Open Letter - Iraq 2003

Dear Constituent,

Why I voted for the Amendment stating that the case for war against Iraq had not yet been established.

The last few months have been a worrying and challenging time for the international community. All MPs have received a large amount of correspondence and have had to think carefully and act by conscience. I find it deeply regrettable that endeavours to prevent military conflict in Iraq have failed. The conflict has begun. Our troops now deserve our wholehearted support in this difficult and dangerous period. We must all await the progress of conflict with both hope and trepidation. I pray that from the British perspective the outcome will be rapid and successful, with minimal casualties on both sides.

Nevertheless, I wish that war could either have been avoided or conducted as part of a genuine and wide international coalition through the auspices of the United Nations. Avoiding war was predominantly in the hands of Saddam Hussein but he actively chose not to comply fully with the demands of Resolution 1441 passed unanimously last November. He is a tyrant with the blood of his own people on his hands. He has taunted the United Nations for 12 years, flouting 17 mandatory resolutions. His is a vicious and oppressive regime. His end will not be lamented. Nevertheless he has not invaded another country as was the case in 1990. In these circumstances the international community needed to show that it would do all it could to disarm the Iraqi regime by peaceful means or to show war was timely, necessary and absolutely justified.

Last September, in an emergency recall of the House, I asked the Prime Minster the following question:

“The Prime Minister has been very convincing about the need to take action against Iraq, but slightly less convincing about how to handle the knock-on effect of even a successful elimination of Saddam Hussein. That is why, surely, the international community needs to be galvanised behind this effort, and why many people in this country really do have concerns about the apparent American policy, which is to go for Saddam Hussein and damn the consequences. Can the Prime Minister reassure us that he has had deep conversations with President Bush on how we handle what will be a very uncertain situation in the Middle East, even if Saddam Hussein is removed?”

In the debate later that day, I remarked: “It will be extremely dangerous even for America, with all its military might, to take action with a fragmented international coalition… which, if we are not careful…will start to create other problems that will ultimately affect the United States and we will be swept along somewhere in the middle, powerless to intervene. We must not allow a discontinuity of interest between Moscow and Washington to occur and nor must we allow Europe to become fragmented.”

Thus it is clear that I have consistently argued that it was vital to ensure that confronting Saddam Hussein (backed by the threat of military action) was a cohesive collective responsibility rather than a unilateral American policy. Containment was at last beginning to work. After 12 years the UN was having an impact on disarmament. I have no hesitation in principle in supporting a vote for the use of military force in the defence and support of vital national and international interests, so long as it is evident that it is a necessary last resort and all other means of proceeding have been satisfactorily exhausted. But if military action was needed to overcome a material breach by Iraq then it should only have been taken with the clear authority of the United Nations (however fallible that organisation). This objective required diplomacy of the highest order and a genuine commitment, neither of which were achieved. The danger now is that the attack on Iraq will be seen as American imperialism. Of course I accept that the Government really tried to get support for a second resolution within the Security Council. But the earnest manner employed in these efforts confirms how important it was to succeed. Now that those attempts have failed, we cannot argue that getting a second resolution was of no importance.

I suspect that all along the US administration had decided to take action and only to embrace the UN as long as it endorsed American foreign policy. More recently, the French President has appeared to have matched this cynicism by fostering division within the Security Council. Yet not only the French realised that the Bush Administration’s approach required not Iraqi disarmament but ‘regime change’ through military action. There was no conviction that the US was seeking a peaceful means of resolving the problem, nor a timetable other than that set in Washington. Indeed, whenever an effort was made to provide time for the UN inspectors to do their work the US showed impatience. Listening to US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld’s megaphone diplomacy was to realise that he had disdain for international opinion unless it coincided with this own. This explains my question to our Foreign Minister in the House on Monday 17th March (to which of course he indicated dissent):

“Does the Foreign Secretary recognise that many of us believe that the United States, having looked for Osama bin Laden, has quickly focused on the more tangible target of Saddam Hussein, and that the irony is that the person who will be most pleased in the next few days is Osama bin Laden because of the renewed risk from terrorism? Is he aware that the way in which the United States has conducted its campaign over the past few months has led to the fracture of the United Nations, the fracture of NATO and the fracture of the European Union? How is that in the British national interest?”

From my constituency post-bag there has been overwhelming opposition to pre-emptive US led military action. Very few letters have urged me to support an early conflict. In general, constituents recognise that Saddam Hussein is an evil tyrant and do not doubt that the Iraqi people would be better off without him. But they do find it hard to understand why he presents an immediate threat to this country. They urged that inspections be given a chance, backed by a resolve to put resources behind the operation. They worry that such requests have been greeted by the US administration as delaying tactics – almost showing that American policy has always been to remove Saddam Hussein not to disarm him. I have considered all the views expressed by constituents but ultimately the stand I have taken is based on my own judgment.

There is also the very serious issue of the new world order post the Iraqi conflict. What should it be? What will be the balance of power? Who decides which is a ‘rogue state’ or where ‘regime change’ is required? Will American military power dominate all debate? If so, does this mean that Britain and other countries should be politically beholden to Washington or that we would be dragged into conflict whenever America chooses or prevented from engaging if America wishes not to do so? I give credit to our Prime Minister for his tireless efforts to persuade President Bush to use the UN route but criticise him for losing effective influence on other permanent members of the Security Council in the process and not making more effort to avoid the breach in the relationship between member states in the EU. It is a monumental diplomatic error to have lost the support of Russia at a crucial moment, allowing it and France to work together as veto-wielding powers in the Security Council.

Then there is the battle against terrorism itself which we must not forget. I fear the current military conflict may be a distraction from the efforts to tackle terrorism and, worse, may well boost the threat of terrorism rather than ease it. After ‘9/11’ there was massive support for America in facing the tragedy. One of the French newspapers declared ‘We are all American now’ in a burst of solidarity. There was wide support for the attack on the Taleban in Afghanistan. Yet this coalition has been left in disarray by US insistence that military action against Iraq was part of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. The case is unproven.

Until the last few days, the US has resisted putting pressure on Israel to resolve its differences with Palestinians by accepting the need for a Palestinian state. Yet that continuing crisis does more to inflame the Islamic world and unsettle the Middle East than any other issue. Finally, little open reassurance has been given as to the intentions for governing Iraq after the battles, including how to reconcile the ambitions of the Kurds. How is it intended to stabilise the impact on surrounding countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria? What is the attitude towards Iran, one of the US Administration’s ‘Axis of Evil’ countries?

Let me reassure you absolutely that my opinion is not anti-American. I have for years had close political, business and personal relations with America and its citizens. It takes a friend sometimes to make criticisms! Indeed, I have been rather taken aback by number of Americans to whom I have spoken who share my worries.

On Tuesday 18th March there was an extraordinary atmosphere in Westminster, with the feeling that the House was once again the centre of key decisions. This is the most crucial time in many of our lives, let alone Parliamentary careers, when we do not know the outcomes of our actions nor have the benefit of hindsight. With all this in mind, I abstained in the vote on the Government’s motion, which the Conservative Front bench supported. Instead I voted for the Amendment. Let me spell it out in full:

‘This House believes that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established, especially given the absence of specific United Nations authorisation; but, in the event that hostilities do commence, pledges its total support for the British forces engaged in the Middle East, expresses its admiration for their courage, skill and devotion to duty and hopes that their tasks will be swiftly concluded with minimal casualties on all sides.’

There is no difficulty for me in wholly supporting our troops now that they are engaged in battle while trying until the last moment to find a peaceful alternative. Which is why I voted as I did.

But what next? If the war is quick and decisive, the Prime Minister will grow in stature. If weapons of mass destruction are uncovered, then action may be seen to have been timely. However, the challenge for Tony Blair in the aftermath of conflict is to demonstrate that he really can exercise effective influence on the US, such that he can restrain a rolling ‘regime change’ policy, and try to re-engage the US in multilateralism. He will also have to risk a breach with the US if President Bush fails to put sufficient pressure on Israel. In addition, the PM will need to demonstrate that he can rebuild a bridge with our permanent partners in the UN (Russia, France and China) and with France and Germany in the EU. A real effort will need to be invested in healing the divisions in the EU, of which we are a permanent member, not a semi-detached partner.

I fear a potentially great instability from President Bush’s concept of Pax Americana. The shrewd American commentator Joseph S. Nye, in the book "The Paradox of American Power", drew attention to the irony that, at the point at which America is most capable militarily of conquering any other nation, it might misunderstand the fact that that very power will alienate other people to the extent that they decide to take terrorist action against the United States. It is therefore incumbent on the most powerful nation in the world to use the other machinery that it has available (the soft policy that Nye mentions) so as to persuade the rest of the world that American culture is not something by which it should be alienated. Instead it should be seen as a culture that could help improve the lives of people in countries throughout the world. I hope that Nye’s book finds itself on the White House reading list!

The burdens of peace may fall on others than the USA, for which we must prepare. Countries like Iraq have a nasty habit of turning on ‘liberators’ with a vengeance when they become perceived as an army of occupation (as we British and the French can recall from the last century and America from its ill-fated ejection from Lebanon in the 1980s). The UN needs to regain credibility and quickly. Then it can lead the effort to restore enlightened governance to Iraq, ensure the oil revenues are used for the benefit of the Iraqi people and, with the EU in particular, assist with humanitarian aid and refugee movements. The UN must animate the so-called road map for Israel/Palestine talks. All this is vital if we are to bring future peace and security to the region and rebuild an international coalition to tackle the threat of terrorism.

 

Yours faithfully,