by Eric Martin
It is understandable, if often regrettable, that politicians are reluctant to admit mistakes while in office. Such admissions can and would be used against the politician in question in subsequent campaigns, and could lower overall approval numbers and, thus, weaken that politician for the remainder of his or her term. So admitting mistakes can have serious detrimental effects on the subject politician's career and ability to govern, and politicians are nothing if not career-minded (certainly not unique to politicians I should add).
Once out of office, though, the refusal to countenance error is a slightly less excusable vanity. At this juncture, the politician's political career is over and there is little but the judgment of history to contend with, and yet the politician's reticence does a supreme disservice to the historical record and its ability to inform posterity.
Which brings us to Tony Blair, who jumped into the fray recently to defend his decision to support the invasion of Iraq despite recent findings that the famed "45 minutes until launch" WMD scare-words (the British version of Condi Rice's "mushroom cloud") were based on nothing more than the second hand, uncorroborated recollections of an Iraqi taxi driver predisposed to eavesdrop. With the British evidence for WMD falling apart piece by piece, Blair refused an opportunity for contrition:
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".
Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." He continued: "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathise with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision."
He explained it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region" because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
At least he conceded that different arguments would have been needed. While it is tempting to dismiss the substance of Blair's defense as an ex post facto attempt at damage control, it deserves to be rebutted because: (a) it might provide a glimpse at the real rationale to go to war; and/or (b) either way, the standard enunciated represents a radical policy - such that the attempt damage control, if that is in fact what it is, could lead to untold and widespread damage.
Let's examine the various possibilities and their implications.
In his attempt to plug the leaks in his case, Blair first evokes decades-old incidents of Saddam's brutality in an effort to somehow add teeth to his charge that Saddam, a now admittedly boxed-in and weaponless dictator, represented a threat to the region circa 2003. But the facts belie the charge. As Blair concedes, Saddam had neither WMD nor ties to al-Qa eda - nor did Saddam have the inclination to launch a regional war nor the means to attempt such a move if the desire was present.
Even if Saddam could launch a conventional war against a neighbor (a neighbor other than Iran I should say, as it's unlikely we would object to that eventuality), and Saddam initiated plans to do so, it would have made more strategic sense to dissuade him (remind him of the outcome of his last attempt in the early 90's) or simply repel his aggression as was done in the early 90's (possibly including regime change if Saddam was, in fact, a repeat offender in such a way). There was no urgency to act in advance of an unlikely future event.
In short, Saddam without WMD and ties to al-Qaeda represented very little threat to the region (even with them, he wasn't much of a menace), and the threat he could pose was better met with deterrence and response - rather than a radical form of preventive war theory. More on that radical new theory in a moment.
Where Blair departs from the flimsy "still a threat despite not having the capacity to threaten" argument, he hints at a far more interesting notion of regional transformation/evolution.
"This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way."
Iraq is a country of significant strategic importance - not only for the vast oil reserves that sit beneath its surface, but for the oil that resides in neighboring countries as well. There is little doubt that control of, or influence over, the evolution of Iraq and the region as a whole would be a valuable lever for the United States to have its hand on (with the UK offering useful suggestions, naturally). It would be naive to suggest that wars are never over such access to resources and influence, and it would be grand ignorance to disregard history's litany of far less valuable economic/strategic casus belli.
But if that's the case, then drop the pretense of freedom and democracy, and let the liberal hawks know that they can get down from their aeries tucked away in the lofty cliffs atop the moral high ground. They've been had - made dupes and props to a more cynical if time-worn enterprise. Let it be a learning experience that, even where they imagine nobel and just causes advanced at the point of a bayonet, those in charge of the bayonets are not on the same page. This matters in terms of outcomes. A lot.
But if we grant a more charitable reading to Blair, for the sake of argument only, his evocation of regional evolution could be a reference to attempts to usher in democratic transformation in the region - thus vindicating the liberal hawks in intentions if not results. That argument, too, fails under closer scrutiny however.
If democratic reform was our overriding concern, why not pressure undemocratic allies to make such changes rather than invading a country and imposing our will therein? But not only did we not put serious pressure on allies to reform, why turned a blind eye to violent crackdowns and other undemocratic actions. Seems like an odd - and expensive - way to go about teaching the lessons of liberalism. But even if Blair was just the type of naif to buy-in to that rationale, the standard it ensrhines it beyond dangerous.
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Around the time of the invasion, and in the years since, there has been quite the controversy stewing in the foreign policy community regarding the standard for making war put forth under the Bush Doctrine. While Bush tried to sell the war as a "preemptive" war, the imminence of threat requirement was lacking, and so it was classified as a "preventive war" instead - that is, lacking an imminent threat, the war was fought because of a distant, contingent and potential future threat. And that was when the WMD/al-Qaeda threat was taken at face value for the sake of assessing the policy.
But with the WMD/al-Qaeda rationale now rendered hollow by history, and confirmed by Blair's admission, Blair further loosens the moorings of preemptive war, turning already abstract ethical arguments for war into a farce.
According to Blair, invading Iraq was the right thing to do even if Saddam lacked WMD because of his vague status as a "threat" to the region. But if criteria for deeming Saddam a threat were to be adopted and normalized, it is hard to imagine there being any scenario under which a given regime would not pass the test for constituting a threat. What was unique about Saddam circa 2003, and could those traits provide enough differentiation to gerrymander a theory without it resembling a bill of attainder?
In the alternative, Blair is arguing that invading Iraq was justified because the US/UK deemed it strategically important to, through the application of massive, violent military force, guide the political evolution of the region to either control access to vital natural resources or, magnanimously, bolster political freedoms.
Regardless, any of those justifications amount to a license to wage any war, as long as that war was: (a) against a target as threatening as a weaponless Saddam; (b) deemed by the US/UK to be in its/their strategic interest(s); or (c) deemed by the US/UK to be a worthwhile pursuit of novel theories of political tinkering for the benefit of the invaded population. In other words, the new standard would be an evisceration of any standard at all.
We'd be better off if Blair would just say he's sorry.
Blair's admission that "different arguments" would have to be "deployed," echoes Wolfowitz's statements that WMD was the one thing everyone could agree on as a reason to invade Iraq. Different arguments weren't made because none would have justified an invasion. They at least had the sense to realize that scary weapons were the only thing that would convince people to support the war.
ReplyDeleteThe admission is plain, and Blair ought to be hauled off the The Hague, as suggested here. Blair's admission is also an expression of the sentiment contained within the Downing Street memos. The policy of regime change was set, and arguments had to be made to justify that policy. WMD was necessary and sufficient, and that is what they "fixed." This is an admission of Blair's own role in the preeminent war crime: planning and waging aggressive war.
What I find amazing is this society's collective inability to even recognize Blair's statement for what it is: an admission of a war crime -- the war crime.