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Blair: Haunted by the The Ghosts of War |
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Andy Rowell, 9 May 2005
No matter how long he stays Prime Minister, whether it is just for one year or a full term of office, one thing is certain. Tony Blair will continue to be haunted by the legacy of the Iraq war and the ghosts of dead British servicemen. They follow him everywhere he goes. And now they could land him in jail as a war criminal.
The Iraq war is the issue that dominated the closing days of the election, despite all the attempts by Blair to steer the debate away to safer issues, like Labour’s handling of the economy. “This election is not just about Iraq,” he wrote last week. Blair said he could not “apologise for what we did because I believed the decision I took was in the best interests of this country; that region and the wide world and I still do.” Even if Blair feels it was morally right to remove Saddam, the crucial question was whether it was legally correct.
Ever since the war, we have been subject to a never-ending series of government lies, spin and untruths that the British government’s chief lawyer had been unequivocal in his advice: the war was legal. For two years this advice remained secret, and was not even shown to Blair’s full cabinet. It was finally published last month. We finally get to see the legal justification on which our nation went to war and it is not the same as what we have been led to believe.
In March 2003 and just before the war, the government’s chief legal advisor, the Attorney General argued that the legal position on the war was “unclear”. “Arguments could be made on both sides” he cautioned. The Attorney General then argued that Blair could be in breach of international law for six crucial reasons. He also said it was essential that strong evidence existed that Iraq was still producing weapons of mass destruction. We now know there was no evidence.
Ten days later, Goldsmith changed his mind and declared that war was legal. “Authority to use force against Iraq exists,” he wrote . It was a complete turnaround. It was also a view that was at odds with most qualified international lawyers who believed that the war would be illegal without a further UN Security Council resolution .
So why Goldsmith’s change of heart? We have also learnt that it was only after a crucial visit to the US that Goldsmith hardened his opinion and came back “persuaded that the case for war was ‘reasonable’”. But who did he meet in order to form that opinion? Five senior neo-conservative lawyers from the Bush administration, including Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s chief legal advisor who has been at the centre of abuse allegations at the Abu Ghraib prison. Gonzales believes that the Geneva Conventions are “obsolete”, and that America’s war against Al-Queda and the Taliban is not subject to international law.
It is views like these that led international lawyer Philippe Sands QC, and the author of the book Lawless World to state: “How delightful that a Labour government should seek assistance from US lawyers so closely associated with neo-con efforts to destroy the international legal order.”
But these lawyers backed their neo-con President who was determined to enact “regime change” in Iraq whether the war complied with international law or not. The tragedy is that a Labour Prime Minister backed Bush’s plan. As early as April 2002, Blair had told Bush that Britain would support regime change. The British and American governments then set about building the case for war.
At a secret meeting in July 2002, recently leaked minutes show that Tony Blair committed Britain to regime change in Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification . Blair told the meeting that “If the political context were right, people would support regime change.” However the Attorney General replied that “that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action”. He was not the only person worried. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, the minutes note “said the case for war was ‘thin’”. Straw then suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum that would assist the case for war .
Ever since then the British and Americans planned for war, whilst Blair said that he was a man of peace. The British and Americans created the conditions to justify war. We were told the real reason for war was the removal of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. But that was not so. We were told that we would never go to war if the war was illegal. That was not so either.
Bush and Blair should have realised that you reap what you sow. This war has killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis and thousands of “coalition” troops. Each death is a life cut short by the horror of war, a life to be mourned by a grieving relative. War is dirty. War kills. War is not just a political game. You cannot just start wars with people you disagree with, or in the case of George Bush, you cannot go to war to finish what your father failed to do. There has to be total unambiguous legal justification for war. As this does not exist then the leaders should suffer the consequences of their actions.
This is beginning to happen. Since the leaking of the Attorney General’s advice there have been a series of announcements of legal action against the government. Leading the fight is Rose Gentle. I wrote about Rose Gentle’s son, Gordon, last year. Gordon Gentle, who was just nineteen, was blown up in a roadside bomb in Basra just weeks after finishing his training. Rose started to campaign for justice for her dead son. She started to tell people that her son did not have the right equipment that might have saved his life. Gentle’s patrol was not carrying an electronic signal-jamming device that Rose believes could have prevented the bomb exploding.
Having read the Attorney General’s advice she is now one of ten families asking for a judicial review of whether the war was legal under article 2 of the European convention on human rights which enshrines the “right to life”. Rose recalls being “angry” when she finally read the Attorney General’s advice. “I always felt that the boys were sent to Iraq for the wrong reasons and that has just been proved true”. Rose believes that Blair is guilty of “war crimes. Tony Blair had no right to send our boys into Iraq,” she says.
Last week Rose and the other ten families took a letter to Number Ten Downing Street. The families argued that: “The loved ones of these families were brave and courageous individuals who entered the British Army in the belief that they should serve their country”.
They continued that each soldier had been “killed at a time when they had been told by Tony Blair that they were fighting a war that was fully justified in International Law in order to disarm a country that held Weapons of Mass Destruction which threatened international peace and security”.
The families argued that recent events suggest that “their military orders were unlawful in that the war was illegal”. They point to the Attorney General's advice, especially his warning to Blair that without a second Security Council Resolution the war might be a “crime of aggression” and involve the commission of “war crimes”.
Any person is entitled to know why their children died. The families are now demanding a full and independent public inquiry whose remit includes examining the central issue of whether the war was lawful or not. If the Government do not concede within 14 days that an inquiry must be established the families will make an immediate application for a Judicial Review.
The families are not alone. Another person to blame Tony Blair directly is Ann Toward whose husband, Anthony John Wakefield, was killed last week when a road-side bomb exploded near Amara. He was the fiftieth British serviceman to be killed in combat in Iraq. Ann blames Blair for the death of her husband: “Blair sent the troops over and he should not have done it. If it was not for that, the children's dad would have been here today”
There is one thing to tell a child that will never see their father again that there father died a “war hero”, fighting for their country. It is another that he died a villain, fighting an illegal war. One of the pillars of a democracy is accountability, that politicians are made accountable for their actions. Rose and the other families believe there is overwhelming evidence that Tony Blair is guilty of war crimes. Rose wants him to have his day in court and if found guilty sent to prison. “If you kill people on the street, the punishment is that you are put in jail. I don’t think Blair should be treated any differently,” she says.
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