From the dwindling number of people who still think that the
March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea, there is beginning to emerge a
self-justifying little spin line that the critics of the war are taking
advantage of “20/20 hindsight”. Mainstream media outlets that are either lazy
or happy to excuse their failings in relation to their own analysis and
reportage are more than willing, as they have been for more than a decade, to
facilitate this approach to exculpation.
So in the interests of getting my own position on the record
(again), I reproduce below the notes from which I spoke in launching the
anti-invasion video clip The Real Face of
War, on 6 March 2003, 14 days before the commencement of the full-scale
invasion was announced.
The Real Face of War
Ladies and
gentlemen
Thank you
for joining us for the official launch of The Real Face of War, a
function which I am honoured to have been invited to perform.
The core message of The Real Face of War is that war
is the wrong response to the current crisis, and before launching the piece I
would like to say a few words in support of that proposition. I want to comment on three issues:
- The appropriateness of war as a response in the conduct of relations between states
-
The real face of war
-
The outcomes we are seeking and might expect from embarking on military
operations against Iraq
War is a last resort
For a democratic nation proclaiming civilised values, war
should always be a last resort. In the
plain English meaning of that phrase, one goes to war when there is no other
choice. Clearly there remain other
sensible and less destructive choices for achieving the objective of containing
Saddam Hussein, and many important member states of the UN advocate them.
We need to understand the gravity of what is at stake
here. We are talking about putting the
sons and daughters of fellow Australian citizens in harm’s way, to contribute
to an armed attack on another country.
As far as I am aware, it will be the first time we will have participated
in an unprovoked invasion of another country.
To the extent that our justification for this relies upon
the new doctrine of the “right” of pre-emptive attack, I would respond that
this new doctrine is an extremely dangerous one that will ultimately be
destabilising to world peace.
The real face of war
No matter how precise the weaponry, the overwhelming
majority of the killed and injured will be innocent Iraqi civilians, the very
people we now say we want to liberate from the tyrant who rules them. It is not for us to decide that the deaths of
some numbers of Iraqi people is an acceptable price to pay in order to improve
the lot of the rest.
And the numbers will be huge. Respectable estimates put the number of Iraqi
civilians killed in the Gulf War at 150,000.
With the scale of opening bombardment that is being openly canvassed in
the media, it is impossible to imagine that civilian casualties will be small.
We should also bear in mind when we go off to fight
oppressive regimes that many of the people in uniform who are opposing us will
be conscripts who would rather be somewhere else.
The objectives
One of the foundations of successful military operations is
a clear objective – a very clear definition of the end state that the
operations are designed to achieve.
Indeed, one of the stated reasons why the coalition allies did not go on
to Baghdad in 1991 was the avoidance of “mission creep”.
We had a clear objective in Operation Pollard in 1998. This was the operation in which we sent an
SAS contingent and two B707 refuellers to the Gulf following Saddam’s expulsion
of the previous weapons inspectorate – UNSCOM, led by Richard Butler. When then Defence Minister Ian McLachlan put
to the combined civilian and military leadership the question of what they
would regard as a successful outcome, the response he received was unanimous
and immediate:
- Saddam Hussein does what we want him to do – lets the weapons inspectors back in
-
All of our personnel come safe home
-
Not a shot is fired in anger.
This is pretty much the way Operation Pollard turned
out. The clear objective enabled the
mission to be accomplished. Saddam
Hussein did let the inspectors back in.
On 8 May we announced that our forces were being scaled down, and in
June we withdrew our contingent completely.
This is what I would call a successful military operation; the most
successful military operations are the ones you manage to avoid by skilful
handling of the situation.
In the present crisis the objectives are most unclear, they
seem to change from time to time, and four distinct possible objectives seem to
be being conflated:
- The war against terrorism
-
Elimination of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam
Hussein
-
Resistance to radical Islam of the sort promoted by Osama bin Laden
-
Creation of a democratic society in Iraq, perhaps as the first step in
democratising the Arab world.
We need to sort out which of these it is, because they are
in fact distinct and conflicting objectives, and confusing them could make a
bad situation worse. For the record, I
share the view of Professor Avishai Margalit, Schulman Professor of Philosophy
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, that the real enemy is Osama bin Laden,
that fighting Saddam will greatly help this enemy rather than setting him back,
and that accordingly, this is the wrong war.
To the extent that the motivation of the looming military
campaign is to build a better Iraqi society, I would say that it is not up to
any “coalition of the willing” to go around righting all the wrongs visited on
unfortunate populations by oppressive regimes. If that is to be the new
international agenda, then the Australian Defence Force and its more powerful
allies will be very busy indeed. In any
event, I am very sceptical about the prospects of an occupying power imposing
democracy at the point of a gun, and I don’t see the kind of commitment to
post-war reconstruction that would make that a realistic prospect.
Once we cross the threshold from the threat to the actuality
of armed force there is inevitably a loss of control of the situation, no
matter how certain the final outcome might seem. Backed into a corner, a dangerous and callous
adversary like Saddam Hussein might well take actions that we would find
extremely regrettable, including for example destroying the Iraqi oil fields,
blowing up some of the dams on the Tigris and/or Euphrates, and using such
chemical or biological capability as he might have. Certainly he would not shrink from any of
these steps out of regard for the impact on his own people.
I fear that the prevailing atmosphere is that Iraq faces
armed attack no matter what it does.
This is counter-productive to any aim of coercing Saddam Hussein into
peaceful compliance with the objectives of Security Council Resolution 1441.
So, without any illusions about Saddam Hussein, what he
stands for, or what he is capable of, I say that war is not the appropriate
response. I think there are some very important lessons
to be drawn about Saddam Hussein from the events of early 1998, and indeed from
the entire twelve-year period since the Gulf War of 1991. These are:
- In pursuit of his own agenda Saddam Hussein will go right to the brink, and in that sense he is a risk taker.
-
Nevertheless, he is a calculating, rational and skilful operator who is
all about regime survival, and hence exercises caution about the risks he
takes.
The events since the Gulf War show quite clearly that while
he will twist and turn and is completely untrustworthy, he is quite able to be
deterred.
In fact my views are neatly summed up by a line of a poem
read by Les Murray on Radio National on Tuesday:
The blow struck now will be weaker than the
blow not struck.
Ladies and
gentlemen, I thank you for your attendance here this morning and now declare The
Real Face of War officially launched.
Paul
Barratt AO
Former
Secretary, Department of Defence
6 March
2003
