In February 2003, I participated in a massive anti-war demonstration in London because I did not believe a democratic government could be installed in Iraq. The Anglo-American forces did not seem to understand the proper conditions on which they could rest a modern Western government. Today, however, Britain should not follow the dishonourable turncoats in the American Democratic Party and in the British press advocating a sudden exit from Iraq.

Why did Britain and its American ally topple the Iraqi regime? This week, Martin Bright, the political editor of the New Statesman, wrote an article entitled Iraq: the new cover-up – the riddle of the missing WMD document. In the article, Bright exposes the fact that a secret first full draft of the Iraq WMD dossier – which Tony Blair put before parliament in making the case for war – had been suppressed and kept secret by the government. Bright is just one of a series of journalists believing that the central nugget of truth put before parliament and the public was that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Their cases suppose what? That it was only because Iraq held WMD that Blair had a safe case before parliament to assert an Anglo-American force within Iraq? I don’t think so – the long list of reasons and detailed explanation for invading Iraq involved a consideration of decades of ruthless slaughter and suppression of Northern Kurds and Southern Shiites in Iraq.

In his article, Bright digs the British press into an even larger hole of trivia and fact-finding exercises on the war, by concluding: “The government’s problem is that the very existence of the secret draft suggests that its spin machine was more deeply involved in the production of the dossier than it has previously admitted.” The entire reason why the British government have denied and admitted so many different versions of events – even in front of the Hutton inquiry – is probably more to do with the fact that they are tired and bored of the “leaked documents” and “secret drafts” game that many journalists play so well. Neither would it make any sense for the government to release an official intelligence plan to the press: the protection of state intelligence documents is very different from a “cover-up” and it is also not clear whether this publicly-unavailable document had been presented to the Hutton inquiry in confidence.
 
In all the striving for “independent journalism” and originality of research, a large number of the British press frequently displace the key question – why did Britain jointly invade Iraq with its American ally? In my view – which I believe I share with a number of Westminster parliamentarians – it was because the violent dictator, Saddam Hussein, needed to be legitimately toppled from power following decades of crimes against humanity, particularly following the atrocities of 1982, 1991 and 1999. The dictator had become one of the greatest depictions of “tyranny”, by committing himself relentlessly to the mass-slaughter of his own people.

To put some perspective on it, that is precisely why I believed parliament and the public (who I am positive still recall the Gulf War actions in 1991) believed that a justifiable war could be launched in Iraq. Furthermore, it is likely that Blair put before parliament – both back in 2002 and now – that when Saddam would be toppled, then a suitable order of elected, reflexive and accountable government (i.e. a democratic one) could be installed to suit the diverse needs and wealth of resources of the Iraqi population. (Please note – I did not mention WMD once in this explanation).

Britain should not be concerned for one minute whether WMD are found or not, and nor should they have been troubled whether Iraq might once have deployed biological weapons within 45 minutes – all of which seemed to have come about through a combination of crap journalism, speculative MI6 and JIC reports and public hysteria following the World Trade Center attack in September 2001. The WMD pretext is not the true “reason” why Britain intervened in Iraq.

In February 2003, when I marched with friends in the anti-war demonstration from Malet Street to Hyde Park, I held a distinctly bizarre position on the Iraq war. In a nutshell, I had been convinced by the arguments of a number of independent parliamentary dissenters – particularly the late Robin Cook – and the absence of a war-evidence inquiry, which was later headed and concluded by Lord Hutton. Although I was no more interested in the WMD pretext than I am now, I believed it would be massively problematic to install a democratic government within a geohistorical climate that could not support those conditions of government. With a passion for the political philosophy of both Hegel and Montesquieu – both of whom seem to suggest that different governments arise from their defined geographical and historical “spirit of the laws” – I did not comprehend then (and to some extent still do not understand now) exactly how a purely democratic government could be placed in Iraq. In brief, the Anglo-American forces did not seem to understand the proper conditions on which they could rest a modern Western government i.e. do not build your house upon sand. However, I strongly (and secretly) supported the removal of Saddam Hussein, and it is certain the Blair government has made a valuable and reasonable contribution to the future lives of Iraqis in doing so.

Even the usually reliable opinion of Simon Jenkins, former editor of The Times, has sunk into counter-culture cowardice. Jenkins claims after the Democratic win in US Congress that America now “gets real” and it is time for British parliament to also do so:

None [MPs] appears to have believed fully in the war – yet, apart from Robin Cook, all signed up to it. If Rumsfeld must resign, what are Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon, John Reid, Margaret Beckett and Des Browne doing in office? As for the majority of Labour MPs. They were so compliant that last month they dared not risk even a parliamentary inquiry into the war’s conduct. They are about to be taught a lesson in oversight by the New Congress.

It appears to be an “oversight” for Jenkins to question this compliance of parliament since there does not appear to be the slightest piece of evidence on their compliance over the Iraq war. To the contrary, the trashy counter-culture critique – to which Jenkins now seems to adhere – is suffering from public complacency, a true ‘tyranny of the majority’. When British individuals oppose a war, they really only ever do so en masse. For the troubled British press – who have even taken to misconstruing events in Iraq to suit the majority public opinion – very little support for the British soldiers can ever be heard. That is to be expected in the prevailing climate of a fully-fledged democratic cowardice of the electorate, unable to see a job through.
 
Following the dishonourable politics plighting the Democratic agenda in the US, it should remain clear that no counterpart critique or inquiry should arise in Britain. The reason why the US Democrats do not need to think twice about the Iraq turnaround is that they have no intrinsic sense of honour – for them, transparency and accountability is enough. Turncoats! They offer, as the basis of their agenda and goldfish-minded approach, a very different history on the origins of the Iraq war – openly swearing that the US and Britain went to war precisely and only because of the presence of WMD.
 
Desperate to reinvent the Iraq war as a new Suez crisis – Britain’s reminder that it can still fail in the East during a post-imperialist age – the press and democratic charlatan politicians continue to suggest Britain went to war precisely and only because of Iraqi WMD. However, in addition to the pretext of WMD (which have been neither proven nor unproven), Britain backed the Iraq War precisely because of the Iraqi dictator’s ruthless and horrific extermination of his own people, given a free reign in the international community under the resignations of rogue Arab governments and Euro-socialist non-interventionist governments.
 
In my own view, I would have no objection to the horrific end of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and look forward to flourishing political and economic relations with the new generation of freed Iraqi citizens. Whether those freed Iraqi citizens and Arab-onlookers have yet had the time to express their gratitude is another matter. Furthermore, nowhere in my objections to the British policy on Iraq do I have any concerns over WMD – that is not the reason why Britain found itself there and it should not be the reason for Britain making a sharp exit.