On the web since 1997
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On the web since 1997 |
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The Moral Case for the Invasion of Iraq - Part IIPeter C Glover / word21.com -- One year on from the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the resumption -yes, resumption - of the 1991 war, the public debate concerning the moral justification for the invasion rumbles on. In the West, the chief debate has revolved almost exclusively around the issue of the failure to find stockpiles of WMD. In the light of the many post-war problems experienced by the occupying US-led coalition, the anti-war lobby has turned up the political heat on the US President and the UK Prime Minister, especially over their pre-war assurance that Saddam both possessed WMD and was intent on using them. But when the reasons for invasion and the removal of Saddam from power are reviewed away from the rhetoric of the anti-war lobby, and the somewhat vacillating convictions of the modern armchair critic, we might wonder just what all the fuss is about. While I, as a former press advisor to, and spokesman for, one of the highest-ranking public officials in the UK,(1) have been mystified by Tony Blair's public mishandling of the WMD issue,(2) it seems to me that the hand-wringing over WMD by the West's intelligentsia is a classic example of taking one's political eye 'off the ball'. Saddam is a man who is a serial invader of sovereign nations (Iran and Kuwait) and has dropped bombs on a third (Israel), a nation he has continually threatened to exterminate by using WMD. And, as we noted in part 1 of this essay, his links with al Qu'eda and their declared war on America and the West have been well established. The only remaining area of disagreement was whether 'co-operation' had gone beyond the 'planning' stage and reached operational levels. Even so, what is known fact is that Saddam has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands (some literally by his own hand), that he is responsible for the displacement of a further two million of his own countrymen, and that he had used WMD in his war with Iran and against his own citizens. And in being responsible for these actions, he has, for a twelve years, been in defiance of the terms of the 1991 ceasefire, by which the world community via the United Nations required him to disarm - with seventeen UN resolutions in pursuit of the same goal up to 2003. Amazingly, however, the real scandal is why, for a full twelve years, the UN did not possess the will to enforce their own resolutions aimed at disarming Saddam - the only reason why he remained in power after his defeat in 1991. Eventually, the patience of |