By Michael Faulkner - October 25, 2009
The former
prime minister is seldom out of the news. In the past week he has featured in
two stories. On October 9th, at a reception following a
commemoration service at St Paul’s cathedral for British servicemen killed in
Iraq, he was snubbed by the father of one of those who died in the conflict.
Refusing Blair’s proffered hand, Peter Brierley told him that he refused to
shake the bloodstained hand of a war criminal. Should he have been inclined to
dismiss this as no more than an unrepresentative gesture by an embittered
individual, Blair would soon have been disabused of any such thought. Several days later more than 20
bereaved relatives, invited to voice their opinions to the newly established
committee of inquiry into the Iraq war, were almost unanimous in their anger
towards Blair. A bereaved mother, who had also been present at the earlier
commemoration service where she had accused him of creating an unjust conflict
and killing her son, said that she wanted to see him indicted as a war
criminal.
The second
story relates to Blair’s candidacy, under the terms of the Lisbon treaty, for
the new post of president of the European council of ministers. Despite
widespread incredulity at such a prospect, the indications are that his bid is
likely to succeed. His supporters talk of his status as an international statesman
and of the huge moral stature he would bring to the post. They are seemingly
untouched by recollections of his unswerving loyalty to George W Bush, with
whom he stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of overwhelming opposition from the people and governments of
Europe, when he dragged Britain into the illegal Iraq war. Now Blair’s good
friend Silvio Berlusconi has endorsed his bid. The beleaguered Berlusconi
shares with Blair an unshakeable belief in his own importance and
indispensability. The two men also share a passionate desire for personal
wealth, though Blair’s acquisitiveness has so far brought him modest rewards when
compared to Berlusconi’s billions. He has also received endorsement from
another of his admirers – the neoconservative Irwin Stelzer, (formerly of
the American Enterprise Institute, presently director of economic policy
studies at the Hudson Institute) who backs Blair because “he turned Labour
around, ousted Saddam and now earns a good living. Bring him on as EU
president.” One is tempted to hope
that endorsement by the likes of Berlusconi and Stelzer may be the kiss of
death for Blair’s chances, but as the office is subject to appointment and not
election one cannot be sure.
At a time
when most professional politicians, along with bankers, are held in contempt in
this country, it is astonishing to think that Blair could soon be the President
of Europe. But perhaps we should not be astonished. During his last years in
office it seemed that his duplicity and mendacity over Iraq must surely catch
up with him and that he would be called to account for the bloody disaster for
which he, along with Bush, was responsible. But no; he left the stage smoothly
to pursue rich pickings in other pastures. His admirers in the media and the
supine majority of his own MPs marked his passing with expressions of fond
affection and regret. His critics in the anti-war movement who re-named him
“Bliar” and called for his impeachment for war crimes, are dismissed by
representatives of the “moderate” media as “loony lefties”, unworthy of serious
consideration. Now, however, there
may be a glimmer of hope that he could yet be called to account. The forthcoming
inquiry into the Iraq war under Sir John Chilcot will, despite resistance from
the government, conduct its investigations largely in public and may not find
it easy to protect those complicit in launching the invasion. The question of the legality of the war
cannot be avoided.
Journalists
who supported the war and defended Blair – and this includes a handful
who had earlier been regarded as on the left – have been vociferous in
dismissing his opponents as defenders of Saddam Hussein and abettors of
Islamist terrorism. Others, who have been ambivalent about both Blair and the
war, seem very reluctant to question its legality. The consensus amongst most
media critics seems to be that the war was at worst, a mistake.
It is well established
that in March 2003, in the weeks and days leading to the invasion, Blair was
desperate to assure the military chiefs that the war they were about to launch
would be sanctioned in international law. It is well-known that in the advice he first gave on March 7th,
the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, in a 13 page letter argued that “the case
for war may not stand up in court.” Ten days later (no doubt under great
pressure to come up with a different view to satisfy the warlords) he submitted
a 337 word letter claiming that the war would be legal! Both Blair and Lord
Goldsmith are likely to be called before the Chilcot committee.
Rather than
trawl through the details of the case and the arguments which will now be very
familiar, it is worth recalling the comments of two critics of the war who
cannot be so easily dismissed as leftists with an axe to grind.
Richard Overy is Professor of History at
Exeter University. He is one of Britain’s leading historians of the Second
World War, author of many books on Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. He is a leading authority on the
Nuremberg Trials and the author of “Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied
Hands”. In a Guardian article of
March 2004, (“History Will Damn Them”) on the first anniversary of the invasion
of Iraq, he wrote:
“The
intelligence services knew that they were being asked to endorse fairy tales.
The Attorney General has come clean on how he was forced to turn an illegal war
into a lawful war of defence against the Iraqi threat. The duplicity was
systematic, and remains so. Blair has no regrets. He bays defiant nonsense
about the terrible menace that has been removed, and the greater terrorist
menace still at large……Why are the US and Britain there, in illegal occupation
of a sovereign state? Why should we accept this reality and knuckle down to
Blair’s call to arms?......War in 2003 was about protecting British and
American interests, not liberating Iraq.”
Philippe
Sands QC is Professor of Law at University College, London, Director of International
Courts and Tribunals, UCL, and a world authority on international law. He is
the author of “Lawless World” – an account, written in 2005, of how Bush
and Blair “are taking the law into their own hands.” In a letter to the
Guardian on March 7th 2003, (“War Would be Illegal”) signed by Sands
and 13 other international lawyers, he wrote:
“There is
no justification under international law for the use of military force against
Iraq….The doctrine of pre-emptive self defence against an attack that might
arise at some hypothetical time has no basis in international law. Neither
security council resolution 1441 nor any prior resolution authorises the
proposed use of force in the present circumstances….A decision to undertake
military action in Iraq without proper security council authorisation will
seriously undermine the international rule of law.”
Sands said
in an interview on ABC TV : “Under international law an illegal war amounts to
a crime of aggression and in some countries around the world a crime of
aggression is one in which they exercise jurisdiction.”
Those who
launched the war and those who defend them are fond of telling us that opinion
amongst international lawyers is “divided”. A tiny minority hold that the war
can be justified in international law. Anyone who takes the trouble to seek out
the views of this minority cannot but be struck by the extreme weakness of
their arguments when compared to those of the great majority of international
lawyers. They are in the same position of those few scientists who still try to
persuade the world that climate change has nothing to do with human activity.
In both cases it is easy to see whose interests they serve.
Finally,
the words of Robert H Jackson, U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials bear
repeating: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from
other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole.”
Bearing in
mind the hundreds of thousands - perhaps more than one million – deaths
that have resulted from the invasion of Iraq, it is perhaps not too much to
hope that Blair, rather than becoming President of Europe, may yet be indicted
for war crimes. 