American attack on Iraq would be a shameful strike against democracy

IN the history of the world, no democratic country has ever deliberately initiated a full-scale war with another country.

In the history of the world, no democratic countries have ever gone to war with each other.

Those are two profound facts. They derive from several of the central tenets of democracy: that government must derive authority from the people; that decisions must be made in accordance with law; that executives must be accountable; that the media must be free to criticise. There are others, but the combination of all of them has always meant that democracies endlessly seek other ways to settle disputes.

Democrats see war as a last resort, and always to be undertaken in response to some intolerable provocation. That doesn't mean that democrats must be pacifists (although pacifists are almost always democrats). It is possible to be a democrat and to recognise that there are circumstances that justify war. But a democrat will never set out to start one.

Are we now about to see the first instance in the history of the world where a democratic country, the United States of America, will deliberately choose to initiate an all-out war? If we are, then I believe that everyone who regards himself or herself as a democrat should shout, as loud as we possibly can, “Stop!”.

Our voices may be too puny to matter in the scheme of things. It might even be said that we, who depend so much on the United States, have no right to speak out.

But if the USA initiates a war with Iraq, it will have debased something fundamental, something that builds its foundations on the words of an American President who coined the immortal phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. In a world of democratic values, the use of war as a pre-emptive strike will degrade everything democracy stand for. If we can justify war on this basis, what can’t we justify?

In this newspaper, I have written passionately in defence of the United States right to respond to the barbarism of September 11.

I supported their invasion of Afghanistan, just as I supported their involvement in the Balkans and, a number of years ago, the Gulf War. In all of these cases, the United States and its allies were acting in response to acts of war committed by others, and they were acting in the interests of all of us. And I have also recorded the view here that the one element of American foreign policy that I was in a position to judge from first hand experience “has been pursued in a fair, subtle, and stylish manner, and it has contributed in no small measure to the achievement of a remarkable peace”. I mean of course the American role in the creation of peace on this island.

So I hope it won’t be said that this is just another piece of anti-American polemic. There will, of course, be those who argue that my basic premise is wrong, and that there have been instances in the past where democracies have initiated attacks on others. There are certainly two examples (I don’t believe it’s possible to come up with others) that have come close: the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

In the case of Grenada, although it was largely unprovoked, there were at least a couple of excuses: the Governor General of the island had appealed for intervention, and there were several hundred American medical students in need of rescue from a breakdown in civic order. The Bay of Pigs, of course, wasn’t ostensibly an American invasion at all, but an adventure carried out by Cubans with the support of the CIA and the American administration.

And this is what Ted Sorensen, Special Counsel to President Kennedy, wrote about the Bay of Pigs: “With hindsight it is clear that what in fact he had approved was diplomatically unwise and militarily doomed from the outset. What he thought he was approving appeared at the time to have diplomatic acceptability and little chance of outright failure. That so great a gap between concept and actuality should exist at so high a level on so dangerous a matter reflected a shocking number of errors in the whole decision-making process, errors which permitted bureaucratic momentum to govern instead of policy leadership”.

That is the sort of thing that will be written, ultimately, after an American war with Saddam Hussein. I have no doubt that America will win. In fact, I believe Iraqi resistance will probably crumble very quickly. And there is no earthly reason to believe that any sane person would mourn the passing of Hussein. Behind the propaganda, it is almost certainly the case that most of his own people hate him passionately, and would perhaps even welcome what they might see as an act of liberation. At least for the five minutes of freedom they would be allowed.

Because Saddam Hussein is unlikely to be replaced by a democrat, and the consequence of this war throughout the rest of the Middle East will be incalculable. Among the prices that could be paid for an American victory, one can be almost certain that one could be the perhaps fatal undermining of powers that, although certainly not democratic, have nevertheless been voices of moderation in the increasingly tense and hate-filled debate between Islam and the West.

But that is an argument for another day, and maybe we’ll all be proved wrong. But if America starts a full-scale war on Iraq now, a basic value upon which America so proudly stands will be besmirched.

And all in the name of pre-emptive action: to stop Saddam Hussein from doing whatever they think he is doing. Monster though he undoubtedly is, Hussein has committed no act of war against the world outside his own country. His intentions may be murky, but his capacity is surely limited. He is not capable of the sort of provocation that would amount to an act of war, and any act of war against him will constitute a first strike. As I said earlier, if we can justify that approach to foreign policy, what can’t we justify?

The policy of ethnic cleansing is a form of pre-emptive action. So is the so-called science of eugenics, which tries to engineer racial purity through selective breeding. But we don’t even have to be that extreme to find an analogy.

Suppose, for instance, the IRA announced that it had decided, in the interests of copper-fastening the peace, that it was going to take out what it described as “the leading loyalist thugs and killers”. We shouldn’t regard this as a breach of the ceasefire, just as a pre-emptive action designed to help democracy and further human rights by getting rid of negative elements before they can do more harm.

Can you imagine the howls of justifiable outrage such an announcement would cause? And can someone please tell me what the difference is, other than in degree? America gave us maybe the best model of working democracy the world has ever seen. Why now do they seem so ready to betray it?