Seven years too late The Observer owns up on Iraq
The Observer newspaper was one of Tony Blair's main media cheer-leaders in the run up to the Iraq war and its columnists David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were its leading armchair bombers. Now the Observer says the war "was not just a strategic failure, it was, for the occupying powers, a moral catastrophe." It was of course more than that. The war was -- as pointed out in the comments at the end of the Observer editorial reprinted below -- illegal and unjustified from the start, and it has devastated Iraq, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its people and driven millions as refugees from their homes.
Observer Editorial 24 October 2010:
The final reasons for going to war are being swept away
An Iraqi man cries over the body of his 14-year-old daughter, Suad Abdullah, killed in Falluja in April 2004
There was no single reason why Britain and the US went to war in Iraq. The motives that inspired George W Bush and Tony Blair have been variously dissected, analysed and psychoanalysed.
It is too early for history to have formed a settled view on the war, but the case that it was a monumental error gets ever more compelling.
Most of the official justifications for war, on grounds of security from terror and weapons of mass destruction, have been discredited.
The only element of moral authority left in the decision might be that Saddam Hussein ran a murderous regime, characterised by torture and extra-judicial killing.
It could indeed have been the duty of western powers to intervene against such atrocity. But the western occupiers quickly became complicit in atrocities of their own, as new leaked military documents reveal.
The files, passed to WikiLeaks and reported in today's Observer, reveal how allied forces turned a blind eye to torture and murder of prisoners held by the Iraqi army. Reports of appalling treatment of detainees were verified by the US army and deemed unworthy of further investigation. Responsibility for disciplinary action was passed to the Iraqi units that had perpetrated the abuse. In a handful of cases, allied soldiers are directly implicated in abuse.
The leaked files expose a cavalier attitude towards international law with regard to the treatment of enemy soldiers and disgraceful tolerance of civilian casualties.
The thrust of these allegations is not new. But each extra piece of evidence builds a portrait of a military occupation deeply implicated in practices that were illegal under international law and unconscionable in the eyes of any reasonable observer.
The terrible truth about British and American involvement in Iraq seems increasingly to be that it was not just a strategic failure, it was, for the occupying powers, a moral catastrophe.
Comments
fishandart: This is a strangely vacuous editorial. The sanctions imposed on Iraq before the war killed tens of thousands of innocent citizens. The invasion itself was unnecessary and illegal, justified through the presentation of fabricated intelligence. The occupation has continued to kill tens of thousands of innocent men women and children. We have known about all of this all the way along this disgusting road that we have traveled as the perpetrators of these crimes. Why now the pretense of shock and horror at the barbarity of 'brave boys'. What do expect to happen ? Are the good people of Wooton Bassett going to line the streets for the murdered children of Iraq
sheep2: This is a newspaper that beat the drums for the war in Iraq. Perhaps you'd like to republish some of the articles (Nick Cohen & David Abamovitch especially) and editorials from 2002 and 2003 and put them up along side the wikileaks material?
clunie: It is too early for history to have formed a settled view on the war, but the case that it was a monumental error gets ever more compelling. Oops, butterfingers, we seem to have invaded a nation and killed thousands of civilians, leaving millions of refugees with militias running many areas. So sorry, we'll send a nice box of chocs to make up for it. Pathetic.
raymonddelauny:
The terrible truth about British and American involvement in Iraq seems increasingly to be that it was not just a strategic failure, it was, for the occupying powers, a moral catastrophe.
Let's focus on the positives as well as the negatives.
Im sure we can all celebrate the Carlyle Group and Halliburton's successes; they did fantastically well. As did the funeral directors at Wootton Bassett. As did Tony Blair in his role of Middle East Peace envoy. Marvellous stuff, it makes me proud to be from Blighty.
Can you imagine not reading this as another sharp-elbowed parent whose children have just started at a blue chip university - but from a service family reading this mealy mouthed claptrap? Just worrying that the next news broadcast on a sub-standard Land Rover might feature another young life snuffed out for Blair's Blood Price:
Blair's BBC interview 6 September 2002
If I thought that by committing military action in a way that was wrong, I would not support it. But I have never found that and I don't expect to find it in the future."
Hotline to the President presenter Michael Cockerell asked Mr Blair whether one of the elements of the UK-US special relationship was whether "Britain is prepared to send troops to commit themselves, to pay the blood price".
Mr Blair replied: "Yes. What is important though is that at moments of crisis they (the USA) don't need to know simply that you are giving general expressions of support and sympathy.
"That is easy, frankly. They need to know, `Are you prepared to commit, are you prepared to be there when the shooting starts?'"
The prime minister added: "We are not at the stage of decision on Iraq, and there are all sorts of different ways in which we might decide to deal with this Iraqi problem in the end."
Pindi: No chance of an apology from the Observer, I suppose, for being the principal cheerleader for the invasion. Once again, I do wish you wouldn´t call it a "war". A war is when once side has a chance of fighting back, which Iraq hadn´t, not after being destroyed in the first invasion in 1991, then a decade of sanctions and no-fly zones, when a mouse couldn´t move without the US/UK observing it.
Blair says he was called by God to do his work, but ended up doing hell´s blackest deeds. This is the usual British hypocrisy, where they say they are fighting for the underdog and for freedom and democracy, whereas behind the scenes they are doing the opposite, as exemplified by its treatment of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, its overthrow of numerous democracies and installing of puppet regimes, including Saddam, and its support of vicious regimes such as apartheid and Israel.
The deciding factor for the UK is where the profit lies. Apparently it considers that they profit by acting as US´s bag carrier. In fact, therein lies utter disaster for the UK, whose economy is going down the drain thanks to its illegal invasions.
liberalexpat: What barefaced hypocrisy. The Observer betrayed its readers and its liberal past on Iraq without any qualms. The editor of the time, Roger Alton, advocated gunboat diplomacy and made The Observer one of the leading warmongers - overturning at a stroke the paper's proud history as Britain's oldest liberal/left newspaper. Two of its leading columnists, Nick Cohen and David Abramovitch, rubbished the anti-invasion protesters - meaning many of the paper's own readers. Even The Sun wouldn't have stooped that low.
The invasion was a failure in all respects - not least that of liberal journalism in Britain and the US. In Murrca, the New York Times swallowed Bush's propaganda hook, line and sinker, with some of its leading journalists acting as administration hacks. It didn't question the line that Saddam caused 9/11 until late in the game, probably one of the reasons that so many gringos even now believe this particular lie.
shazam: Well,goodness me, what an admission from one of the cheerleaders of the war! Better late than never.
