A dove's guide: how to be an honest critic of the war

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday February 06, 2003 16:21 by Matthew Parris

we must have clear thinking

February 01, 2003

A dove's guide: how to be an honest critic of the war
Matthew Parris

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-152-561996,00.html

They say the Devil has all the best tunes and were I a hawk on Iraq I might complain that the doves are enjoying a similar advantage. Our doveish tunes are on every lip. Our case slips easily from the tongue. The hawks’ argument is tricky to articulate and their motives easy to decry. Their frustrated attempts at explanation lead them into tangles that approach black comedy.
A high (or low) point in this farce arrived for me earlier this week while shaving. I was listening to the Foreign Secretary being interviewed on the Today programme. He suggested that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been found. A surprised interviewer protested that this was surely not the case. Aha! spluttered the Foreign Secretary, and was that not precisely the point? “The Iraqis have been found to be hiding them.”

Rumsfeld’s Fork: Saddam must show what he has or be indicted for hiding it.

The logic is cracked, of course, unless the undeclared major premise (that the weapons are there) is made explicit. But if the existence of the armoury is the starting point, rather than a possible conclusion, of the inspectors’ work why not just give Saddam 24 hours to lead them to it? Why have they been dashing around, trying to surprise the Iraqis, and asking for more time? Tony Blair’s latest line, that the inspectors are not in Iraq “to play a game of hide-and-seek”, would carry more conviction if the Prime Minister had told us at the outset that he did not expect the inspectors to find anything. Instead the impression is given that the UN team and its British and American sponsors did hope that it might discover weapons but, having failed to, has redefined its job as being available to be shown weapons by the Iraqis themselves.

Thus, and to our doves’ hearts’ content, we may make sport with the arguments of Bush and Blair. But when the mockery dies away do we not have to ask ourselves one awkward little remaining question? What if the undeclared major premise is true? What if the weaponry is there, just as Washington and London believed all along?

I happen to think it might be.

To that one awkward little question we doves should add another. What if the United Nations Security Council does in the end authorise an invasion?

The anti-war camp has invested heavily in what we might call “the UN route”. We have focused our criticism on London and Washington’s habit of hinting that if war is needed it must come with or without the support of the Security Council: the “second resolution”.

Now some of those doves who protest their allegiance to the rule of international law and the authority of the UN are genuine in their beliefs. If that second resolution is finally procured then they will switch from opposing the war to supporting it. That America and Britain might have attacked even without a resolution would not invalidate the attack.

Other doves, however, are being disingenuous. In their hearts they think that invasion is simply wrong, but as they doubt that the UN will authorise it anyway, they find it convenient to rest the argument on the supremacy of the Security Council. If, however, the UN is finally persuaded to legitimise an attack, these doves will not become hawks: they will change tack and complain that the Security Council has been “bullied” into war by Washington’s ultimatum. They will continue to oppose the war.

That is their right, but such a position would be wholly inconsistent with their earlier support for the rule of international law, for now it will be they who are flouting the UN. If the Security Council does agree a second resolution then, regardless of whether we like the pressure it was under to do so, we had better prepare for the possibility that the UN sanctions force.

Because I happen to think it might.

An invasion will follow. So here is another question the thoughtful dove should be asking himself. What if the invasion goes well?

Military prophecy is a field in which the peaceniks’ position has become dangerously exposed. For many of us, opposition in principle came before the practical doubts we trumpet. Of course, doves do exist whose only reason for opposing attack is that they think that it will fail, and of course it might, but every candid peacenik, reciting the military risks, should examine his motives and ask whether these are really his reason for opposing war. Would he be ready to admit that he had been wrong to oppose the war if an attack proved quick, straightforward and relatively unbloody?

Because I happen to think it might.

And after that? What if, once Saddam and his regime have been routed, the European Arabists’ predictions of mayhem prove wrong? When doves insist that even if the war succeeds the peace will fail, how firmly do we attach ourselves to that argument? Would we still oppose war, even if we could be persuaded that it would bring a better Iraq?

Because I happen to think it might.

Suppose it does. A determined dove can still disapprove of that outcome, on the ground that whether or not the Iraqi people like their new government the Islamic world in general will be outraged at the interference. “Moderate Arab opinion” (whatever that cloudy thing, much prayed-in-aid these days, may be) will be insulted, and world peace will be the loser. Many doves predict this today. Would such a commentator admit that his opposition to war had been wrong, if countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco join the chorus of approval for American intervention?

Because I happen to think they might.

Like the admiral who gave 12 reasons for not firing a salute, the twelfth of which was that he had no powder, a certain kind of doveish commentator’s position can be summed-up thus: “I’m against war because I’m not convinced Iraq is harbouring weapons of mass destruction, but even if they are I’m against war because the UN has not authorised it, but if they do I’m against war because an invasion would prove a military fiasco, but even if it didn’t I’m against war because toppling Saddam would destabilise Iraq, but even if it didn’t I’m against war because it will antagonise moderate Arab opinion.”

This will not do. It is not honest. As an avowed dove, let me warn of seven deadly pitfalls for fellow doves:

1) Don’t kid yourself that Saddam might really have nothing to hide. Of course he does. He’s a mass-murderer and an international gangster: a bad man running a wicked Goverment; the British Prime Minister and the US President are good men running good Governments.

2) Don’t hide behind the UN. The organisation may in the end be browbeaten into “authorising” an attack. If it really is your judgment that an attack would be morally wrong or practically hazardous, how could UN endorsement make it wise?

3) Don’t count on France, Germany or Russia to maintain their opposition to war. They may just be holding out for improved offers.

4) Don’t attach yourself to predictions about the military outcome. If the Pentagon thinks an invasion could easily succeed, the Pentagon may be right.

5) Don’t become an instant pundit on internal Iraqi politics, and how Shias, Kurds and Sunnis will be at each other’s throats when Saddam falls. You do not know that.

6) Don’t assume that moderate Arab opinion will be outraged. Moderate Arab opinion likes winners. America may be the winner.

7) Don’t get tangled up in conspiracy theories about oil. It is insulting to many principled and intelligent people in the British and US administrations to say that this can be understood as an oil-grabbing plot. Besides, you drive a car, don’t you? Is the security of our oil supplies not a consideration in foreign policy?

Don’t, in summary, dress up moral doubt in the garb of wordlywise punditry. Give warning, by all means, of the huge gamble that allied plans represent, but if all you are talking is the probabilities, say so, and prepare to be vindicated or mocked by the outcomes. We are very quick to aver that Tony Blair will be discredited and humiliated if the war goes wrong. Will we be discredited and humiliated if the war goes right? If the basis of our objection was that the war would fail, that should follow.

I do not think that the war, if there is a war, will fail. I can easily envisage the publication soon of some chilling facts about Saddam’s armoury, a French and German scamper back into the fold, a tough UN second resolution, a short and successful war, a handover to a better government, a discreet change of tune in the biddable part of the Arab world, and egg all over the peaceniks’ faces.

I am not afraid that this war will fail. I am afraid that it will succeed.

I am afraid that it will prove to be the first in an indefinite series of American interventions. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a new empire: an empire that I am afraid Britain may have little choice but to join.