Iraq: an op ed piece

6 years after entering Iraq in a blaze of 'shock and awe' along with the rest of the so called 'coalition of the willing', the British army will be pulling out in July. They will be leaving behind them a country that is now a genuine, functioning democracy, with a army and police force, without its genocidal dictator and with a recovering infrastructure. When you look at those facts it is almost tempting to write a revisionist account of the whole bloody saga, but it is vital we do not, not yet anyway. These facts do not affect some of the huge problems that have been associated from this ill-fated endeavour right from the start

Firstly we sent our troops into harms way, based on a lie. George Bush said at the time of the invasion;
"Iraq continues to flaunt its hostilities toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade... This is a regime that agreed to international inspections — then kicked out inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world... By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes [Iran, Iraq and North Korea] pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred."
The fact that Tony Blair went along with this nonsense, in retrospect is damning. There was no genuine evidence for either claim, WMD or links to international terrorist groups. Whether you believe it was a desperate grab for oil, an attempted to finish up what his daddy started or something else entirely, the reasons put forward to the public, parliament and the UN for going to war were lies.

Secondly, far from blunting the terrorist threat (remember there were virtually no terrorists in Iraq before the invasion) this war has only heightened tension and acted as a recruiting magnet for radicalised Muslims. It is seen as the West persecuting Muslims yet again, and the disgusting actions of US troops in abu Ghraib prison only highened these suspicions and accusations. Before the invasion al-Qaeda had no foothold in Iraq, after the invasion Iraq became a stronghold for them as they took advantage of the Sunni insurgency and began operating in the country.

Finally this war diverted valuable manpower and resources away from the genuine war on terror in Afghanistan. There was no evidence at all that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, in fact Saddam, whilst hardly a pleasant dictator had very little to do with religious extremists, considering them a destabilising factor in his nominally religious state. Afghanistan (and the border with Pakistan), by contrast was a hot bed of radical Islam, breeding the kind of men that carried out terrorism all over the world before and after the invasion, not just 9/11 but bombings in Kenya, Bali, London and elsewhere. If the £5.5 billion the UK government has spent so far in Iraq (according to the Times) had been spent only in Afghanistan then it probably would have had a genuine influence in reducing the terrorist threat to the world. As it is, the invasion of Iraq has just made it worse.

So yes, things might improve for the Iraqi people in the future, and this may in the long term be a stabilising influence, but none of that changes the very dubious footing on which this war was fought, the mess that was made of the aftermath and the thousands of lives that have been lost. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is right when he says;

"There must be a fully independent public inquiry into how this was allowed to happen. The time when Brown has been able to hide behind our troops' ongoing presence in the country is coming to an end... The death and injury of hundreds of British troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in this futile war cannot simply be swept under the carpet."

So let's have an inquiry, let's get to the bottom of this sorry saga and let's see if we cant get to the truth of it once and for all.