The Moral Case for Inspections

Sometimes events occur that make you proud of the human race. Our news media's obsession with negative stories, convinced that bad news makes good stories, means that we rarely hear of such events. Therefore, we are blessed this week. Not just one story to make us proud, but two - Friday's rejection of American bullying by the UN Security Council, and Saturday's massed, peaceful protest by the people of the world.

Instantly, Tony Blair brought us back down to Earth. Before the marchers had even assembled, Blair attacked the protest. I'll get to the quality of his rebuttal in a moment. First it is worth noting how nervous the marchers have made him. Moving the Prime Minister's speech forward by three and a half hours, especially to mid-morning is not something that would be done without a very good reason. The noise of the demonstrators was never likely to be a problem - massed police and a ban on amplifiers take care of that. Instead, Blair had two aims. Firstly, he got his rebuttal in before the marches began, and thanks to the marvels of the Internet, that rebuttal speed round the world. Secondly, he avoided the embarrassment of being one man speaking in favour of aggression while outside eighty thousand spoke against.

Blair is not the only one to be nervous. In America, tear gas was used to force demonstrators to disperse. Never mind that there have been no reports of any violence or damage. Never mind that the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to free assembly. The government is nervous, and citizens' rights go out the window.

The content of Blair's rebuttal is even more telling than its timing. Blair went for the moral high ground, claiming that the choice was between war and sanctions, that removing Hussein from power would be a service to humanity. The former claim is ludicrous - there are many options between these two extremes, one of which I'll outline in a moment. The latter is attractive, but irrelevant. Regime change is not the intention of UN resolution 1441, and has never been mentioned before as Britain's intention. Worse, removing Hussein is only of benefit if the replacement is less of a tyrant. Presumably, Britain and especially America feel they can control who gains control of Iraq. Given that the result of America's last attempt at King-making in Iraq was Saddam Hussein, I will remain less than confident.

The reason for invading Iraq keeps changing. When the war was first mentioned, Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda. Later this changed to unspecified terrorists. Then, the whole terrorism idea was dropped, and the reason became weapons of mass destruction. Then Al Qaeda surfaced again. Then it was Iraq might supply weapons to terrorists. Or rogue states. Or both. Now we're on to human rights. The justifications for war keep changing. The only constant is war. Separately, these justifications vary from not very convincing to total nonsense. The best of them - weapons of mass destruction and human rights abuses - don't withstand scrutiny. Iraq probably doesn't have deployable chemical or biological weapons, and certainly doesn't have nuclear weapons or anything that could possibly reach us. Hussein is no more guilty of human rights abuses than China, Syria, Saudi Arabia. There are no provable links between Hussein and terrorism, and war is by far the best way to ensure that any weapons Iraq does have end up in the hands of terrorists or rogue states. When the justifications change every time someone questions one of them, you can guarantee that the real reasons are being hidden.

Blair's moral case is a chimera. Protecting the Iraqi people is not America's intention, the UN process that Blair claims to be so committed to has no human rights dimension. The aim is, let us be very clear, to disarm Iraq and, at least for America, get the evil dictator. What happens afterwards (other than to the oil) is very much secondary. The British government has been keen recently to provide small details of how the Iraqi regime has been abusing the oil for food program, but these Iraqi abuses are to a large extent possible because we in the west are more keen on the oil than whether the theoretical food ends up where it should.

If we are interested in a moral approach to Iraq, neither war nor the current sanctions regime is acceptable. Instead we need a middle ground. First, and here I agree with the hawks, we must stop waiting for Iraqi agreement. The inspection regime is not a negotiation. Matters such as U2 spy planes and the private interviews of scientists are not optional. The U2 flights should be started immediately, with Iraq simply being informed that any attack on these planes would be treated as an act of war. Interviewing scientists and similar matters on the ground are more difficult, but here the Franco-German plane floated two weeks ago has the correct idea. If the UN inspectors need to play the role of police, then they must be empowered to do so. More personnel, backed by UN troops, would allow, for example, scientists to be brought to the inspectors without Iraqi minders. Permanently sealing or monitoring the most sensitive of sites would even become a possibility. In return for Iraqi co-operation with a new, more aggressive inspection regime, a phased lifting of the sanctions should begin, with properly targeted food aid being made a priority.

The moral ground is in the middle. Doing nothing is not acceptable, but neither is an unjustified war. The moral case for war is being made only to sway our feelings. The morality does not stretch to the regimes whose human rights abuses we are ignoring, as long as they provide troops or staging areas. It does not stretch to Guantanamo Bay. There is no moral justification for the cluster bombing of civilian targets, nor for a war that ignores far greater dangers such as Al Qaeda and North Korea.

The moral path is difficult, unglamorous and time consuming. It does not make good news, and will not provide the gung ho victory parade that President Bush so desperately wants. It may even not work. In six months, a U2 plane may be shot down, or a Hussein may turn on the weapons inspectors and their guardian troops. Then we will go to war, but one which we have genuinely tried to avoid, where the justification can be seen. Not a war based on convenience, hypocrisy, lies and spin.

Graham Robinson. 19th February 2003.

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