Last Straw

Alas­dair Palmer of Lord Tubby’s news­pa­per has this to say:

Lord Goldsmith’s con­fid­en­tial advice to the Prime Min­is­ter on the leg­al­ity of invad­ing Iraq without a second UN res­ol­u­tion, revealed for the first time last week, was equi­vocal about almost everything. It was clear about one point and one point only: “Regime change,” insisted the Attor­ney Gen­eral, “can­not be the object of mil­it­ary action.” Any inva­sion which had that goal would be unam­bigu­ously illegal under inter­na­tional law.

Last week, most of the dis­cus­sion of the Attor­ney General’s advice centred on whether it was “argu­able” that the inva­sion would be legal without a second UN res­ol­u­tion expli­citly author­ising it. Yet when com­pared with the glar­ing illeg­al­ity of an inva­sion whose expli­cit pur­pose was regime change, this is a non-issue. The Prime Min­is­ter knew it, the Attor­ney Gen­eral knew it, the Cab­inet knew it, and so did any­one who bothered to think about it. What, then, was Tony Blair doing when he stated: “What is import­ant is that whatever action we take is done in accord­ance with inter­na­tional law”?

The repeated insist­ence of the Prime Min­is­ter, the Attor­ney Gen­eral and, indeed, the whole Cab­inet, that the inva­sion of Iraq was com­pat­ible with inter­na­tional law seems simply to have been a pose to try to fool people who genu­inely wanted the inva­sion to be legal — but were too stu­pid to see for them­selves that it wasn’t.

Of course, a num­ber of the people in that cat­egory include the Labour MPs who voted for it after hear­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the Attor­ney Gen­eral assure them that it was in line with what inter­na­tional law required. Many of those MPs are now very angry at their own stu­pid­ity. They have deflec­ted their anger on to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Attor­ney Gen­eral for not shar­ing the con­fid­en­tial advice that was released last week.

This is simply a fur­ther demon­stra­tion of their own idiocy, for there was noth­ing in that con­fid­en­tial advice that was not obvi­ous at the time of the Com­mons vote. It was extremely easy to work out that the inva­sion was incom­pat­ible with inter­na­tional law. If that law has a guid­ing prin­ciple, it is that the inva­sion of one coun­try by another in order to replace its ruler is a flag­rant viol­a­tion of state sovereignty.

I do not believe that the Prime Min­is­ter cyn­ic­ally exploited his MPs’ stu­pid­ity by his pre­tence: the first per­son he fooled by his soph­istry was him­self. A self-deluding soph­ist is not an ideal char­ac­ter to have as the leader of our coun­try: it is what we will get if we re-elect Tony Blair and Labour next week.

It’s worth read­ing the whole piece: Regime change is illegal: end of debate to say.

Michael Smith of the Sunday Times points out that:

The minutes show Gold­smith warned Blair eight months before war star­ted on March 19, 2003 that find­ing legal jus­ti­fic­a­tion would be “difficult”. The attorney-general only ruled unam­bigu­ously war was law­ful a few days before the war star­ted after Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, deman­ded unequi­vocal writ­ten confirmation.

Boyce was never shown Goldsmith’s more equi­vocal advice to Blair of March 7, 2003, and says today min­is­ters failed to give him pro­tec­tion from pro­sec­u­tion at the Inter­na­tional Crim­inal Court. “I have always been troubled by the ICC,” he says, adding that if Brit­ish ser­vice­men are put on trial, min­is­ters should be “brought into the frame as well”. Asked if that should include Blair and Gold­smith, he tells The Observer: “Too bloody right.”

Too bloody right.

Sir Men­zies Camp­bell, Lib­eral Demo­crat for­eign affairs spokes­man, said the leaked minute showed Blair had “agreed to an illegal regime change with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. It set out to cre­ate the jus­ti­fic­a­tion for going to war. It was to be war by any means.”

Sug­ges­tion for next week’s head­line, “Bri­tain re-elects War Criminal!”