Iraq - Let's not over do it, Question Time

Watching Question Time sometimes, you would be forgiven for mistaking the programme to be all about David Dimbleby. Last week he was true to form, constantly interfering in free-flowing debate, picking on panellists unfairly and making all-to-easy populist quips. I am sorry David, you are not Paxman. You do not have the politicians on the stand like Paxman on Newsnight; your job on Question Time is merely to chair the debate and, crucially, you must do so impartially. Yet, rarely does Dimbleby follow this scope, and there is no subject that he and Question Time relish more than that of Iraq. Take last Thursday's show as an example: poor old Peter Hain (who gives the sense that he is very uncomfortable defending the government on this subject) had to face the wrath of his fellow panellists - and of course the BBC hand-picked audience which is always unfairly left leaning.

The strength of the attack upon Hain, combined with its frustratingly righteous delivery, prompted me to try and clear up a few misconceptions about Iraq. To recap, during the show a faltering Hain tried to defend the decision to go to war by saying that the public’s favour was split at the time. This brought about the all-too-familiar groan from the audience, with one member proudly retorting that 80% of people were actually against the war. I am unsure from which survey she took her quote, but for the record there are official polls which show - if not a split down the middle- then certainly no consensus against. On the eve of the war, an ICM poll in the Guardian found 38% approval for an attack on Iraq. Not half, but a significant amount (it is almost enough to win government for a political party in a general election). Further still, a Mori poll conducted at the same time revealed that 74% would approve of an attack if it was found that there were weapons of mass destruction and the UN were also in favour of an invasion. The two caveats here are crucial, both of which we shall deal with shortly. (My initial response to this is who on earth were the other 26%? Presumably the same sort that cram into the BBC studio every Thursday evening for Question Time and moan at the right wing view of the world). These polls at least show though, that despite the leftist-inspired BBC coverage to the contrary, the country was not wholeheartedly against the war.

Of course, some will now argue that, yes, people were only in favour because there were supposedly weapons of mass destruction. We now know there were no such weapons, and intelligence was beefed up and presented in such a way as to support what seemed like a pre-determined decision to go to war. This may be so, but it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion, as one audience member suggested, that we are ‘run by a bunch of liars’. Some will never be convinced or satisfied about Tony Blair until he faces a war crimes tribunal. My belief, reading between the lines and taking into account what we have learnt recently in the Chilcot enquiry, is that Blair desperately wanted to support America in a post 9/11 world and supported regime change generally in Iraq. He knew that in itself that it would be a hard sell to the British public, so concentrated efforts on proving the case for invasion on weapons of mass destruction. That does not mean he made it up or lied. Let us remember that at that time, Saddam Hussein was acting just as if he did have weapons of mass destruction. As poor old Hain tried to point out on Thursday: for goodness sake even the French and the Russians believed he had them!

But no, the Question Time folk will not submit to this. Blair and co not only lied, but worse, they did it all so that they could smother themselves in oil. I do not deny that I am sure a less oil-endowed country would not have gained so much attention, but this is not the same as saying it was the motivation for the invasion. If this was really all about oil then why on earth was there such a woeful plan to reconstruct the country? Surely if all they wanted to do was get oil, they would have spent a little time thinking about how they would stabilise the country subsequent to the invasion.

Put the weapons argument to one side for the moment. There was still an argument for invasion as alluded to previously. This was part of the neo-con ideology of transporting freedom and democracy to the Middle East. We know this to have desperately failed, and looking back it seems like a whole lot of folly, but in a post 9/11 world it was genuinely convincing. In support of this, it should be noted that there is much good (as well as bad) that has come from the invasion; the Iraqis are at least free and need not fear persecution by their own dictator. Just ask the Kurds in the prosperous north of the country how much this means, and they will tell you in no uncertain terms. Still today, the insatiability of Islamic countries (Yeman, Pakistan, etc.) poses a real threat to our security and we have still not formulated a foreign policy that reduces or even contains this threat.

Now let us reflect upon the UN and the ‘legality’ of the war. There seems to be a great deal of confusion here. International law is not like the criminal law that governs the actions of people in this country. There is no legislation in the same way that there is the Sexual Offences Act 2003, for example. Sure, there is the UN charter and some case law, but this is all pretty vague stuff and highly open to interpretation. The UN is not the High Court of the international community, nor is it (as it is often wrongly referred to) 'democratic'. Five of its members sit permanently on the Security Council and all hold a veto. There is no democracy in that. The UN is merely a forum in which we can hope that international disputes can be settled. Tony Blair had that hope and tried extremely hard to get a UN sponsored invasion of Iraq. But if there is no UN sanction (and there are still many eminent international lawyers who argue the final UN resolution was enough to justify the Iraq war) it does not necessarily mean that a war is illegal. More to the point, it does not necessarily mean that a war or particular course of action should be avoided. If we waited for China and Russia to agree to everything before we took any action on international disputes, we would never get anywhere. Many times since the UN’s inception have we had to act without its sanction, most recently in Kosovo.

The slimy Calvin McKenzie, also on the panel of Question Time for the debate, at one point banged his fist in protest at the amount of soldiers who have died. Indeed, every young man’s death is a personal tragedy and I have every respect for our soldiers and their remarkable sacrifice and bravery. But come now Calvin, they are not conscripted and every soldier knows when they sign up that they may well die in conflict, whether that conflict be politically controversial or not. Although no comfort to the personal loss, it should be said that the amount of soldiers who have died in the Iraqi conflict compare favourably with most conflicts of the latter half of the 20th century.

Iraq is a subject that many feel strongly about- and quite rightly so. There is much to be said and learnt on the matter. The number of lives lost, Iraqi in particular, gives the topic greater resonance. Yet let us not forget all the facts and simply see Bush, Blair and co as war mongering liars. The truth is something quite different, and listening to the overwhelmingly imbalanced view perpetuated through Question Time is, frankly, getting quite tiresome.

The Lisbon Treaty – anyone get the feeling like they are living on Animal Farm?

Is it just me or did the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty last month occur without so much as a whimper? On the day it became law I awoke to check the papers and I was shocked to find that no national newspapers made any significant mention of it. Surely it would make it on to one of the television news bulletins I thought? No, nothing. Ok there was a nice little blog article on the Daily Telegraph website by the ever reliable Daniel Hanan lamenting UK seising to be a nation, but was that it? Was that the sum total of marking such a significant constitutional event in the mainstream media? Surely the enactment of such a disgraceful treaty should have been met with more protest?

It is worth reminding us of where we have come from in relation to this subject. I say this because I fear that in relation to the great European project we are in danger of becoming like the inhabitants of George Orwell’s, Animal Farm. We are sleep walking into an irrevocable and unprecedented change of the state we live in and we seem even unable to recall the rules as they once were or what indeed had been promised to us. The current government promised us that we would get a vote on the European Constitution. Given that the European Community that existed in 1972 has morphed beyond recognition into a supra-national being now known as the European Union, this was the very least a patient public deserved. At last the British people that had helplessly witnessed the sovereignty of our nation be chipped away at over 30 years would finally have a say on an unprecedented constitutional question. Due to the very existence of the referendum that took place in 1972, what is not unprecedented is that when there are questions of such magnitude the people have a right to a referendum. And yet when our European brothers and sisters voted in 2005 in France and the Netherlands that they had had enough of the European project of an ‘ever closer Union’ and gave a resounding ‘no’ to the European Constitution our dear politicians thought it wise to retract their promise of a referendum. Instead they made a few minor edits, changed the name and said that because they had done so we no longer needed to be consulted and within just 4 years it has become law. Animal Farm has become Manor Farm, two legs used to be worse than four legs but two legs are now better and eventually although we all believed that ‘all animals are equal’ we now have found out that ‘some animals are more equal than others’.

Surely such a turn of events not so long ago or even in most parts of the world today would have been met with riots on the street? The poll tax got people rioting and that wasn’t so long ago. Why are people not angered about this? Sure, a G8 meeting, a meaningless over-expensive climate change conference or if you a Muslim of particular sensitivity then perhaps the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is cause for a good old protest complete with controversial chanting, placards and skirmishes with the police. But the enactment of a law that has changed the status of this country’s sovereignty irretrievably and that the government promised us a referendum on and then back tracked when it knew we would say no, we get no protest at all, not even a mention in the newspapers. Just tacit acceptance of the inevitable march towards a federal European state. Are people really happy to let our politicians sign away our sovereignty and say nothing about it? I cannot believe that.

Please I beseech you, protest and complain! Riot if need be! Keep doing so until the great European project is halted and reversed like the people wanted in the first place! It is not an easy battle to be won, the Dutch and French referendums prove that they are determined to achieve their goal of the United States of Europe even in the face of overwhelming support against it. But please let us not be like the passive victims on Animal Farm staring at the corrupted rule book thinking to ourselves that ‘I am sure it was different once’ but cannot recall what it was that has cheated us.