A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  On 7 March, Peter Goldsmith had submitted his final opinion. As I said earlier he had been over to Washington and had had detailed discussions with the administration lawyers. He set out the arguments for and against and on balance came out in favour. Later, much was made of the ‘pressure’ on Peter to do so. The truth is he was, and is, someone of genuine integrity. He really wanted to be sure. It was difficult. The world is full of lawyers, and on this, every lawyer was having his or her shout. He felt the responsibility keenly, as he should have. There was clearly a case against in law; but there was also a case for. He debated, discussed, reflected and decided. His opinion was balanced. The argument was balanced. He did his job.

  He was also one of the few lawyers who, in charge of an administrative function, had real executive capability. The changes Peter made to the role of Director of Public Prosecutions, to the Crown Prosecution Service and to criminal justice made a huge difference to the quality of the system. He put up with my frequently expressed impatience (and not always expressed politely) with the courts over their immigration, terrorism and asylum rulings. He was a stickler for proper process. But within those bounds, he was a radical, with the ability to translate the radicalism into real change.

  George and I were due to meet in the Azores on 16 March, partly to bind in Spain and Portugal who were both supportive and both of whose prime ministers were under enormous heat from hostile parliamentary and public opinion. It was clear now that action was inevitable, barring Saddam’s voluntary departure. George had agreed to give him an ultimatum to quit. There was no expectation he would, however. Alastair, Jonathan and David were working hard with the Bush team, Condoleezza Rice in particular, to draw up the right statement with the right phrasing.

  The mood in the UK continued to be highly volatile. On 11 March, Donald Rumsfeld inadvertently put the cat among the pigeons by suggesting at a press conference that owing to Britain’s internal politics, it may be that we shouldn’t be part of the initial military action. Some thought he was trying to put the wind up us. It was clear to me that it was just a cock-up. He was actually trying to be helpful. It didn’t help, however, and by then the military were absolutely determined, rightly, that they would be part of the action from the outset, and took amiss any sense that we might be in the second rank.

  Robin Cook came and said now that it was clear that a second resolution was impossible, he would resign, and perfectly amicably we set about drawing up resignation statements. I understood the importance of the second resolution in terms of political survival and so forth. I confess I always thought it a bit odd in terms of the moral acceptability of the course of action or not. It bestowed more legitimacy, it was true, but whether we got a second resolution or not basically depended on the politics in France and Russia and their calculation of where their political interests lay. We had acted without UN authority in Kosovo. It would have been highly doubtful if we could ever have got UNSC agreement for either Bosnia or Rwanda. I never even thought about it for Sierra Leone. Yet it would be hard to argue that, morally, in each of those situations, we should not have intervened. What’s more, if the going got tough, as we have found in Afghanistan, the mere fact of UN authority does not necessarily bind people in.

  However, had we got it, of course the politics, at least for a time, would have been far easier. But we didn’t and so the choice was clear, as it was for many nations’ leaders at that moment: in or out? We could count on roughly thirty to be in the military coalition, but it was plain the US and UK would bear the brunt.

  On the morning of 16 March, we got up early and flew to the Azores. It was a slightly surreal event. On the face of it we were still pushing for a political solution. There were some last-minute hopes of an Arab initiative to get Saddam out; or of a Saddam capitulation. George was content to adopt the line that we were going to hold out every last hope for peace. We sat and talked for a while in the strange little waiting room outside the main room where the meeting had taken place. It was at the Lajes airbase and the facilities were basic, as most military airbases are, the rooms functional, the decor pretty plain save for some azulejos (Portuguese tiles) on the walls. It was a beautiful island – that much we could see from the flight in – but we saw little of it.

  We rehearsed again the main arguments. He was completely calm. He thought we had to send out a message of total clarity to the world: have anything to do with WMD and we were going to come after you. More even than me, he was focused on the possibility of terrorist groups getting hold of WMD material. ‘I am just not going to be the president on whose watch it happens,’ he said. ‘I love my country and these people threaten it by their hatred for us.’

  It’s easy to mock the simplicity of the George Bush view of the world. Some of it does indeed appear Manichaean. On the other hand, the simplicity was born out of a very direct analysis which it was hard to dispute. For all its faults and the limitations natural in any entity containing humanity, America is a great and free country. There’s lots of things about the US which I find incompatible with the way we Europeans think about things: guns and capital punishment and the prison system and some of what seems indifference to inner-city poverty, for example. But plenty of Americans also disagree with those things.

  None of that should diminish its strength, its appeal or its essential goodness as a nation. I know that ‘goodness as a nation’ sounds odd, but they and we have systems of government and basic rights and freedoms that are ‘good’. Now some nations can’t achieve those freedoms yet, but are on their way and will get there. I believe China is such a nation. It has unique problems. It has the world’s largest population and more than fifty different ethnic varieties within it. It will take time to develop politically. We should be sensitive to the stresses and strains of that development.

  But you look at other nations and you see no sign of benign evolution. You see, instead, power corruptly wielded, a nation held back, people oppressed and a future denied. There is no house on the hill which makes the present struggle worthwhile; just a horizon full of deeper despair as far as the eye can see.

  For those people in that bleak wilderness, America does stand out; it does shine; it may not be a house in their land they can aspire to, but it is a house they can see in the distance, and in seeing, know that how they do live is not how they must live.

  So when I look back and I reread all the documents and the memories flood back to me of all those agonised and agonising meetings, calls and deliberations, I know that there was never any way Britain was not going to be with the US at that moment, once we went down the UN route and Saddam was in breach. Of course, such a statement is always subject to in extremis correction. A crazy act of aggression? No, we would not have supported that. But given the history, you couldn’t call Saddam a crazy target.

  Personally, I have little doubt that at some point we would have to have dealt with him. But throughout I comforted myself, as I put it in the Glasgow speech, that if we were wrong, we would have removed a tyrant; and as a matter of general principle, I was in favour of doing that.

  Nonetheless, I was also aware that the very split in international opinion meant that we were absolutely at the mercy of events, and in wars events are usually of the unforeseen and unpleasant kind. So as we left the Azores, I knew the die was cast. I was aware of my isolation, my precarious grip on power, and – stomach-churning thought – my total dependence on things going right, not wrong. What’s more, this was the first time I would be committing ground troops to an action to topple a regime where we would be the junior partner, where we would not be in charge of all the arrangements. It is true that in Afghanistan British troops were engaged on the ground, but the initial action was an air campaign. This time we would be fighting Saddam’s forces, who had been through two wars themselves, and would be fighting to protect their privileged place in the Iraqi hierarchy.

  Above all, as I stared out of the window of the BA plane chartered for the day trip and looked at the
coastline of the Azores fading into the distance, I knew lives would end or be altered as a result of this decision. I was calm too, but calm because now my fate was sealed along with the fate of countless others. I was doing what I thought was right. But by God, I wished I wasn’t doing it.

  We returned. We held an emergency Cabinet on the Monday. Robin had resigned and so didn’t attend. I took everyone through the arguments again. I had finally got George to commit to the Road Map, which was of enormous importance to the Middle East peace process. Essentially it provided the framework, as it still does today, for the steps towards peace. It had been resisted by the Israelis (ironically in view of their later strong advocacy of it), and the US system was at best lukewarm, but it was holy writ for the Palestinians, the Arab world and the EU. After much wrangling and debate, we got the US signed up to it and we even got a specific commitment to it in the US ultimatum to Saddam.

  Apart from Clare Short, the Cabinet were supportive. All my most loyal people weighed in. As ever on these occasions, John Prescott was a rock. Derry Irvine came in with a very helpful intervention saying that if France had not threatened to veto any resolution authorising action, we could probably have got a second resolution and the problem was that we tried so hard to get a second resolution that people assumed, wrongly, we needed one legally.

  Then came 18 March and the debate in the House of Commons. The Bush ultimatum, with our changes all taken on board, was balanced, not bellicose, and strongly supportive of the Iraqi people. And, critically for me, it played up the Middle East peace process. I had worked on my speech – the most important speech I had ever made – late into that night and Tuesday morning. At times like this, I just put my head down to write.

  The argument came easily. I went through the history of the perpetual flouting of international law and UN resolutions, the ejection of the inspectors, the military action in 1998. I explained why we couldn’t allow this to go on; how after September 11 we had to send out the clearest possible signal that the security paradigm had changed and so should our toleration of rogue regimes that used or developed WMD.

  In one passage, which I regretted and almost took out, I made reference to the 1930s and to the almost universal refusal, for a long time, of people to believe Hitler was a threat. I was careful not to conflate Saddam and Hitler and specifically disowned many of the glib comparisons between 2003 and 1933. But I did mention how joyful people had been at Munich when they thought action had been averted.

  Now I would put it differently. Actually there is a parallel, but it is less about the lead-up to action and more about the general ideology of this extremism based on a perversion of Islam and our attitude to it, and our attitude to the rising threat of fascism. In both cases, there is enormous reluctance to believe we are necessarily in a war. In both cases, our longing for peace blinds us to our enemies’ determination to have their way. In both cases, we excuse behaviour on the part of people and states that in other circumstances we would abhor. In both cases, it seems all a bit remote from us and therefore we ask: Why do we need to intervene?

  I summarised the basic case in this way:

  Let me tell the House what I know. I know that there are some countries, or groups within countries, that are proliferating and trading in weapons of mass destruction – especially nuclear weapons technology. I know that there are companies, individuals and some former scientists on nuclear weapons programmes who are selling their equipment or expertise. I know that there are several countries – mostly dictatorships with highly repressive regimes – that are desperately trying to acquire chemical weapons, biological weapons or, in particular, nuclear weapons capability. Some of those countries are now a short time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon. This activity is not diminishing. It is increasing.

  We all know that there are terrorist groups now operating in most major countries. Just in the past two years, around twenty different nations have suffered serious terrorist outrages. Thousands of people – quite apart from September 11 – have died in them. The purpose of that terrorism is not just in the violent act; it is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, and to produce consequences of a calamitous nature. Round the world, it now poisons the chances of political progress – in the Middle East, in Kashmir, in Chechnya and in Africa. The removal of the Taliban – yes – dealt it a blow. But it has not gone away.

  Those two threats have, of course, different motives and different origins, but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept fully that the association between the two is loose – but it is hardening. The possibility of the two coming together – of terrorist groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of a so-called dirty radiological bomb – is now, in my judgement, a real and present danger to Britain and its national security . . .

  Let me explain the dangers. Three kilograms of VX from a rocket launcher would contaminate 0.25 sq km of a city. Millions of lethal doses are contained in one litre of anthrax, and 10,000 litres are unaccounted for. What happened on September 11 has changed the psychology of America – that is clear – but it should have changed the psychology of the world.

  Of course, Iraq is not the only part of this threat. I have never said that it was. But it is the test of whether we treat the threat seriously. Faced with it, the world should unite. The UN should be the focus both of diplomacy and of action. That is what 1441 said. That was the deal. And I simply say to the House that to break it now, and to will the ends but not the means, would do more damage in the long term to the UN than any other single course that we could pursue. To fall back into the lassitude of the past twelve years; to talk, to discuss, to debate but never to act; to declare our will but not to enforce it; and to continue with strong language but with weak intentions – that is the worst course imaginable. If we pursue that course, when the threat returns, from Iraq or elsewhere, who will then believe us? What price our credibility with the next tyrant?

  I also dealt with the divisions in the international community and in particular with how I wish Europe had negotiated with the US. In retrospect, I fear this only heightened the fact of my isolation, but it is interesting to speculate whether with different leadership, a different outcome along the lines I describe could have been achieved.

  What we have witnessed is indeed the consequence of Europe and the United States dividing from each other. Not all of Europe – Spain, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Portugal have strongly supported us – and not a majority of Europe if we include, as we should, Europe’s new members who will accede next year, all ten of whom have been in strong support of the position of this government. But the paralysis of the UN has been born out of the division that there is.

  I want to deal with that in this way. At the heart of that division is the concept of a world in which there are rival poles of power, with the US and its allies in one corner and France, Germany, Russia and their allies in the other. I do not believe that all those nations intend such an outcome, but that is what now faces us. I believe such a vision to be misguided and profoundly dangerous for our world. I know why it arises. There is resentment of US predominance. There is fear of US unilateralism. People ask, ‘Do the US listen to us and our preoccupations?’ And there is perhaps a lack of full understanding of US preoccupations after September 11. I know all this. But the way to deal with it is not rivalry, but partnership. Partners are not servants, but neither are they rivals. What Europe should have said last September to the United States is this: with one voice it should have said, ‘We understand your strategic anxiety over terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and we will help you meet it. We will mean what we say in any UN resolution we pass and will back it with action if Saddam fails to disarm voluntarily. However, in return’ – Europe should have said – ‘we ask two things of you: that the US should indeed choose the UN path and you should recognise the fundamental overriding
importance of restarting the Middle East peace process, which we will hold you to.’

  Finally I dealt with the issue of regime change.

  I have never put the justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in Resolution 1441 – that is our legal base. But it is the reason why I say frankly that if we do act, we should do so with a clear conscience and a strong heart. I accept fully that those who are opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? . . .

  The brutality of the repression – the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty – is well documented. Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, their tongue was cut out, and they were mutilated and left to bleed to death as a warning to others. I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam. ‘But you don’t,’ she replied. ‘You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear.’ And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine what it must be like not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place, and the blunt truth is that that is how they will continue to be forced to live.

  So the moral case for action – never absent from my psyche – provided the final part of my speech and its peroration, echoing perhaps subconsciously the Chicago speech of 1999.

  We won the vote handsomely in the end, by 412 to 149. My team – both civil servants and special advisers – had been utterly magnificent, giving me the most powerful, sustained and sustaining support.