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The judgement offered on Saddam Hussein today is welcome. Whether it is enough for the people of Iraq and beyond is not for me to say.
A parliamentary debate into the conduct of war, reconstruction and democratisation is not what a parliamentary inquiry would set out to achieve. An inquiry would pass judgement as to whether that conduct was adequately performed. If it were the case that an inquiry looked to see what lessons can be drawn from the execution of the post-war occupation (especially post-war security), then I would support it. But that support would be conditional on its timing. Now, whilst there is a significant British presence in Iraq, is not the correct time. Either way, to use calls for an inquiry as a political tool is, though to be expected from insignificant political parties such as Plaid Cymru, the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Liberal Democrats, an example of atrocious and abhorrent behaviour by the Conservative Party.
There are two problems associated with parliamentary inquiries relevant to this circumstance. The first is the terms of reference. The motion put forward recently was for an inquiry that considered:
the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq.
The important words there are "relation to". An inquiry into the "way in which the responsibilities of government in Iraq" is a very different thing to what Plaid Cymru et al were asking for.
The second problem with a parliamentary inquiry into an issue as divisive as Iraq has been is related to the first: an inquiry itself can be sabotaged, not by those carrying out the inquiry, who will have very specific terms of reference within which they hold their inquiry, but by those who would like the findings of the inquiry to justify their initial position on the war. An inquiry on the post-war occupation would rightly point at several failings of the occupying forces, to which there would be many who use this as proof that the British should never have been there in the first place. This would result in inaccurate claims of a "whitewash".
I have quoted Howard Jacobsen on this point before, and will do so again here:
[T]he near unanimous cry of "whitewash" [following publication of he Hutton report]! A nation with its mind set like a trap. "Whitewash, whitewash! Bliar, Bliar!" Tell us the story we want to hear, or tell us nothing…
Who were these people who believed that an inquiry was meant to be the expression of their own views, who thought a finding was something already found, who cried foul the moment their conclusions were not concluded?
To summise: an inquiry, at the right time, into the discharging of government duties in Iraq is welcome. The inevitable and inaccurate claim that this inquiry is a "whitewash", because the inquiry will and can never say whether Britain should have been in Iraq in the first place, is not.
Tags — Politics