Five Years of War

Five years ago to the day, Bush told Americans that the invasion of Iraq was under way. "My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." If you want, you can watch the speech on video—but you'll need RealPlayer. This was 2003. YouTube wouldn't be set up for another two years.

Bush's speech also contained the lie that would be repeated many times over the coming years: that Iraq's military was a "grave danger" in spite of the years of sanctions.

Blair took a different tack. He published the infamous Iraq dossier, which was supposed to show that Iraq was acquiring "weapons of mass destruction". When I read the dossier, I felt massively frustrated. Having a scientific and engineering background, I could see immediately that the threats were exaggerated. On page 21, the dossier talks of a chemical plant and says, "Intelligence reports indicate that it will produce nitric acid which can be used in explosives, missile fuel and in the purification of uranium." This is perfectly true, but the main uses of nitric acid are for manufacturing plastics, fertilisers and other civilian products. Every industrialised economy uses large amounts of nitric acid, including Britain.

Over the following years, the argument about the dossier would go backwards and forwards. David Kelly would kill himself because of it. Andrew Gilligan would lose his job. Lord Hutton would lose his reputation. But Britain's government and Britain's media tend to be run by people without scientific training, so no one was able to point out that the dossier simply makes no sense. People without scientific training fabricated the dossier, and people without scientific training were taken in by it.

Five years after Bush's speech, we are still fighting. In a few months, the war will have been as long as World War II. Casualties in World War II have been estimated at 62,000,000. Reputable estimates for Iraq have ranged from 600,000 to 1,000,000—even though the fighting has only taken place in one country.

At home, Britain's race relations have been destroyed. Significant numbers of Muslims see Britain as a threat to peaceful Islamic countries, and significant number of whites see Muslims as a threat to the UK. I worry that the damage may be irreparable; the end of Britain's multicultural dream.

Blair managed to hold on to office for quite a while after the invasion, but eventually the loss of public trust forced him from office. If the opinion polls are to be believed, Labour will shortly be following him into the political wilderness, facing defeat on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Blair has been trying to repair the damage with two projects which are so naive as to be laughable. He signed up to be envoy for the Quartet of countries trying to bring peace to the Middle East. When he failed to solve the Middle East's problems in a few months, he launched a foundation to promote dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). I've got an idea about that, Tony. Perhaps if we avoid launching wars of aggression against Islamic countries, they won't hate us.

In 2004, the city of Fallujah was overrun by occupying forces, after being taken by insurgents. Reporters have not, on the whole, been able to visit Fallujah to see what happened. However, information that has filtered out suggests that the city was almost completely destroyed. One of the surveys of civilian deaths in Iraq visited Fallujah and found a very high figure. This suggests that civilian Fallujah was hit indiscriminately, as American forces attempted to flush out insurgents. The Geneva Conventions define this as a war crime.

The attack on Fallujah was assisted by British forces, presumably acting on Blair's orders. War crimes are criminal offences in Britain. One way we could put Iraq behind us would be a police investigation of Fallujah, followed by the prosecution of Blair. In my mind, the only other way is for all politicians who were involved in the invasion decision to leave public life. Killing a million people is so serious that there is simply no other option.

Cameron was not involved in the decision to invade Iraq. He was in Parliament, but at a junior level. On the other hand, Brown was actively involved, because he was chancellor. If he had said that we couldn't afford the war, it wouldn't have happened.