A great anniversary, and so many more to come

So here we are at the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion. It’s an action still vehemently justified by Tony Blair, who beats Tricky Dicky Nixon in the honest politician stakes only because he looks straighter (I never understood how anyone could look at Nixon’s jowly face and shifty eyes and expect anything even remotely resembling the truth from him).

Tricky Dicky: the caption says it all

Blair has a powerful argument that he deploys with increasingly tedious frequency against any critic: ‘surely you can’t disagree that the world’s a better place without Saddam Hussein’. 

I always want to answer him, ‘it surely is. As it would be a better place without car bombs going off daily around Baghdad, without the one hundred to several hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths the war caused, without powerful nations trampling on international law, and without countries going to war on the whim of policy-makers instead of solid evidence.’

Come to think of it, perhaps the big question to put to Blair (and Dubya, and their supporters) is what’s happening in Iran. Way back in the days of the Iran-Iraq war, the West’s darling was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, because anyone who was against Iran had to be democracy’s friend. In fact, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he always claimed that he’d been given the nod by none other than the United States, and it certainly seems that at the very least the Americans had sent him some pretty mixed messages.

Today, the bogey man’s Iran again. Our good friend Israel keeps threatening military action to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power. The West rattles its sabres, deploys its battleships, ratchets up its sanctions.

In between, the West had a couple of wars with Iraq. And where’s Iraq now? Run by a Shiite government that’s turned it into a client state of Iran. For instance, Iran is actively backing the Assad regime in Syria, and channeling a lot of its support through Iraq.

So Iran was the enemy of the West and is its enemy again. In between the West helped make a regional superpower of Iran by installing a friendly regime in Iraq.

Is it just me or does that seem – how shall I put this – a trifle incoherent?

But an anniversary isn’t it just a time to look backward. It’s a time to learn the lessons of the past and prepare for the future. So let’s see what lesson we can learn from the ten years in Iraq.

Again, it’s Tony Blair who gives us the clue. What was he telling the BBC tonight, apart from the fact that he has no regrets about what he did in 2003? That the price of not intervening in Syria might be higher than the price of intervening.

In other words, things went so well in Iraq, he can’t wait to repeat the experience in Syria.

Straight-speaking Blair, in a role he can't wait to reprise

So what’s the lesson? When you’re in the kind of place Blair inhabits, you never learn any lessons from history.

And, sadly, most of the people in power today are the worthy successors of Blair, Dubya and their mates.

On this glorious anniversary, look forward to celebrating a lot more of them in the future.

Syria: when the West sits on its hands

It’s harrowing to watch the news footage from Syria. A warplane turns gracefully in the sky, taking its time to choose a target before it glides in and bombs another house, killing some more children, a family, some old people, occasionally a rebel or two. On the ground men and women scream and cry and plead for help from the West. 

Syrian warplane gracefully killing women and children in Aleppo

Of course they call on us: in their position my anger at the wealthy and powerful nations who are sitting on their hands would be exactly the same.

‘Why don’t you intervene?’ I would scream, ‘Why don’t you help? Is it because we don’t have oil? After all what’s happening here is just what you set out to prevent in Libya.’

But that’s just the point at which natural sympathy for a people being massacred by a vile government has to pause a moment and take stock.

Because how well did that go in Libya? Did our military intervention there usher in a new era of peace and democracy? With the US Ambassador, Chris Stevens, killed there a week ago, is that even a question worth asking?

There are no doubt people in Libya keen to build a new nation conceived in liberty. But there seem to be many looking for something quite different. Perhaps a theocratic autocracy. Perhaps an opportunity to settle scores with another tribe. Perhaps just the perpetuation of a low-intensity conflict which serves them well.

The idea of perpetual conflict is hardly unrealistic. The fighting shows no sign of ending in Afghanistan. Today we learned that NATO has decided to suspend joint patrolling with Afghan forces in small units, since there have been so many occasions when Afghan soldiers have rounded on their supposed colleagues in NATO and killed them: 36 attacks this year costing 51 lives.

And what about the longest-standing of the Western attempts to force enlightenment on the Arab-speaking world? In a burst of optimism, Iraq brought in a power-sharing regime in 2005. Tareq al-Hashemi served as Vice President under a Shia President. Last December he fled for his life, a decision he presumably regards as one of his more judicious, since last week he was sentenced to death in his absence. Only on Monday, he accused his former colleagues in government of helping Iran pass weapons through to the Syrian government, rather confirming the widespread view that if there was a victor in the Iraq War, it was the Tehran regime which hugely extended its influence in the country.

Coincidentally, Monday was also the occasion of the latest in the unbroken series of bombings that have rocked Iraq ever since Dubya Bush declared his ‘mission accomplished’. The latest left at least seven dead in Baghdad and 24 injured.

The West has proved itself good at taking military action but lamentable at building a legacy behind it. At least, not the kind of legacy anybody would honour.

Meanwhile, back in Syria itself, a report issued on Monday by Human Rights Watch suggests that there are elements of the rebel army whose behaviour is no more commendable than the government’s: they have been torturing and killing their opponents just as the regime tortures and kills its own. Perhaps we are beginning to discover, in time on this occasion, what we discovered far too late in Libya: just opposing Basher al-Assad or Muammar Gaddafi doesn’t necessarily make you a nice guy.

Supporting disreputable characters wouldn’t be new in the history of Western intervention in the region. Let’s not forget that the West spent a long time supporting and arming the Taliban against the Soviets in Afghanistan before we decided these erstwhile friends were a pretty nasty bunch too. If you haven’t seen Charlie Wilson’s War make a point of watching it now (and not just for the lesson: the script’s by Aaron Sorkin, of West Wing fame).

That news footage from Syria is as harrowing as ever. But, though my heart goes out to them, when I hear the persecuted civilians on the ground calling out for Western help, my inclination now is to say ‘be careful what you wish for.’ We’re good at delivering poisoned chalices but they’re not good presents.

It sounds heartless to say it, but bad though things are, I firmly believe that the West should hold to its present attitude and stay sitting on its hands. The alternative could be a lot worse. And last a lot longer.