Britain’s independent Iraq Inquiry Report, a withering critique of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to drag his country into the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is likely to forewarn an already fragile Britain, and equally fragile other European nations, on yoking themselves to future American military attacks overseas. The report of the John Chilcot inquiry, made public on Wednesday, runs into 60,000 pages and contains more than two million words. It took seven years to put it together. It reveals that Mr Blair had decided to hitch himself to the US bandwagon when he sent a single-line “Secret-Personal” note to President George W. Bush, “I will be with you, whatever.”
This was over the objections of his senior advisers, including the then British ambassador to Washington. One of them thought it too sweeping, another reckoned it “closed off options”, and yet another felt it might be taken at face value.
What’s worse is that the note was despatched in July 2002, some eight months before the invasion on what proved to be false grounds. It is arguable that the British PM’s words of unconditional support of any possible US action on Iraq may have made the Bush administration reckless, less caring of consequences, and effectively goaded it to go to war even if that was not the British leader’s intention.
The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath left 150,000 civilians dead. It led to other actions in West Asia that destabilised the entire region, brought the Al Qaeda in with full force, and generated ISIS. Nevertheless, Mr Blair did not appear repentant at a two-hour media interaction on Wednesday. He maintained his decision to go along with the attack was taken “in good faith”. He still thinks knocking Hussein out was a good idea. At least Iraq has a chance now, under Saddam Hussein it did not, Mr Blair noted without hesitation. What he means can be clear only to him.
Iraq, the Chilcot inquiry makes amply clear, posed no security threat to Britain or the US, and had no weapons of mass destruction, as was indicated by the faulty intelligence, which Mr Blair magnified when he spoke of it in public although the basic intelligence inputs were more nuanced.
After Brexit, Britain is psychologically delinked from Europe. In the matter of international political and security affairs, the exposure of Mr Blair’s decision-making leaves it potentially out of kilter with the US as well. Here is a warning to other nations too about hitching their star to American military plans.
