the time when we learn to live in harmony with our planet and with each other. We could set a course for a sustainable future and resolve our differences through diplomacy not arms.

But things don't look so rosy just now. George Bush has effectively wrecked the Kyoto Treaty on global warming. He looks pretty determined to close some of daddy Bush's unfinished business by declaring war on Iraq.

Since 1945 we have had relative peace. In western Europe peace is the major achievement of the EU. Peace either side of the Atlantic is part down to the UN and part down to 40 years of fear of mutual destruction. But now there is only one superpower. And George Bush's USA looks about to behave like some global rogue elephant, trampling whoever it dislikes - because no one can get in its way.

If Bush goes to war with Iraq it will probably be outside and in defiance of the concert of world opinion. Our fellow Europeans are alarmed. The Moslem world is alarmed. At home my own party has made it quite clear all along that we do not favour armed conflict that is not specifically sanctioned by a second UN resolution. Most of the Labour back benchers are jittery. It seems that the only people in favour of Britain being packed up in America's trunk are Tony Blair and Iain Duncan-Smith, a most peculiar alliance.

As I write 30,000 British troops are on their way to the Gulf. I don't have any inside military knowledge but I guess it saps the morale of our troops if they know they are being sent to a conflict that is not backed by the people they joined up to defend. Yet it seems that they are being sent on an unstoppable course for war.

What is the strategy? So far, the evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is less than compelling. Bush has talked of "regime change" for which read toppling Saddam. But nowhere in international law is there a clause permitting the removal by arms of a government, however horrible it has been to its own people. What about the Kurds? A people treated with condescension and contempt by all the great powers since Iraq was created in the 1920s, there seems to be no plan for them to gain a free homeland.

The artificial state of Iraq was created by Britain and France mainly to protect their oil interests. And of course, the security of today's oil supply is the fact most likely to be upper most in Mr Bush's mind. And so Britain looks like being dragged into the most traditional of wars - to topple a non compliant ruler and take control of his resources.

Mr Blair has disappointed many who thought things could only get better in 1997. He says his close relationship with Bush has been a restraining influence. Maybe. But the restraining influence could be so much stronger if he acted in concert with Chirac and Schroeder, who are against a war. Mr Blair has used warm words about Europe but he has missed an opportunity to present a united European front that even Bush would find hard to ignore.

Tony Blair is known to admire Mrs Thatcher. She had her Falklands. But he would do well to look at the picture of another Premier on the staircase at Number Ten. Eden found that leaders who act against the grain of national and world opinion can come badly unstuck. Iraq could yet be Blair's Suez.