Those who lived by the sword damned by Chilcot pen on Iraq
ON Sunday, July 3, a car bomb in Baghdad killed at least 250 people. A United Nations report said that in May at least 900 Iraqis were killed and 1500 wounded, including up to 150 people killed in a series of suicide bombings in Baghdad.
Three days after the bombing in the capital’s Karrada district – the worst terrorist bombing since the 2003 invasion of Iraq – one of the war’s leading advocates made a stunning statement.
Asked whether invading Iraq was a mistake, Tony Blair stuck to his lines: “I believe we made the right decision and the world is better and safer.” Killing people to save them. Better and safer. In 2014 almost 10,000 Iraqis died in attacks - more than the cumulative total of fatalities from terrorism in the entire world from 1998 to 2000.
Blair’s astonishing comments follow last week’s release of the so-called “Chilcot report” into Britain’s role in the Iraq war.
Chilcot’s report lays bare the eagerness with which the full weight of western military might was inflicted on the long-suffering people of Iraq.
This second war came on the heels of crippling sanctions that withheld basic necessities, which in turn arose from the first Iraq war – all punishments inflicted on Saddam’s already brutalised population: a population that bore scant responsibility for bringing him to power in the first place.
That the report focuses on the feeble justification for the onslaught should be the lesson.
Whether intelligence was embellished or fabricated does not obscure the main conclusion of the report: that all peaceful options were not exhausted when the decision was taken to all but destroy a sovereign nation, and with it up to 300,000 defenceless people.
Other factors receive similar evaluation which seems unduly clinical in that light: was the war legal? Were adequate planning and resources allocated to “nation building” once the war was won?
Does it matter as much whether the devastation of innocents was accompanied with adequate post-war planning and administration?
Is a dreadful thing done badly any worse than a dreadful thing done well?
Blair’s standard line about the world being a safer place sounded plausible in the aftermath of the first onslaught and overthrow of Saddam’s thuggish regime.
But as the worst case scenario continues to play out, he sounds detached from the horrific reality.
As the report states: “We do not agree that hindsight is required.” All the disasters that have come to pass were “explicitly identified before the invasion”.
The rise of a Sunni insurgency, the vicious Shia/sunni civil war of 2006-07, the upsurge of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its atrocities, the eventual emergence of ISIL and ISIS which spawned Islamic State, the instability in the region that helped spark wars in Syria and Yemen, pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia, the radicalisation of young men and women abroad and the terrorist blowback attacks on western countries and travellers, including our own.
As the report emphasises, all these consequences were voiced in the inevitable lead up to a war opposed by the majority of Brits, and Australians for that matter.
Both here and the UK opponents were rubbished by the government of the day and their jingoistic media supporters, but despite the catastrophic outcome of the war, its cheerleaders have lost little in prestige or career prospects.
The exception is probably Blair, who can credit Iraq as taking him from one of the UK’S most popular leaders, the man who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, to the much-reviled figure he is today.
But there is little comfort to be had in hoping the grim lessons of Iraq were learned: In 2011, unprovoked, Britain, the US and other western powers repeated the blood-thirsty blunder in Libya with largely the same disastrous outcome.
Like Blair, Australia’s official line on Iraq remains that it was all a mistake, yet we have not held a thorough inquiry to determine what actually happened.
Chilcot’s findings possibly explain why not.