The Iraq War, 2003 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the last of six lectures on political crises in Britain since 1945 but I'm giving an extra lecture next Monday at 6 on the 1975 referendum on Europe and comparing it with today that's next Monday at 6 and neck CIO's here it will be 6 lectures on I think a much less controversial topic the history of the monarchy from Queen Victoria to the present day because the Iraq war I suspect is the most controversial all the topics I discussed I'm discussing and certainly not yet history but a live political issue in that it still arouses very strong feelings indeed a friend of mine whom I said I was giving his lecture said I hope you leave get out alive after it and of course these feelings and attitudes greatly influenced people's opinions of tony blair who has become in some circles at least a political pariah because in large part because of iraq and you may have read in yesterday's times there were reports of a new attempt to impeach him from his leading parliament and to bring him before the International Criminal Court and particularly in the Labour Party this feeling is quite strong I think though Blair is the only Labour leader who's ever won three elections in a row two of them with the largest majorities labour has ever secured and critics of Blair allege that he secretly agreed with George Bush the American president on regime change in Iraq and created a false pretext to make an illegal war appear legal he then bullied the Attorney General to provide legal justification for the war and deceive his cabinet and Parliament to gain support for it critics say the war was not only illegal but the greatest British foreign policy disaster since su ISM so electoral II Iraq has cast a shadow over Blair's reputation and perhaps the Chilcott report which is due in July will help to remove that shadow we don't know but as I said before I must be the only person who's glad the Chilcotin report hasn't yet appeared because I I don't think I could face the task of reading what barely over two and a half million words about it of course possible everything I say today may be overtaken by the report now a second way I think in which this lecture differs from the others in the series is that Britain played a subordinate role in the war to the United States and Blair was sometimes called the pootle of President Bush though I'm try and show that wasn't wholly fair but the point is the war would almost certainly have occurred even if Britain hadn't participated in it and at one point President Bush said to Blair I appreciate the difficulties you are having with your party I shall quite understand if you do not join us and then our role would have been as it was during the Vietnam War in the 1960s when Harold Wilson's Labour government broadly supported America but without participating but Blair said he wouldn't take that position that he would join the Americans but if the war was a failure it wasn't just a British fairly obvious it was an American one as well it would have taken place whether Britain participating or not now I'm not going to take sides in the debate in the war persuade you that one side is right all the other wrong what I want to do is lay out the issues involved as fairly as I can and then leave you to make up your own minds but one conclusion I have come to which our state at the outset is whether you think Blair or Bush were right or wrong it seems to me that they acted in good faith they did not in my view seek to see the public or Parliament to gain support for the war nor did they have hidden motives such as the desire to gain oil from Iraq and I hope my lecture will give clear evidence to support that judgment now that doesn't mean I think they were necessarily right in their decisions that is for you to judge but it doesn't mean they took their decisions with the best of intentions and in good faith they may have been wrong you must decide that but I think they were not wicked in that sense now the war was fought against Saddam Hussein the ruler of Iraq and he'd come to power in Iraq in 1917 9 he was brutal and ruthless even by the standards of the other dictatorships of the Middle East and he was a representative of the Baath Party whose ideas were formed in the 1940s by two Syrian intellectuals and they were based on the ideas of Italian fascism and German Nazism now the bath party's ideology was secular anti religious and also anti-communist but Saddam Hussein the the political leader saddened Hussein most admired was Stalin and he took Stalin as his model and he proved I think a fairly act pupil five days after coming to power he called a meeting of leading members of the bar party and he announced they had been a plot against his leadership and he read out the names of 66 people present whom he said had been involved in the plot who were ordered outside then he told the remainder of those present of the meeting that they had to act as a firing squad to shoot these 66 which they duly did at a later stage but prisons became overcrowded with political prisoners so one of Saddam's sons took 15 thousand of those serving the longer sentences and shot them to make room for more and sudden sons were in fact as homicidal as he was and likely to succeed him in due course and the Dutch United Nations Rapporteur for Human Rights said the brutality of the regime was and I quote so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have passed since the Second World War and at the prevailing regime of systematic human violations remains a threat to peace and security in the region in 1980 sadden began a war with Iran which lasted eight years and ended in conclusively and cost over half a million Iraqi lives during that war he used chemical weapons on Iranian troops in 1988 to put down a revolt of the Kurds in the north of Iraq he forcibly relocated Kurdish civilians in the north from their homes killing at least 50,000 and probably many more he used chemical weapons on the Kurds that is on his own people something even Hitler had not done in peacetime killing around 5,000 and causing birth defects in others 6000 Kurds fled to Turkey as a result now before suddam Hussein came to power Iraq had been developing a nuclear weapon and had been aided by this by the French and in particular by Jacques Chirac when he was Prime Minister of France in 1974 to 6 there was a nuclear facility at Osirak in Iraq known to critics of the French as oshi Rock and that was bombed and destroyed by the Israelis in 1981 and Israel was condemned by the international community but it's worth considering how politics would have developed if Iran had become a nuclear power now Saddam continued to develop nuclear weapons and also chemical and biological weapons his foreign minister Tariq Aziz was to tell Richard Butler the Australian head of the inspectors in Iraq that we made biological weapons in order to deal with the Persians and the Jews in 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait to replenish his oil supplies which had been badly hit by the war with Iran this was the second time he'd invaded a neighboring state and the first time since 1945 but one UN member had annexed another now in response the UN passed resolution 678 which you can see there in which the member states of the United Nations cooperating with Kuwait were authorized to use all necessary means to evict Iraq from Kuwait and also to restore international peace and security in the area and that is important because they could have said just to evict Iraq from Kuwait but they didn't they added a second point that Iraq had to comply with named me to restore international peace and security in the area now a coalition authorized by the UN because the phrase all necessary means implies force if necessary led by the United States but including the Arab states drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after a 38 day campaign and he realized they rapidly withdrew his troops and the coalition then stopped and some wanted the coalition forces to go further to remove him from power but it had no mandate from the UN for regime change the UN mandate was to remove Saturn from Kuwait and secure peace in the area but the fact that Iraq had not been invaded enabled Saturn to boast that he'd been undefeated and he thought his mistake had been to invade Kuwait before he had nuclear weapons and said he wouldn't make that mistake again now many in the West not only hope but assumed that this humiliation would lead to Saddam's overthrow but it did not they encouraged revolt against him but they didn't support these revolts and they were to revolt against him first from the Kurds in the north and secondly from the sheer Muslims in the south who were the majority in Iraq both were repressed with brute great brutality but the West then after that established safe havens and no-fly zones in these areas so as to prevent Iraqi planes from flying over them and the Kurds gained de-facto autonomy in their own area in the north and established a government there which approximated some of the norms of democracy with greater popular control certainly than in Iraq but also in the abbé other Arab states now Sodom repressed not only the Kurds that is fairly well known but also the Shia in the south and there were unconfirmed reports that he'd used poison gas on them as well but there were it was thought around 50,000 Shia deaths and many more fled the country than figures are unclear but the australian director of the inspectors who later came to iraq said that for saddam hussein chemical warfare is as normal as crowd control and it was estimated that up to the time of the gulf war from 1988 he'd killed around half a million of his own citizens now after the war the united nations granted an armistice that his peace unconditioned and the condition was that saddam disposed of his weapons of mass destruction and the UN supervision all rendered them harmless he was also required to abstain from supporting international terrorism and that was UN resolution 687 and Saddam was given 90 days to comply with that resolution and sanctions were imposed until he complied though the sanctions did not include food medicine and humanitarian supplies now and the reason for this provision was that while Iraq was not alone in developing or seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction and no doubt some other nasty dictatorships also were developing them sadda Malone had used them and used them more than once so this was what was passed now um from 1991 although there was a 90-day limit suddam Hussein played cat-and-mouse with the UN inspectors who were authorized to secure resolution 687 in 1996 his son-in-law defected to Jordan and said that the UN inspectors hadn't noticed it but he was breaking the resolution and was actually developing weapons of mass destruction and the son-in-law asked if he'd come back to Iraq and said he'd be granted an amnesty if he did then he foolishly accepted that there was killed and from March 1996 after the son in law's revelations cedam denied the inspectors access to key facilities and documents and in August 1998 he ceased all cooperation now the UN then passed a resolution demanding compliance unanimous resolution of the Security Council 15 s nought and sat him back down but three weeks later the chairman of the inspectors said that Iraq was still not cooperating but placing new restrictions on inspectors and this was during the time in office of President Clinton it before Bush and Clinton said instead of the inspectors disarming Saddam Saddam has disarmed the inspectors and America under Clinton and Britain under Blair responded with a bombing campaign and that was undertaken without UN support it was unilateral now this is important because Bush was often accused of ignoring the United Nations but that process began under Clinton and it began because of there is terrorist attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and because of the worries about Iraq now in autumn 1998 the republican-dominated Congress in America passed an act which printin signed called the Iraq liberation act which adopted regime change as official American policy it did not authorize military action to remove Saddam but it allowed money to be sent to the Iraqi opposition and authorized various methods to undermine him now all this happened let me stress under Clinton regime chained was now official American policy and this is almost with greater turning point in American policy as what happened after 9/11 the Americans were beginning to say we can't rely on the United Nations to deal with these threats and we can't really trust the Saturn regime now Saddam Hussein failed to appreciate this he thought in my view the democracies were too hesitant to resist him and she could continue to play for time now Tony Blair the British newbridge Japan's oldest became brands in 1997 said that he was going to follow what he called an ethical foreign policy and in March 1999 without UN authorization he committed troops to Kosovo to counter what he regarded as a Serbian threat of genocide against the Albanian Muslim population and he couldn't get you an authority for it because the Russians would have vetoed it because Serbia was Russia's Ally and NATO began a 78 Day bombing campaign of targets throughout Yugoslavia which led to the end of the Serbian dictator Milosevic and the argument for that was humanitarian relief and it was supported by Robin cook who was the foreign secretary who was resign over Iraq and in Iraq humanitarian relief was a secondary consideration it wasn't the main or even the only legal justification for the war but Qatar though for some provided a precedent for action taken without UN approval for a purpose which many believe are justified now the International Court of Justice disapproved of the invasion of Kosovo and the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said that it was of dubious legality in the current state of international law but justified on moral grounds and it was supported by the EU and NATO which didn't support the Iraq war though many members did now this was the context then in which 9/11 came about which was the worst single terrorist threat in the history of the world and made people feel about the threat of unlimited destruction and unlimited casualties and that fundamentally altered British and American policy towards Iraq now some in the American administration believed that there were links between Iraq and the al-qaeda terrorist organization which had been responsible for 9/11 but most American in the American administration not and the British government did not Saddam Hussein it's fairly clear was not involved in 9/11 but he welcomed it said it was a do punishment for America's crimes and he was involved contrary to six eight seven in international terrorism he offered $10,000 to the families of suicide bombers in Israel and was later to offer the same sound to Exim to any Iraqi who killed a un relief worker in northern Iraq but linked with terrorism shed further light on the nature of the regime but wasn't the basis for the alteration of policy what changed was the calculus because it meant that Britain and America were no longer prepared to put up with saddens playing for time they said by comparison with other rogue states it's not only a North Korea for example is not only he's got the capability to make weapons of mass destruction but he has had already been shown he had the firm intention of using them and the regime of containment and ineffective sanctions they said had run its course he'd been given 90 days in 1991 it was now 10 years later and the international community now had to show that Saddam could no longer flout UN resolutions but had to comply and that meant a policy of deterrence backed up by force and that was a change again the further change in Britain American policy which Saddam failed to appreciate now bush and Blair both came to the conclusion the policy of containment as if you've been carried out so far inspection and sanctions were insufficient and indeed the sanctions were eroding and harming Iraqis because the money for medicine and food was being appropriated by him and put into his own coffins and Russia with some support from France was watering down sanctions both countries had commercial interests in Iraq now in the 1990s John Major's government was accused of allowing dual use goods to be sold in Iraq that his goods that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction in breach of sanctions but the Russians and French were breaking sanctions on a much greater scale and profiting from the fact that British governments on the whole did their best to ensure compliance with sanctions sanctions were also being broken by the neighboring states Syria and Jordan and Saturn was selling oil on the black market to them a two hundred thousand barrels a day were being sold in defiance of sanctions so we're not working effectively and there's a danger of Saturn using this oil revenue people thought to make weapons of mass destruction so the calculus change in the sense of Britain and America thought it was much more dangerous than it seemed in the past to allow Sodom to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction precisely because his path behavior had shown he would use them so there was a link between weapons of mass destruction and regime change in this obvious sense but the very nature of the Iraqi regime and its past actions meant these weapons will be a much greater danger for civilized world than the possession of such weapons certainly by a democracy or even by other rogue regimes which were much more cautious about using them and as we have seen America had adopted a policy of regime change in 1998 largely because of this and that case seemed even stronger after 9/11 now all this certainly altered the act 9/11 did alter the attitudes of the Bush administration Bush had won the presidency primarily on domestic issues and his first meeting with Blair Raya 2001 goosh said his priorities were education welfare and reducing the size of the state and at first his policy on Iraq was a continuation of Clinton's before 1998 simply containing saddened by tightening sanctions as his Secretary of State Colin Powell put it keeps Adam in his box now all that changed after 9/11 and in October 2002 there was a joint congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq it was passed by a majority of 296 to 133 in the house and 77 to 23 in the Senate and that was a larger margin than America support of the Gulf War in 1991 it was supported by all the Republicans but the Democrats were divided though many Democrats voted for it Joe Biden the current vice president voted for it so did Hillary Clinton so did John Kerry but Obama who was not yet in the Senate was against and the policy now was that UN resolutions must be firmly enforced and if sadden did not comply fully force would be used to ensure compliance and British policy was to support America but on conditions it's not true as is often said that Blair offered America a blank check now the British ambassador Sir Christopher Mayer said that a meeting at Crawford in Texas in April 2002 Blair had pledged and I use his words in blood end of quote to support Bush and regime change the difficulty with that was of Sir Christopher was not actually present at the meeting between bush and Blair and both deny this happened and those were present the meeting denied happened but Bush Blair sorry insisted on two conditions for support first that Bush had to go to the UN and work through the UN which of something that Bush was unhappy about doing and some of his administration particularly those President Cheney and the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld did not want to do their line was Iran's nen in the Arats and enemy there and has to be dealt with the UN's irrelevant but a bush said he didn't need further Authority because he had the Joint Congressional resolution of 1998 passed under Clinton and the one of 2002 but Bush agreed under pressure that he would use the UN he later very much regretted it Blair also insisted that America had to revive the stalled israeli-palestinian peace process because he said if that problem could be dealt with the other Arab states would be much more sympathetic to the American position Blair thought that Arab resentment against America which was seen as Israel's protector would be lessened and there'd be more Arab support for an attack on Iraq if that proved necessary now Bush agreed to that too but the peace process led nowhere now contrary to what the Christopher Maher implies the Crawford meeting did not decide upon immediate regime change though it did lay out contingency plans as yet there was no definite commitment to war the first choice was to continue to use diplomacy but with a different approach and they argued that if Saddam was convinced that America in particular would use force he might comply with his obligations though perhaps they were pessimistic about whether he actually would they said he had to be convinced had been change of view in America and Britain and as later September 2002 Bush told Blair at Camp David I don't want to go to war but I will do it now the problem facing bush and Blair was clear but Iraq cheated before and Saturn had done everything he could to develop weapons of mass destruction resolution 687 had given him 90 days we were now in the autumn of 2002 in 11 years and the situation was unclear if he was not hiding weapons of mass destruction why was he playing cat-and-mouse with the inspectors as we said they were excluded in 1998 they would readmitted late in 2002 when British and American troops to the extent of 250 thousand were placed on Iraq borders in other words when he seemed a face of threat of force but people said he had long time to hide the evidence between 1998 and 2002 could the evidence be discovered before the Gulf War the International Atomic Energy Authority had failed to detect sedan's nuclear weapons program now in September 2002 the government asked the Joint Intelligence Committee that is the heads of the Secret Service to produce a dossier as to the intelligence they had relating to Iraq and this dossier became very controversial because it's made this statement his military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them unless we face up to the threat we place at risk the lies and prosperity of our own people now reading that you might think this meant they could be launched on Britain in 45 minutes but the actual meaning was they related to battlefield weapons in Iraq or Iraq's borders not to any attack on Britain and in a report on the intelligence in 2004 conducted by Lord Butler who was a Robin Butler had been cabinet secretary he said the various judgments in the dossier went to and I quote they went to although not not beyond the outer limits of the intelligence available and he said they should have made that clear and they should have made clear what the limitations of the intelligence were that it was patchy and unclear perhaps all intelligence particularly about a totalitarian States bound to be unclear but he did say there was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead no evidence of culpable negligence so deliberate distortion it's important to note the document was produced by the intelligence agencies not by the government Blair wrote a foreword to the report but he didn't actually write the document but it omitted caveats that the evidence was thin and clear and uncertain and Lord battler said the 45-minute claim should not have been included however it's fair to say on the other side that the 45 minutes was in no way crucial in the justification for war it was not mentioned in the Commons debate on the war in March 2003 and became important only in hindsight now the battle report said that a little earlier in March 2002 the intelligence advice was that Iraq continues to develop mass destruction though our intelligence is poor it continues with its biological weapons and chemical weapons programs and if it has not already done so could produce significant quantities of biological warfare agents within days and chemical warfare agents within weeks of a decision to do so we believe it could deliver chemical and biological weapons by a variety of means including ballistic missile warheads there are also some indications of a continuing nuclear program and the intelligence people said Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction in the past and could do so again if his regime were threatened now dr. David Kelly a government scientist was accused of leaking details of the government's plans to the media and Vick tragically committed suicide when the media found this out he was ironically in favor of the war and he said that the long-term threat remains Iraq's development to military maturity or weapons of mass destruction something only a regime change will avert now a British intelligence services and American for that matter were much criticized after the Iraq war but it's important to note that it wasn't just a British and American intelligence since that believe sad and Hussein had weapons of mass destruction the intelligence services of almost every country including those countries opposed to the war France Germany and Russia also said the likelihood was of Saddam was developing them and Bush was told by the German ambassador and German German the country of post-war Germany said I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume they still have weapons of mass destruction now in November 2002 Security Council by majority by unanimous Majority 15's and not passed resolution one four four one it said that Iraq was still in material breach of six seven eight and six eighty seven and it had and I quote a final opportunity to comply within thirty days or face serious consequences now this resolution confirmed what the other resolutions have said that contrary to what many think it wasn't the owners of the onus wasn't on the inspectors to prove that he had these weapons of mass destruction it was particularly with one four four one the onus was on sedan to show that he had them and was destroying them in conformity with earlier resolutions now that was passed unanimously as I say and therefore no Member States was in doubt that Saddam had not complied with the earlier resolutions and he probably still have these weapons no state said it was unlikely sattim had them any more he had a week to respond and a further 30 days to comply and the resolution then said the UN was then to convene to consider the outcome now five days after the resolution was passed sad him allowed the inspectors in again but the resolution was ambiguous and deliberately so he didn't say whether or not a further resolution was needed to authorize military action six seven eight had used the words all necessary means and that implies war this one said serious consequences which does not necessarily imply war it neither affirmed nor denied that you needed a further UN resolution to go to war an attempt by Russia and France to insert language to the effect that military action required another resolution was defeated but the resolution did not authorize force and the Security Council rejected the words all necessary means which would have authorized force because France and Russia would not have agreed to an explicit authorization of force nor to an automatic trigger where Britain would not agree to an explicit commitment to a further UN resolution so the issue of whether a second resolution was needed was at the least uncertain and you may say if you're opposed to the war you shouldn't go to war on an uncertain or equivocal resolution now it was reasonable to suppose that another UN resolution was needed to authorize force or at least that it would be that Security Council to consider we're thus Adam had complied not the individual member states and Security Council had no reason to believe the Security Council had delegated authorization for the use of force to Britain and America and those countries which supported them the problem was supposed it was obvious Adam hadn't complied but Security Council for reasons related for politics of for example France and Russia wasn't going to act as in fact occurred and that faced Britain and America with a difficult dilemma now at first Blair hoped for a second resolution Bush by this time was getting fed up with United Nations but Blair said we better try and get a second resolution and he worked hard with the Americans to get one because after all he said you're in no doubt that Saddam still has these weapons no one believed he'd complied and had the opponents of a second resolution now got cold feet or were there some alleged perhaps unkindly the France and Russia were influenced by their commercial contracts with Iraq but what the French were now leading the dissidents in saying was that the inspectors needed more time and the inspectors also said they wanted more time they said after one 4:41 we were getting a bit more cooperation things were improving they weren't satisfactory they didn't say he's complied with the earlier resolution they were getting somewhere now it seems me the French but the position the French and inspectors was distorted because this had said 30 days and it was a final opportunity and 1991 and given 90 days he still hadn't complied and such compliance was came about because of the threat of force how good would be sure that more time resolve the issue and if you want time but whether Saddam was willing to comply to take another example South Africa after the collapse of apartheid agreed to destroy its weapons of mass destruction and did so within two years and only nine inspectors were needed to verify that because post-apartheid had acted was perfectly willing to destroy its weapons of mass destruction so I think that was one weakness in the French position the further weakness is that the inspectors were not there as detectives it wasn't their job to search out whether Saddam had these weapons of mass destruction it was to verify that Saddam was complying with the UN resolution that the onus was on him to say that he had and it seems to me the French position is shifting the owners the burden of proof to the inspectors it wasn't with them it was with Adam to comply and it was by no means clear that France in particular would ever support use of force and Jacques Chirac who was now president of France said as much he said on 10th of March whatever the circumstances France will vote no to a second resolution so the arguments of Blair and Bush was that the UN would then appear impotent and Saturn would have defied it now and I think no one thought he'd actually complied with one for for one and after the invasion the Iraq Survey group discovered that Saddam had been instructing his experts and technical people not to cooperate since once sanctions had gone he hoped to restart his weapons of mass destruction program paradoxically the only method by which satyr might have been made to comply without a war would have been a unanimous second resolution by the Security Council saying if he did not immediate force would be used but such a second resolution was unobtainable and if no such second resolution was unobtainable it was likely that sadden would not comply because he'd be aware he didn't have to face the threat of thought now if the UN took no action it would be to paraphrase what Clinton said the UN that was disarmed not sad and since he'd be away he had nothing to fear in the event of non-compliance as it was the UN positions seemed to be to tell Sodom unless you comply within 30 days as we have demanded we will give the inspectors more time and perhaps issue another ultimatum if you do not comply you'll be given more time and he'd been given more time since 1991 would there be another final opportunity this was a final opportunity it may be the French and others regretted their support for one for for one and folding a gaunt and foul but it was very very clear in its wording now the majority of the permanent members of the UN Security Council did not support the use of force and the majority of elected members did not either was the intervention legal now the Attorney General said it was even in the absence of a second resolution because he said that there was still threat to international peace and security and that six seven eight authorised force and set out the ceasefire conditions and that six eight seven revived authority to use force under six seven eight whereas one four four one confirmed that Saddam was still in material breach so this was a breach of the armistice and the doctrine of implied authorization to use force was there in previous UN resolutions now most international lawyers not all but most think that argument is unsound because six seven eight authorised a coalition supported by the UN to take action it did not delegate authority to Britain America and their allies none of the legal advisors in the Foreign Office believed that there was a legal justification for the war and one deputy had resigned and Robin Cook leader of the House and former forints actually also resigned and the objection to the doctrine put forward by Goldsmith the Attorney General was it wasn't for the parties of conflict decide in their own case and that one for for one will not have received unanimous support if those who supported it believed that it provided for immediate war in the event of non-compliance now let's assume that we think the war couldn't be justified in international law and I said that was the view of the majority of international was there not all of them because international law is more amorphous and uncertain than domestic law and they're no means as our our domestic law of enforcing it you may remember when I gave a lecture on series that are known Bevin who was a pose to Suez so there was only one slogan worse than my country right or wrong and that was the United Nations right or wrong now could the actions of France and Russia be the real arbiter of international law and if so what had that to do with international morality after all the leader of Russia was an ex-kgb officer now why should his judgment have anything to do with international law or morality now China was also opposed to the war on the Security Council but why should they than and towards the repressive regime why should they be the arbiters of international morality will law and this draws attention to the fact the United Nation is not a court but a political body making decisions on political grounds difficult to accept it's a fount of all morality and International Affairs now once sad an if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction his position would be immensely strengthened he could invade Kuwait or Saudi Arabia to get oil and the cost of removing him would be horrendous and if that happened people in Britain and America would turn on Blair and Bush and say why did you not act against Adam in time you were criminally negligent you have cost many lives not only in the Middle East but the lives of British and American troops I think people wouldn't have accepted an excuse that there was no support in the UN for action against sadden now a lot of people criticized British governments in the 1930s the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments for not stopping Hitler when he was weaker they said he could have been removed with much smaller loss of life if you dealt with him earlier now any attempt to remove Hitler I think before 1938 would have Ralph great opposition at home when had little domestic support and in the 1930s the League of Nations proved unable to prevent aggression by Mussolini in Abyssinia now I've given the example of Kosovo where Britain intervene without United Nation support there are other examples of regime change on that basis for Indians intervened in 1971 to protect Bangladesh against attacks from Pakistan can they were condemned by the UN General Assembly Tanzania intervened to remove general Amin in 1979 and the Vietnamese intervened in Cambodia to remove Pol Pot her murderous dictator in 1979 now in 1950 Britain and the UN had authority to resist the North Korean attack on South Korea because of Soviet Union for those reasons and boycotting the Security Council had they not been boycotting it they would have vetoed it now the political argument against war was that Saddam Hussein was no more of a threat than he had been since 1991 the containment and sanctions though not working perfectly were in the words of code empowered I viewed before keeping him in his box it had been partially successful in the words of the butler report it had frozen Iraq nuclear program and prevented her from rebuilding her chemical Arsenal to pre Gulf War levels ballistic missile programs had been severely restricted biological and chemical weapon programs have been hindered no-fly zones gave some protection to the Kurds and shear and Saddam was not threatening his neighbors but they also said to the extent it was working it was working only because of a threat of force not because Saddam and had a change of heart and the battle report quoted with approval the report of the Joint Intelligence Committee playing for time he would then embark on renewed policy of non-cooperation it concludes in some despite the considerable difficulties the use of force in the ground campaign is the only option that we can be confident we remove Saddam and bring it back into the international community so once the threat of force was removed containment would no longer work and bush and Blair faced what I think is a cruel dilemma in which there were no easy answers they believed if they failed to act they would have to act later and in far less favorable circumstances and that would be blamed for future generations not confronting an evil dictator when it was possible to do so at much lesser cost that the same dilemma faced by British governments in the 1930s now over the last attempt to prevent war when the British and American governments laid down five new conditions for a raft to meet including that the inspectors be allowed to conduct interviews with 30 Iraqi scientists involved in weapons of mass destruction outside Iraq so they couldn't be influenced by the dictatorship to give the answers that said I wanted the inspectors added a further condition of their own that Saddam publicly call on all Iraqis to cooperate with them that had no response from Iraq now by 15th of March when the House of Commons debated this it was 127 days since resolution 144 one which had given us a damn 30 days and he was now the Commons was told in breach of 17 United Nations resolutions the Commons for the first time in modern history actually had a vote on the war there was no vote in 1914 or 1939 and it was thought that there would be a majority of the water wouldn't be a majority in the labour party which meant that Blair would have to resign and he the cabinet secretary was preparing papers for a transition of prime minister and Jack Straw told Blair if you go next Wednesday with Bush and without a second resolution the only regime change that will be happening is here but in the end a majority of Labour MPs did vote for the war most concerns of conservative party supported the war though there were some prominent dissidents including Kenneth Clark Liberal Democrats were united against the war Blair said very unfairly I think that they were united only in in misjudgment and opportunism that's unfair they had a principled case against the wall there was much popular opposition in Britain to it there was a march in London which would track it said around a million people the largest peacetime such demonstration in the country it was the first occasion when both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic Cardinal artificial Westminster condemned the war but once at once we went to war public opinion turned round in its favor as often happens but before the war the time showed 67% of Britain's British people against the war 90% of French against the war 86% of Germans and also 93% of Spanish though the Spaniards favored the war Spanish government joined the war coalition fighting the war and Blair told the Spanish Prime Minister that the percentage of people in Spain supporting the war was roughly the percentage who believed that Elvis Presley was still alive now people often say that governments should lead and not merely follow public opinion and Blair in particular was often criticized for following public opinion and focus groups and spin and all the rest of it but when a government does not follow public opinion it's condemned for ignoring it so perhaps you can't easily win now on the 17th of March Blair and Bush met in the Azores Bush said he wanted to come to London but was advised that might not be wise and Bush issued a statement saying that Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing six of the then 15 members of the European Union supported the war Britain plus Denmark Italy Netherlands Portugal and Spain but all the 10 new accession states 2004 supporter were the ex communist states in Central and Eastern Europe with recent memories of tyranny Chirac said they'd missed a good chance to be quiet and accuse them being badly behaved which wasn't well-received in Eastern Europe of NATO members 15 were in favor only Belgium Luxembourg France and Germany were against but Blair was the only European social democrat leaves to face the fate of the war apart from the poem the Arab League predictably denounced the invasion but Egypt allowed coalition warships to use a Suez Canal and Jordan authorized deployment of US troops on it foil Japan and perhaps not surprisingly South Korea also supported the war in total 40 countries supported it now perhaps at this point without the advantage of hindsight let me do a poll how many of you and what I described so far I've tried to be as fair as I can how many of you would have voted for the war in the House of Commons I can't see what's wrong a hazy very very few how many against again I can't say I think most people have abstained now victory was achieved in the war in less than two months with very few casualties Iraq was a country the size of France or California there are around a thousand British deaths some from friendly fire but no weapons of mass destruction were found and some said that Blair and/or Bush were liars that they deliberately said there were weapons of mass destruction knowing it was false so to make a case the war if you think about it that's absurd they were about to be found out if they knew there were no weapons there and they were going to war it was bound to be found out and it was named the side morality it was a bit of a stupid thing to do and they able to build a pointless deceit which they'd known would have ruined their reputations and as was clear the intelligence services of countries opposed to war not in Britain and France believed that he had them and the idea that Blair had deceived was refuted by the report by Lord Hutton the law Lord in 2004 now it's thought by some that Saddam strategy was to hide his weakness by pretending that he had weapons when he didn't but it's also possible in that sort of state that his subordinates were too frightened to tell him that her position was much weaker than he thought and that the UN had actually succeeded in getting a lot of the weapons I mean anyone who told him something you didn't want to hear would not survive her very long it's very difficult to read the mind of a dictator why he took the policy you did it's equally observed to say as some do we went to war for oil there'd be no problem for the West in getting oil from Iraq southern would readily have sold oil in return for lifting sanctions and the threat of inspection you happy to do that after the invasion the oil was news not for the West but to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq now I said no weapons of mass destruction were found and that's a general view but it needs to be qualified report of the Iraq survey group said in 2003 there was no active program but it also said that Saddam was a greater threat than we had known its second report in September 2004 based on interviews with Saddam and his associates said that Saddam wanted to recruit Iraq's capacity for weapons of mass destruction after sanctions were removed and Iraq see economy stabilized the battle report said that prior to the war the Iraqi regime had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programs including if possible its nuclear weapons program when UN inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted they also said he was importing dual-use goods in breach of sanctions and that unknown to the United Nations maintain he maintained laboratories that could quickly be reactivated to produce weapons of mass destruction they said that Iraqis were planning to produce several chemical warfare agents including sulfur metier mustard nitrogen mustard and sarin and their program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes in other words a test biological poisons so he was certainly in breach of UN resolutions and while you can argue the intelligence was mistaken it can also be argued those who believe in containment and the effectiveness of sanctions under the UN also were misjudging the seriousness of the situation because since the UN was unaware of trees the inspectors might have concluded that the weapons had been destroyed sanctions would have been abandoned and Saturn would have been free to resume I say the only constraint on him was the threat of force and after a while that threat would cease to carry conviction even if the UN had been prepared to maintain it in face of the clearly declared opposition of France and other countries it is possible that Saddam would have had a change of heart that he would have become milder and cease to be a menace and his homicidal sons who probably have succeeded him would also be cut would also become gentler characters in other words that the regime would have reformed himself but I wouldn't I think we wouldn't bet on that now the aftermath was there was the elected and legitimate government in Iraq and there still is a legitimate government in Iraq and the Kurdish errors became de for all practical purposes independent but that legitimate government was soon beset by huge problems looting corruption and civil war and the intervention of the al-qaeda terrorists and also from Iran these were defeated by coalition forces by 2010 with around 20,000 so 200,000 casualties mostly Iraqi insurgents and al-qaeda and the strategic effect of the war seems to have strengthened Iran which had strong links from the shear in the south of Iraq in America so in 2010 the Americans withdrew after mistaken judgment and that led to the incursion of - which now controls a part of Iraq now it's fair to say I think that much of the criticism the war not all but some of it at least is rout respective related to what happened after the war rather than the war if Iraq had settled down as to some extent Kosovo has I think Kristen be more muted however when you look at the casualties it's worth remembering that over 500,000 Iraqis had died in the unnecessary war with Iran around 60,000 Kurds had been killed by Saddam and many more displaced in their homes 75,000 were killed in the first Gulf War around 50,000 shares probably killed in the 1991 reprisals and at least a hundred thousand further civilian deaths under Saddam in addition Iraq which had been richer than Portugal in 1979 by 2003 had 60% of its population dependent on food aid Saddam said that was because of sanctions but it wasn't because he was using the money for food as I've said for his own purposes a third of Iraqi children in the centrum south of Iraq was suffering from chronic malnutrition and 30 of a thousand children under thigh were dying the figure worse from the Congo and I'd say this is because the money for food and medicines imported by the international community had been used by Saddam for his own purposes now matters immediately improved when the coalition forces and the new Iraqi government introduced a proper immunization and nutrition program and by 2010 because the oil was used for benefit of Iraqis GDP per head was three times as high as it had been in 2003 so it's a difficult balance to draw the judgment of whether things were better or worse in addition for a very short time other middle-eastern dictatorships were they frightened by the Americans Libya in 2003 Colonel Gaddafi confessed he'd been developing a weapons of mass destruction and but now dismantled them which he did he said that six days after Saddam Hussein was captured at the end of 2003 that a coincidence we don't know Iran began to negotiate on its nuclear program in October 2003 and Pakistan shut down the activities of its nuclear scientist AQ Khan for short time rogue and terrorist states became very frightened of what the Americans might do at this point you might want to hear Blair giving a retrospective judgment I think it's on Irish television certainly I think around 2010 after his men wasn't come out he's interviewed on Irish television the sitting in dentistry having a cup of coffee in the morning and listening to say a million people outside protesting did those protesters and that's that the enormity of it at the time give you pause for thought of course it look it's not them thank you it gave pause for thought simply the awesome nature of the responsibilities and the decisions you should have force forethought all the way through but here's the thing yeah in the end you have to decide this way or that right there is unfortunately no third way in it the number of soldiers that have died their British soldiers in Iraq and the countless number of Iraqi civilians over time have you ever had a moment of a night where you might have shed a tear and said this is horrific did you ever cry a breath what's happened as I say in the book you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel emotional about it and I actually explained one occasion when I when I did when meeting the family of one of the soldiers but let's also remember that if I take in the opposite decision or if America taking the opposite decision there were also people dying under Saddam every year just one little thing which is worth pointing out under Saddam the child mortality rate in Iraq was the same as the Congo now it is down to a third of what it was that's 50 or 60,000 children extra children living every year there so when you look at the history of this unfortunately this is not a case of this decision leading to bad consequences this decision leading to good it's a decision with difficult consequences either way when you arrive into a situation that there's a live television interview and you come through the gates and you have people chanting and with the placards and so on and the shouting war criminal and the shouting at you are you a war criminal of course I don't believe that but why do they why they call you run you know why they are and they know us explain and I don't have to explain they can explain it but in the end you can try you know I of course I can I can understand it but you can't take decisions on the basis of people with placards you've got to take decisions on the basis of what you think is right does their opinion matter do you think of course their opinion matters but their opinion can't determine it everything look one of the first things that you learn in politics I'm afraid and this is a lesson in political leadership is that those who shout most don't deserve necessarily to be listened to most right everyone should be listened to equally irrespective of the volume of noise so yes I had to listen to people who were opposed to the decision cycle there were also people in favor of the decisions idea including incidentally many many Iraqis I remember Gerry Adams as a Nazi last season of this program and I asked him do you think you have blood on your hands down through after all the conflict and so on and I put the same question to with a rack of interview to somebody who was involved in a military struggle war whatever you want to call it do you ever feel sometimes that perhaps you have blood you know I feel that and I took a decision that was incredibly difficult yeah and I know many people disagree with it but I took it in good faith and all I ask people to do is to understand the other point of view I understand as would you do it tomorrow with the same information I know it's a bit of a people it is a clergy because it's a it's a high cut that yeah I know it is but I I in answer to the question do I still believe in the light of what we know now that Stan was a threat yes for the reasons I've just get now why did I rock not settle down why did it lead to die ish some say West is seen as an enemy of the Muslim world and an attack on Iraq is seen as an attack on Islam in fact so it seems me a bit unfair because Blair and Clinton had intervened in Kosovo to protect Muslims and after all most of the victims of Saddam were themselves Muslims now war all these problems the consequence of Western intervention or result of mistakes made by the West after military victory now of course with hindsight everyone can point to mistakes made after the war just alternatives perhaps a mistake was to debark the country to quickly analogy with denazification after 1945 perhaps there was a mistake to disband the Iraqi army but there's no convincing reason I think to believe you alternatives would be any better than hindsight it's a wonderful thing but I think the problem lies deeper in misconceptions about Iraq held both by Blair and even more by bush and those who advised him people say there was insufficient planning for post-war situation and that was partly no doubt because the focus of planning was on the military campaign and put the planners I think drew an analogy with what happened in Germany in Japan after 1945 though there'd been much more planning for that but the main difference was that Germany and Japan were old established nation states which were unified with a strong sense of national identity Iraq was an artificial state which had been part of the Ottoman Empire it was formed after the first world war after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire putting together three districts to that Empire the South would share and they were majority in Iraq over 55% the center with a Sunni who were 20% and the North who were the Kurds 20% these groups were not only religious who separate but territory separate at their 30 million Kurds scattered among a number of states in the region and they're the world's most numerous people without a state of their own though they haven't attracted the same degree of support from the international community as another stateless people the Palestinians but the Kurds unlike the Palestinians are not Arabs and didn't want to be part of an Arab state and Saddam said there was no place for them in an Arab state and he as rather hitler'd said no place for Jews in a German state and he showed that by his policies now Iraq had been put together when Churchill was colonial sector at the end of the First World War and Churchill for a time had favoured a separate Kurdish state but that was oh he was overruled by colonial office officials because they said firstly it'll destabilize turkey but more importantly said the Kurds and the Sunnis will together offset the Shia majority and so help stability in Iraq and Churchill later regarded that as a mistake Bush who may say by making possible de facto Kurdish independence and did Churchill's mistake the Kurds are de facto independent Bush as we know used to keep a bust of Churchill in his office which as we also know a Barrack Obama had removed now the Baths leaders were Sunni and they certainly weren't prepared to share power with a shear I mean the whole notion of sharing power is fairly alien in that part of the world so the only way of ruling Iraq by a minority was by force to hold down the majority not necessary by such brutal means of satire news but but certainly by force and Saddam you may say at least kept the Sunnis and Shias down kept them apart from fighting each other because of his own brutality the sense in which united most of them against him now buttoned Blair meant well and they said they wanted to secure democracy in Iraq Bush said this in February 2003 he said that a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region by bringing peace and progress into the lives of millions he thought it had a domino effect lead him up to the rest of the Middle East and therefore make the Middle East problems particularly Israel Palestine problem easier to settle from Bush held Pratt's a not unreasonable view to arrived very idealistic American president Willson that everyone everywhere wanted democracy he said all people wanted a chance to be able to choose their government all women wants to enjoy equal rights with men all people want to enjoy basic human rights Blair said he wanted the Iraqis to be able to choose a government for themselves he told Kong American Congress he seems a myth that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people let me Lucia vich was Serbia Savior and I say they hoped there'd be a domino effect in the Middle East but despite all the improvements despite the fact that Iraq has more or less an elected legitimate government there's probably no real chance of securing democracy there in the immediate future what does democracy mean in a society so deeply divided by tribes ethnicity and religion no real sense of majorities and minorities in the sense in which we understand it they're just simply different religious groups the majority after the invasion were shear they certainly weren't inclined to share power with the Sunnis particularly after all the way the shadow of the Sunni had treated them when he had power they even less prepare to recognize the rights of the Kurds who were not Arabs at all and many of the shears sought an alliance with Iran who was part of Bush's axis of evil so arguably one outcome of the war was to strengthen Iran which some may regard as more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq it's a disputable hoggin now Charles Freeman who'd been ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the older Bush from 1988 to 1992 he said we invaded not Iraq but the Iraq of our dreams a country that didn't exist that we didn't understand and it is therefore not surprising that we not the Kaleidoscope into a new pattern that we find surprising the ignorant are always surprised now more recently in Libya where Britain and France renewed Gaddafi they've also been enormous problems there is now over four years after the intervention a legitimate elected government but it's plagued by ethnic and tribal warfare and parts of the country are also occupied by daesh the truth is that most of the added countries in the Middle East have been extraordinary luck to the waves of democratization who have affected every continent since the fall of communism and apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s leaving Israel which is in a sense of western importation as the only democracy in the region but because they believe democracy could be secured Britain and the US did not ask themselves how Iraq could be governed in the light of the profound ethnic religious and tribal differences that are there is there in fact such a thing as a real Iraqi identity at all or should one arrange for orderly partition and an independent Kurdish state though that would be bitterly resented by Turkey since would be a pole of attraction for Kurds in Turkey so the costs of intervention are very clear and you might say we should stay out of the Middle East entirely that's a snake pit and we should keep well away that all our interventions have done a lot of harm but then you have to consider the cost of non intervention this is what Blair was saying if Saddam Hussein had remained in power developed weapons of mass destruction which he had every intention of doing and some of you might think Syria is an example of the costs of non intervention as you know David Cameron sought to intervene but was defeated by a majority in the House of Commons and we know that at least 10,000 Syrians have died in custody under the Assad regime but Western calls for sanctions were resisted by Russia and China now a general civil war further quarter of a million people have died and there are nearly 5 million Syrian refugees you have to ask yourself whether there was in the early stages when Cameron wants intervention a real civil rights opposition in Syria which would have come to power and established Syria as a moderately legitimate state well would the outcome been as it written Iraq and Libya where the overthrow of a brutal dictator who kept order by the most ruthless inhumane means is followed by something nearly as bad or even worse in Syria now were are sad to be overthrown and - take over the state the outcome clearly would be worse and that's part of the reasons why the Russians would intervene militarily to save Assad now of course with hindsight all things might have been done differently but as President Bush said and unless I agree with him hindsight is not a strategy everyone's hindsight is better than the most acute foresight my conclusion is there no easy answers that bush and Blair were faced with an almost impossible dilemma and that all of us should be very grateful that we were not in their shoes and did not have to make their difficult decisions thank you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: Iraq, Iraq War, Gulf War, Britain, united states, Saddam Hussein, President George Bush, President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair, labour, conservative, Government, opposition, parliament, gresham, gresham talk, gresham lecture, gresham political history, Political History Professor, political history lecture, political history talk, Vernon Bogdanor FBA CBE, #Education

Id: 8uzr8Cp8ioc

Length: 71min 0sec (4260 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2016