One
of the striking images in recent television drama history was arguably that of a
fictionalised Tony Blair being arrested and flown off to the International
Court of Justice to face the charge of being a war criminal.
Alistair
Beaton’s satirical ‘The Trial of Tony Blair’ was a biting look at what could
happen to the former prime minister whose legacy ultimately appears to be
inextricably tied to his role as the key decision-maker in committing the
British armed forces to the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The
fact that this decision was predicated on the highly publicised but false
allegation that the regime of Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of Weapons of Mass
Destruction and was an action undertaken in circumstances where many of the key
players involved in formulating Resolution 1441 have gone on record to assert
did not, to quote the then serving
British ambassador to the UN, contain
“automaticity" and "hidden triggers” which would lead to
military action, have made Blair the seemingly enduring subject of public
controversy and inquiry.
He
has been subjected to the most devastating forms of moral obloquy emanating
from religious clerics to anonymous Internet trolls. Some of his public appearances have been
subjected to the most extraordinary disruptions. In 2012 whilst giving a speech
at the University of Hong Kong, he was threatened with arrest by a Briton who
claimed that he was liable for “crimes against peace.”
The
same year, while giving evidence at a public inquiry, an intruder approached
him and branded him a “war criminal”; adding the unproven allegation that Blair
had received a multi-million pound bribe to make the decision to go to war.
More
recently, while dining out with members of his family, he faced an attempted
citizen’s arrest undertaken by an ordinary bartender, one Twiggy Garcia, who
had been inspired by a website named arrestblair.org.
But
has Blair been hard done by? Is it all overkill, and to quote a journalist
recently writing for the London Evening Standard newspaper, “disproportionate”?
That opinion article was after all
prompted by the aforementioned attempted citizen’s arrest.
It
was an event which some may have found distasteful because Garcia’s actions, in
their line of reasoning might be construed as the trivialisation of a serious
matter, or, alternately, as the progression to the near extremities of an
unjustified atmosphere, conducive to his seemingly perpetual demonization, which
over the years has been built around the reputation of the former prime
minister.
For
instance, one of the most enduring of photo-shopped items to have made the
rounds on Internet discussion forums, blogs and avatar images of choice has a
joyful Blair taking a ‘selfie’ with an enormous conflagration representing the
destruction wrought by the Iraq war in the background.
It
has often seemed to have taken on the appearance of an all too easy-to-join
bandwagon in which any nondescript individual can have his or her say, or even go
further than mere words.
The
soon to be released report based on an inquiry by Sir John Chilcot –five years
in the making- promises to bring his decision yet again squarely into public
focus.
The
results may likely not satisfy those on either side of the argument, but it
will be interesting to see were the discourse will head: Will the narrative
ultimately be that of Blair the good; a useful ally of an American nation in
pain over the infliction wrought by the falling of the twin towers or Blair the
dupe; the useful idiot in an enterprise which was hatched years before by US
policymakers?
For
some, the ramifications of Blair’s decision to join in the attack on Iraq are to
be considered to have been one of those difficult decisions to have been made
by a statesman and about which opinion may remain divided but without rancour.
This
view is justified specifically given the supposedly amorphous qualities of
international law.
To
others, Blair got off lightly from a colossal deed which sealed the fate of hundreds
of thousands; perhaps millions. He has not been brought to account and is
effectively a ‘fugitive’ from justice.
Mr.
Garcia is not alone holding such sentiments. Indeed, he is in distinguished
company.
After
his retirement and been shorn of the straightjacket of the constitutional
convention which demands a strict neutrality in regard to political issues, the
late Lord Tom Bingham, once the senior law lord, criticised the decision to go
to war in Iraq as having been “a serious violation of international law.”
As
it happens, so too have eminent figures in the legal establishments of both the
United Kingdom and the United States. Geoffrey Bindman Q.C., an expert in human
rights law, and Professor Francis Boyle, an international law expert at the
University of Chicago have gone on the record to say as much.
There
have been a number of attempts geared towards making Blair legally accountable
for his action. In 2002 for instance, efforts of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
through a judicial review to obtain a declaration that Resolution 1441 did not
authorise military action against Iraq was rejected because the decision to
take military action was “beyond the court’s purview”.
In
other words, actions taken in defence of the realm are part of the Royal
Prerogative and are thus non-justiciable. While inroads have been made in recent
times to ensure that prerogative powers are in principle reviewable, the court
was alluding to the fact that a number of powers exercised under this ancient
mechanism are inherently political in nature and the judiciary would be
compromised by intervening in matters of the like.
The
legal action taken by CND, mounted before the actual decision was taken, serve
to remind of the widespread concerns held about Blair’s urge to follow George
Bush on this ill-fated foreign adventure.
Another
application for judicial review based on human rights doctrine and the specific
provision concerning the ‘right to life’ which is incorporated into United
Kingdom legislation was also rejected four years later.
The
applicants had asserted that the refusal to hold an independent inquiry into
the deaths of British soldiers had breached a procedural obligation which
itself followed on from the substantive breach in committing the British armed
forces to an invasion and inevitable loss of life without taking reasonable
steps to ensure that such invasion was lawful.
As
has since been ascertained, Blair took the decision to go to war with a
backdrop of the government’s legal advisor, Attorney-General Peter Goldsmith’s opinion revolving form a
firm ‘no’, to ‘doubts’ and to a ‘yes’.
To many, the journey to the final opinion smacked of political
manipulation.
And
manipulation was indeed the order of the day.
In a leaked memo, the serving head of MI6, the foreign intelligence
service of the United Kingdom, Sir Richard Dearlove advised Blair that
President Bush had resolved to attack Iraq even though the case for the
existence of weapons of mass destruction was “thin”. Such lack of evidence
would provide no barrier, Blair was further apprised because, according to
Dearlove, “intelligence and facts were being fixed (by the United States)
around the policy.”
Blair
himself stood up before Parliament to assert that Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction programme was “up and running”; following this with the infamous
utterance that these weapons could be deployed “within 45 minutes”.
Through
false leads which spanned supposed Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from the West
African country of Niger to the use of flawed intelligence provided by assets
such as the Iraqi defector code-named ‘Curveball’, the spectrum of evidence
which Tony Blair relied on to make this far reaching decision of state has been
discredited beyond doubt.
So
much so that what is left for defenders such as the Evening Standard columnist
Matthew d’Ancona, is to defend Blair’s decision on the grounds that his
“instincts” were right and that contemporary events in Syria prove this.
It
is, of course, an arguable point as to whether intuition can validly form the
basis of what should be the sober means involved in the expression of
statecraft. But even if one were not to relegate it to a level akin to that of
basing decisions of state on a reliance on horoscopic astrology, Blair’s
instincts, or more accurately, his acts of contrivance, were surely woefully
wrong and misplaced.
The
regime of Saddam Hussein was already severely weakened by a UN administered
embargo and a strictly enforced ‘no-fly zone’. This embargo ensured the
scarcity of medicines and the subsequent deaths of half a million Iraqi
children.
Blair’s
cooperation in the subsequent invasion has led to the deaths of hundreds of
thousands –if not millions- emanating from the initial military incursion, the
occupation and subsequent guerrilla war fought against the coalition forces as
well as the de facto civil war which has intermittently raged between the Sunni
and Shia communities to varying degrees of intensity.
This
fratricidal conflict was aided by a United States-constructed policy of
initiating death squads in the tried and tested manner of its Vietnam War-era
Phoenix Program and the miscellaneous programs run by various Central America
governments in the 1970s and 1980s.
A
simple deductive analysis based on logic and a mathematical body count demonstrate
that Iraq was a more stable country under the Saddam regime and that there is a
severe imbalance between the amount of lives lost post-invasion compared to
that during the Saddam era, ‘blood-thirsty’ dictator though he may have been.
Another
matter which may not addle the conscience of Blair and his defenders is the
rise in births of babies afflicted by congenital conditions which is the
outcome of the use of chemical agents in the munitions utilised in the war and
occupation.
The
Nuremberg Principles refer to the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging
of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties,
agreements or assurances” and “participation in a common plan or conspiracy for
the accomplishment” of any of the aforementioned acts.
The
ascertainable facts which form the background to the war in Iraq arguably point
to a prima facie case for Tony Blair to answer in the International Criminal
Court in The Hague.
It
is simply not good enough to argue that Blair should not be put in the same
category as a Wilhelm Keitel and an Alfred Jodl because they were part of the
totalitarian Nazi regime and Blair from a nation with traditions steeped in
liberal democracy.
A
person who robs another while enrobed in fineries is no different from one dressed
with an eye mask and stripped jersey. A rogue is a rogue.
The
Gleiwitz Incident, the precursor to the German invasion of Poland was a less
sophisticated manufacture of a justification to wage war than offered by the
Blair and Bush administrations prior to the commencement of conflict with the
Saddam-led Iraq. But in both situations, the start of hostilities was
predicated on a ruse and represented in each respect an abrogation of the
international agreements guiding the handling of either issue.
Blair’s
retort to his would be arrestor was to invoke the current conflict in Syria:
“Shouldn’t
you be more concerned about Syria?” he is said to have told Mr. Garcia.
The
implication here by Blair and his supporters is that the consequences of inaction
may just be as perilous as is the case with taking positive action. Such
arguments may also be suggestive of a ‘White Man’s Burden’-form of obligation
on the West and as well as an inevitable ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’-form
of repercussion.
As
it turns out that conflict is one which could not have reached the present
levels of depravity without the active overseeing of the West of the efforts of
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to arm Sunni extremists in the ongoing
attempt to overthrow the secular government of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The
actions of the West have stimulated the Syrian Civil War which is aided by at
least one group that is the legacy of Blair’s war in Iraq; the Al Qaeda-affiliated
‘Islamic State in Iraq’ brigade.
Part
of the legacy of the War in Iraq has been an inflammation of the Sunni-Shia
schism and the increasing marginalisation of Christian populations in Iraq and
now Syria.
The
evolving standards by which statesmen are judged for their decisions as regards
the promulgation of international wars as well as the conduct of internal
‘Dirty Wars’ make it clear that Tony Blair’s decision which led to the deaths
and mutilations of countless civilians and of the loss of 179 British military
personnel in Iraq should not be treated as an unremarkable foreign policy
decision on which people can merely offer polite agreement or disagreement.
Though
the futile gesture of performing a citizen’s arrest on Blair may have fallen
short of what is perceived to have been the ‘breakthrough’ action all those
years ago when a British bobby solemnly placed the former Chilean head of state
Augusto Pinochet under arrest in London, there are those who remain hopeful
that the likes of Tony Blair will someday be held to account for having
participated in the engineering of a war under false pretences.
The
weight of moral logic and the existing corpus of jurisprudence demand that no
less is the case.
©
Adeyinka Makinde (2014)
Adeyinka
Makinde lectures in Public Law at a university in London.
