Give war a chance
www.dailytelegraph.co.uk (Filed: 16/02/2003)
If readers find the headline above familiar, it is because it appeared above a leading article published by this newspaper in October 2001. A week after the launch of Allied raids on Afghanistan, we argued that those claiming that the campaign would lead to a protracted, pointless slaughter were wrong. The rapid collapse of the Taliban removed one of the world's most barbarous regimes, and one theologically committed to harbouring terrorists. Its extinction was an unalloyed good, especially for the Afghan people.
A year and a half later, Britain and America stand on the verge of another war, against a regime with a much longer record of sustaining and equipping terrorist groups. Again, the likely military campaign faces a cacophony of opposition: the thousands who marched through London yesterday to protest against war on Iraq were making exactly the same case as was advanced during the Afghan conflict and, in 1999, the Kosovo war. They had, and have, every right to express their dissent. But the cost of that right is to face scrutiny themselves.
The Prime Minister was right to say yesterday that - if, hypothetically, the marchers got their way - "there are consequences paid in blood for that decision too. But these [Iraqi] victims will never be seen. They will never feature on our TV screens or inspire millions to take to the streets. But they will exist nonetheless".
Iraqi exiles were conspicuous by their absence from yesterday's protest. Their position was well expressed by a letter in Thursday's Guardian from Dr B Khalaf, an Iraqi locum consultant in London, who wrote: "My family and almost all Iraqi families will feel hurt and anger when Saddam's media shows on the TV, with great happiness, parts of Saturday's demonstration in London. But where were you when thousands of Iraqi people were killed by Saddam's forces at the end of the Gulf war to crush the uprising?"
Saddam must have taken further comfort from the desperate scenes at the United Nations on Friday, as the supposed "global court" descended into a Babel of juvenile point-scoring. It was easy to forget the clarity of the situation: paragraph 13 of UN Resolution 1441 states explicitly that Iraq "will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations".
Hans Blix's report last week said that compliance with these obligations meant "more than opening doors". Iraq had to "squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions". In his report on January 27, Dr Blix noted that 6,500 chemical bombs, stocks of anthrax and VX nerve agent, 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals, 360 tonnes of bulk agents for chemical weapons and 30,000 special munitions for the delivery of such agents were unaccounted for.
This remains the heart of the matter. On Friday, Dr Blix hailed as a "positive step" the decision of the Iraqi Parliament - if that body deserves to be so described - to "ban" weapons of mass destruction and "welcomed" the news that Saddam has set up commissions to search for such weapons. One can only hope that Dr Blix's dry delivery was meant to be parodic. If, as Saddam claims, Iraq has no such weapons, why does it need to ban them, or launch inquiries to find them?
As Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British Ambassador to the UN, said on the BBC's Today programme yesterday, not one of the foreign ministers who applauded their French colleague on Friday believes that Saddam has complied with his disarmament obligations. The problem with the present impasse at the UN, however, is that the Iraqi dictator must now surely believe he has three options, rather than two: not just to disarm, or to face war, but also to string along the UN even longer.
There was an outside chance that war would be avoided by Saddam and his family fleeing Iraq: the antics of the French and Germans have reduced that chance almost to nil. Those nations which have been most vociferous about the UN are now doing least to ensure its continued credibility. On Friday, that body looked almost as painfully irrelevant as the League of Nations in the late 1930s.
Many in Europe, used to the soothing tones of Bill Clinton, find President Bush's Texan rhetoric unsettling and, in some cases, obnoxious. They should remember that the President's language is designed to appeal to an American audience still afflicted by the atrocities of September 11. It should also be remembered that Mr Bush has not remotely lived up to the stereotype of the trigger-happy cowboy: it was Mr Clinton who tended to fire off cruise missiles instantly when faced with an aggressor. President Bush, in contrast, has shown patience during the war on terrorism, and deserves more credit for that than most on this side of the Atlantic are prepared to give him.
What the opponents of war must remember is that the prospective conflict in the Gulf is not about America's financial ambitions. Nor would it be a war on Iraq. It would be a war on Saddam. In the past 12 years, the Iraqi dictator has shown that he has nothing but contempt for international law, for UN resolutions, for UN inspectors, for the liberties of his own people.
He has defied repeated demands that he account for lethal weaponry which could cause unimaginable horrors. At the same time, he has strengthened his connections with terrorist groups. The Bush administration's campaign to prove a link between Saddam and the events of September 11 is politically understandable but is a distraction from a greater argument.
The point is not that Saddam and Osama bin Laden are allies - they are not - but that the Iraqi dictator, a deceitful, tyrannous psychopath, has shown time and again that he is willing to use any means at his disposal to harm his enemies and to aid terrorist groups which would do the same. Are those who marched through London yesterday truly confident that Saddam will not pass weapons of mass destruction to such groups if he is able so to do? How can they possibly believe that the answer is yet more inspections, yet more delay, yet more postponement of the moment of reckoning?
In truth, that moment of reckoning is upon us. It is a bleak prospect, and it is insulting that the marchers assume that those who accept the necessity of war do so with anything other than a heavy heart. But those at yesterday's rally, and the national governments doing their best to obstruct military action, have failed to explain what they would do to make the world and the Iraqi people safe from Saddam's psychosis. On the day that Baghdad is liberated, as the full story of his horrific rule and the terrors that he inflicted becomes clear, will they march in celebration with the same passion as they protested yesterday?