http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/featuresopinon/display.var.2111778.0.Apologists_for_war_are_as_silent_as_all_the_graves.phpIn November of 2002 I was getting a little ahead of myself, and writing about war crimes. The excuse, then and subsequently, was that I was not the only one. The other extenuating circumstance, granted the retrospective justification of five long and horrible years, is simple: every fear was then fulfilled. Worse, foresight required no cleverness on anyone's part.
The list was commonplace. No weapons of mass destruction, thousands dead, resistance, terrorism, inevitable regional unrest, bloody religious strife and the certainty, sooner or later, of civil war: that was the miserable bet. Democracy, peace and stability were not on any of the cards. Instead, for answer, we got astounding complacency, remarkable military incompetence and a series of deceits. What we did not get was a surprise.
As the fifth anniversary of shock, awe and invasion rolls around with no plausible end to the occupation of Iraq in sight, that detail is too easily forgotten. These days the culprits gladly confess their errors (always well-intentioned, of course), but they overlook this part of the tale.
They were warned, warned repeatedly, warned when they were hustling Hans Blix's inspectors from the scene, warned when they mounted the charade of seeking a second UN resolution. Anti-war protests were the visible, public aspect of a global argument in which every serious question went unanswered and every prediction went unheeded. Five years ago, as the bombs began to fall, it was already clear that the conquest of Iraq had been part of the George Bush game-plan from the start. Even the hunt for Osama bin Laden - this piece of cynicism remains breathtaking - was rendered a secondary issue. Bush wanted his war.
By that time, many people on both sides of the dispute were reduced to repeating themselves. Positions were established even before the killing started, even before the excuses for the invasion had become a kind of regressive series of increasingly incredible untruths. Before the shooting, remember, Tony Blair was telling the Commons that regime change in Iraq formed no part of Britain's desires.
In November of 2002, in any case, I wrote the following: "The argument, to hear the White House and Downing Street tell it, runs like this. Saddam is a monster; Saddam is probably a dangerous monster; therefore, somehow, numerous Iraqi dead are the price we' must pay to see him off. It's his fault, not ours, and we're really very sorry. But nothing remotely resembling a crime could possibly be involved."
It was a crime in the making even then, by all the usual standards. Britain and America were not under attack. Having spent years bombing Iraq in a piecemeal way, they had no evidence that an attack against them was imminent. And they lacked the UN's endorsement. Those, crudely, are the rules.
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