Iraq Revisited
It was an extraordinary scene in the Commons yesterday when William Hague invited the Government to agree in principle to look at the Iraq war fiasco, in the form of an enquiry led by Privy Councillors. The Government refused, despite precedents in two world wars. They had no argument, and certainly no senior officer has ever indicated any objection to such an enquiry.
Ultimately for the sake of our national credibility, and that of both our armed forces and our security services it is imperative that we learn the lessons. Iraq is now in parts a hotbed of al-Qaeda. Part of the reason Tony Blair advanced the need to attack Iraq was to prevent terrorism in the first place.
Tory Sage said on June 13th, 2007 at 8:50 am:
Sorry Richard. Your post shows either naivete or cynicism.
The world is watching Britain. In particular, our enemies are watching. What interests them is whether our undoubted military strength is matched by the willpower to deploy it and see a job through.
Carping at the Government and demanding post-mortems while are troops are still on the ground and generally giving the impression we can’t wait to get out sends a truly wretched message to Britain’s enemies. It suggests that we simply don’t have the stomach for a bloody, messy, drawn out fight. That we’re only interested in quick victories.
The bad guys (and there are plenty of them out there) can always sniff weakness. The lesson that will be learned is that if you want to break the will of Britain then all you need is to bomb, maim and kill as many people as possible and generally create bloody chaos. That will ensure that we’ll throw our manicured, liberal hands up in horror and say ‘we’re doing no good here - let’s go home’.
That, of course, is exactly what the bad guys want. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original decision to go to war, this is now a test of wills. I’m ashamed to say that the official Opposition motion to hold an inquiry into the war was a morale boost to our enemies.
I just hope it wasn’t done for motives of petty, partisan advantage-seeking.