By Gary Kent
Given the huge investment that this country made in the lives of its soldiers and in public money, it is only right that there should be a comprehensive inquiry into the causes and conduct of the military intervention in Iraq in order to learn the lessons for the future.
Labour Friends of Iraq was founded by supporters and opponents of that intervention, but who deliberately sought to respond to the new Iraq that emerged from the intervention. For the last five years our priority has been working with Iraqis who are seeking to build independent organisations such as trade unions and to create a federal and democratic country.
The sad thing about much of the discussion about Iraq is that it either ignores or obscures the reality of Saddam’s murderous regime or that Iraqi voices are invisible in that debate. My worry is that a large number of activists have little or no knowledge of the crimes of the previous Iraqi regime which include genocide against Iraqi Kurds, massacres of Shias in the south and external aggression in which about a million people died.
It is important that the inquiry recognises that this story didn’t start with the invasion, but that it nevertheless examines this suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam. For those reasons, it should take evidence in Iraq.
After five trips to Iraq since 2006, I would say that many Iraqis welcomed the intervention, especially in Kurdistan which had benefited for 12 years from the US and the UK policing a no-fly zone for Iraqi bombers and gunships over the Kurdistan Region. Many people were deeply angered by the litany of errors committed after the intervention, which gave vent to Shia fundamentalists, Baa’thist die-hards anxious to protect their former privileged position of dominance and Al-Qaeda.
Iraq came very near to full-scale civil war but security has vastly improved and its sovereign government is increasingly taking charge of its own security. There are still problems with delivering public services, in relations between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds and with the country’s neighbours. There is a desperate need for foreign investment and trade as well as all sorts of cultural, political and social contacts to overcome the legacy of decades of neglect and destruction of the economy as well as Iraq’s isolation from the outside world.
British troops are on the way out but we now need a new, deep, long-term strategic relationship between Iraq and Britain based on political, diplomatic and economic issues. By all means, let’s examine how we got here but let’s also make a greater effort to work with the new Iraq in their interests and ours.
Gary Kent is Director of Labour Friends of Iraq.
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And where was he when Blair pulled the wool over the dummy cabinet's eyes?
Zimbabwe hasn't invaded it's neighbours or used WOMD on it's own people etc.
You would no doubt also have sat back and let hitler take poland etc. as the UK had "no business getting involved"
All I care about is how big were the lies that this government told the British people as a pretext to war?
That is all.
The war aims of GWI were met when Saddam was thrown out of Kuwait. There was no UN mandate to march on Baghdad and the coalition would have broken up had Bush Senior attempted regime change in 1991.
Regardless of Saddam's tyrannical reign afterwards, the UK had no business getting involved. It was all about Bush and the Neo-Cons wanting to clear the way for a set-to with Iran (and of course the oil).
Ask yourself why we haven't invaded Zimbabwe.
It could be suggested that the secrecy is to avoid public embarrassment of people like Teflon B'Liar, Pa McRuin-Broone, Lord Meddlesome and others of that Ilk.
As for the rest of us Peasants of the UK. We will just have to be grateful for whatever crumbs falls from High Table of Our Liege Lords and Ladies of McGubbins-Broone's demented Stalineque parody of a Gubber-munt.
Don't expect much out of this inquiry. Its finding have already been written and are locked away in some dark office in Whitehall. (all allegedly of course)
are you writing in your capacity as advisor to the Islamic Dawa Party of Iraq? If so, could you inform us how much Nouri al-Maliki is paying you? I think you should give this evidence in public.
His regime had invaded Kuwait and Iran, fired missile on Israel, Suadi arabia and threatened other gulf states.
They had tried to develop WOMD (biological, chemicla and nuclear) and had used chemical and biological weapons on their own populace.
Hunderd's of thousands had been executed by Saddam's regime and yet the War was opposed solely on anti-US grounds.
Talk to an Iraqi about the situation, especially the Kurds and marsh Arabs and all will say it was a great day when Saddam was removed.
The issue is NOT about why we went to war, it really is about why the "peace" was so botched in the aftermath of Saddam's fall. It is redolent of so much of NuLabour though, appalling planning and control.
For a long time I have been utterly dismayed that the left who would not hesitate to jump up and down all day over some Oxford undergraduate telling a racist joke would happily ignore vile abuses of human rights abroad just so long as the perpetrator was an enemy of the America.
The western left has ignored the Iraqi left, the trade unionists and in fact the whole lot of them, preferring to share platforms with the fascist Muslim brotherhood instead. They have almost no understanding of what life was like Saddam nor they have any concept of the value of liberty and freedom, much less democracy. Yet most extraordinary of all Britain has great numbers of Iraqi immigrants and exiles who are enthusiastic about the west removing Saddam. Sure they want the west out as soon as it is safe, but they supported us doing it. But the left will not engage with them, at all.
I suggest some of these enraged lefties try getting in a minicab from time to time, sometimes your find them driven by an Iraqi and you can ask them directly as I have. Your find they do not support the lefts view of Iraq at all. They deserve their elections as much as we do ours!
Good luck making sense to your Labour comrades.