Iraq war revisited by UK panel

A high-level UK panel has reiterated what much of the world has been suspecting. Last week, the Chilcot committee ruled that a British government led by Tony Blair joined the United States’ invasion of Iraq without sound reasons. The key findings were directed at British politicians, but had resounding repercussions on America all the same. The invasion, which the United Nations tried in vain to block, took place although Iraq posed no major threat to the world, the panel concluded.
According to the damning verdict following a seven-year inquiry led by the respected Sir John Chilcot, Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The panel suggested the then-British prime minister was acting in cahoots with the United States, as there was a “secret” letter Blair sent to then-president George W Bush pledging that “I will be with you, whatever”. The committee also ruled that Blair chose invasion before peaceful options could have been exhausted, that British intelligence produced flawed information, and that he kept his Cabinet in the dark and was responsible for the British military being poorly prepared for the war.
The panel’s bottom line was that the invasion was not justified. This stance corresponds to the United Nations’ attempt to stop the United States. Opponents of the war stated that although the late Saddam Hussein may have been a repulsive ruler and may have put Iraq under a reign of terror, the invasion was still a step too far. The anti-war camp was powerless to stand in America’s way, and the rest is history.
The invasion raises at least a couple of disturbing questions. If the United Nations can’t stop a superpower from bombing, firing missiles at, or sending troops into another country after simply making unproven accusations, who can? If democracy is the way to go for this world, shouldn’t America have listened to the voices of the global majority?
There are other debatable issues, too. The invasion was a war against terrorism, the United States claimed, but do acts of terrorism that followed justify the invasion? Were they direct or indirect results of the fall of the Saddam regime? Did some brutal terror groups come into existence as a result of the invasion? The world may not be able to really know, as history is usually written by the powers-that-be.
All these questions are old ones. They are revisited only because of the completion of the 6,000-page Chilcot report. There will be attempts to discredit the document or some major new international event will distract attention. Nothing, however, should blur the fact that this was not a document conjured up by anti-invasion radical Muslims. The findings were made by a respectable panel and significant enough to send Blair to issue a public response. He defended his decision, of course.
In another “secret” message to Bush before the war, Blair reportedly said: “This is the moment when you can define international politics for the next generation”. Did this reek of joint ambition on a global scale? Again, nobody can really know. But the words are there, not elusive as the “weapons of mass destruction”, and it’s up to any reader to interpret them.
Everyone knows that the Iraq war was costly, and some Southeast Asian nations were part of it, too. A tangible review, however, can only address losses of lives and money spent. The moral costs stemming from the war are a lot harder to measure. The Chilcot report has taken politics, local and international, to task and asked serious questions about how, where and when an extra-judicial exercise can be carried out on a global scale, and by whom.