Views
Ears closed to strong argument - for The Inverness Courier
LAST week Parliament debated the war in Iraq, for the first time in many months. The debate was notable for the absence of the prime minister and David Cameron, and for a powerful speech from Ming Campbell setting out the case for withdrawing Britain’s troops from Iraq. I share his view that the time has come for a staged withdrawal.
For all the reasons that have been rehearsed many times, the war in Iraq was illegal and wrong. The decision to go to war in Iraq was illegal and wrong, based on a false prospectus presented by Tony Blair. It was backed by Labour MPs — who with one or two honourable exceptions closed their ears to the strong arguments against the war.
It is perhaps due to the embarrassment felt on the Labour side about this decision — thought by some to be the greatest foreign policy error since Suez — that Mr Blair decided to stay away from the Commons debate.
Rightly, there was outrage that Tony Blair refused to come to the House of Commons to explain his own views on this hugely important issue. Having taken Britain to war in the face of huge public opposition, will not now attend Parliament to defend his policy or tell us what he wants to do.
It is striking that, even after all that has happened, the UK government still refuses to develop a foreign policy in this part of the world that is independent of George Bush’s failing US administration. Nor is there any reason to believe that Gordon Brown will be any more willing to allow Britain to think for itself in these matters.
British forces have shown immense skill and professionalism in their efforts to stabilise Iraq. Indeed, as I learned for myself during a recent visit to the highly impressive Royal Irish Regiment at Fort George, acts of enormous courage have become almost routine for our forces.
But the time has now come to bring them home. On the 1st of May, it will four years since “victory” was declared in Iraq. Whatever your view about the war, having invaded we had a moral responsibility to stabilise Iraq and to try to leave it in a better position than we found it. But that commitment cannot be open-ended.
The case for withdrawing British troops from Iraq has become unanswerable. Even the head of the army, Sir Richard Dannatt, has said that British forces should come home “sometime soon”. Four years on from the invasion is, I think, the right time to start to pull out. Let us now plan for a phased withdrawal so that between May and October their work in Iraq can be brought to an end.
Posted on: 30/01/2007
