Iraq made Blair a pariah – Starmer risks the same with Iran

The National

9 hours ago

Then, as now, America was acting as virtually a rogue nation giving no thought to the different opinions of its allies.
Then, as now, the American president had a skewed vision of the situation in that part of the world and no clear idea of the forces which would be unleashed by his actions and how to restore peace.
Then, as now, Labour were in power and had demonstrated they were willing to support America in any course of action they decided upon no matter what the consequences might be.
Today those consequences look even more terrifying than they appeared when America, with support from Britain's armed forces, invaded Iraq in 2003. This time the threat of nuclear annihilation hangs more heavily in the air.
READ MORE: Casual threats of annihilation from Trump are not reality TV stunts
And this time America's president is even more unpredictable and reckless than George W Bush, even more unlikely to apply logic to any decision as to his future course of action.
Bush's justification for taking action against Iraq had nothing directly to do with the terrorist atrocity of 9/11.
There was no suggestion, far less evidence, that Iraq was in any way linked to the plane hijackings which led to the demolition of the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
America was so desperate to take action – any action – in what it had dubbed the 'global war against terror' in the aftermath of 9/11 that it alighted on the claim that Iraq had in its armoury weapons of mass destruction that posed a potential threat to the US and its allies.
There was, in fact, no evidence to back up that claim. Most of the Western world regarded Bush's claim with justified scepticism. However, Britain pledged its support.
It's important to remember that in Bush's State of the Union address in 2002, in which the president started to put together the case for action to remove Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, he railed against the so-called 'axis of evil' which included Iran as well as Iraq.
The US grudge against Iran has deep roots so it's no surprise that it could one day lead to the possibility of military action.
Americans have been easily persuaded by presidential warmongering even without any compelling evidence it was needed. Even before that State of the Union address, a survey suggested that 73% favoured military action to oust Hussein.
The government was not willing to let the small matter of there being no evidence of the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction deter it from waging war.
Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN: 'The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'
The British people were less easily fooled, but, alas, the same cannot be said for their government at Westminster. Its Prime Minister Tony Blair ignored the millions in his country marching against the invasion of Iraq and ploughed on regardless.
There was some opposition within his own party. Robin Cook, then the leader of the Commons and a former foreign secretary, resigned from Blair's government in March 2003 over Iraq.
He said at the time: 'I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support.'
However, Blair brushed off the resignation and most of his ministers and Labour MPs watched in acquiescence as the invasion proceeded.
At the time, the Prime Minister was fond of telling us that if we could see the evidence that was on his desk proving that Iraq did indeed have weapons of mass destruction then we too would back his decision.
Some time after Hussein was deposed and executed, when the weapons of mass destruction theory had been well and truly dismissed, I watched Blair tell a private meeting of Scottish editors that there was at that time no further evidence of the existence of those weapons but he still supported the invasion anyway.
Today I'm still not clear what motivated Blair.
READ MORE: The facts are clear. So why won't the BBC report on Israel's nuclear weapons?
Did he really believe Iraq posed a threat to the rest of the world, despite all the evidence to the contrary? Or did he support Bush in a bid to cement the relationship between his government and Bush's Republican regime?
A Guardian column by Steve Richards queried this interpretation. He suggested that both Blair's support for the invasion and David Cameron's decision to call the Brexit referendum were the result of a lack of prime ministerial depth and experience.
Whatever the answer, history will judge. The big question now is whether Keir Starmer will duplicate Blair's blind allegiance to a US president's decision, no matter how crazy.
And secondly, will anyone in his government have the guts to advocate standing up to Donald Trump and tell him that joining Israel's bombing of Iran is not only immoral but will move the world closer to nuclear destruction?
The answer to that first question looks dangerously close to Starmer hitching his future of Trump's insistence on supporting Israel in all matters, from the unrelentingly inhumane genocide in Gaza to buying into the president's paranoia about Iran's alleged closeness to developing nuclear weapons.
That claim has already led to a split between Trump and his director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that Iran was not building a nuclear bomb.
The president's annoyance was clear in his dismissal of her opinion this week, when he snapped 'I don't care what she said.'
Starmer said on Tuesday that Trump has said nothing to indicate he would direct US missile strikes on Iran.
Nothing that is apart from confirming on Wednesday that he has approved a plan to do just that.
He told CBS that he has not yet made a decision on whether to enact that plan. The truth is that no one, probably including the president himself, knows what Trump will do next.
Things don't look good. According to a 'senior intelligence source', the president has held off from strikes to see how Iran responds to his demands for 'unconditional surrender', which seems to translate as an abandonment of its nuclear programme.
The heat was turned up even further yesterday when Israel's defence minister said Iran's supreme leader 'can no longer be allowed to exist' after an Iranian missile attack hit a hospital.
It's hard to overestimate the damage done to Israel's claims of moral superiority in this conflict by the damage caused by its missiles hitting hospitals in Gaza. What is clear is that Israel and Iran are nowhere near a solution to their dispute and the pressure is mounting on Trump to make a decision.
Starmer has admittedly advocated further negotiations rather than American bombs but if Trump goes ahead with military action it looks more likely that Britain will support him, at the very least by allowing him to use the Diego Garcia UK military base in the Indian Ocean.
The record of Labour MPs – and particularly Labour MSPs in the Scottish Parliament – of standing up to their Prime Minister's folly on other matters is poor.
READ MORE: David Lammy heads to US as Donald Trump considers whether to strike Iran
The party's leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, has urged Starmer to do more for Scotland after its by-election win in Hamilton but any criticism of his performance after major U-turns on election promises has been either missing or heavily coded.
That's not going to change if he moves to back Trump's action.
Blair's support for Bush moved many former Labour supporters to ditch the party and embrace the SNP and independence because of the urgent need for Scotland to develop its own foreign policy.
That urgency has increased rather than faded. John Swinney really has to capture that renewed urgency with real passage and focus, together with an indication of a route to independence, at the SNP's national council meeting tomorrow.