Last week, the British parliament was in a flap over the fact that, during a heated debate, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the U.K. had previously been involved in “illegal wars." Wallace was obviously referring to the war in Iraq, and his Labour Party counterparts took offence. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office had to later issue a statement that Wallace’s views were his personal opinion.
However, a 2017 survey revealed that nearly one-third of British citizens also believe that the Iraq war was indeed "illegal" and that former prime minister Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes.
The survey was taken after a former chief of the Iraqi Army brought a private prosecution against Blair for his role in supporting the U.S. led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The British High Court has since blocked the Iraqi officer’s bid to bring Blair to justice.
It is refreshing to know that one-third of the survey respondents believed “Mr. Blair knowingly misled parliament and the public and should be tried as a war criminal.”
What is disappointing and perhaps revealing of an inherent sense of first-world privilege is the fact that two-thirds of those surveyed did not think Blair’s actions were punishable as a war crime.
Iraqi General Abdulwaheed al-Rabat, the plaintiff in this case was not acting on some sort of a whim.
All the evidence of Blair’s manipulative actions were already revealed and detailed through a thorough British parliamentary investigation known as the Chilcot Inquiry.
When the Chilcot inquiry results were made public in 2016 they painted a chilling picture of not only Blair’s actions but also those of his former foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
The inquiry concluded; “Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to the U.K., intelligence reporting about (Iraqi) weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that the war was unnecessary and that the U.K. undermined the authority of the UN Security Council.”
Had the Iraq invasion gone smoothly and the U.S.–U.K. coalition had established a post-Saddam democratic Utopia, one could argue that Blair’s lies were for the greater good. But that is not the case, given that to this day - more than 17 years later - the bloodletting and violent anarchy still grip war-ravaged Iraq.
In fact, the magnitude of the crime which Blair co-committed – we cannot exclude former U.S. president George W. Bush’s regime from this equation – is that the human cost to Iraqis remains incalculable as it remains ongoing.
In other words, Blair and Bush are indeed war criminals but until the killing which they unleashed is stopped in Iraq, we cannot assess the full magnitude of their crimes.
However, before my fellow Canadians puff out their chests and take pride in the fact that Prime Minister Jean Chretien opted out of joining in on Blair and Bush’s war crimes in Iraq, let me just state one word – Libya.
Back in the spring of 2011 it was Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, that took the lead international role in helping Libyan rebels to oust President Moammar Gadhaffi.
After some initial success, the Libyan rebels had suffered setbacks at the hands of Gadhaffi security forces. When it was alleged that Gadhaffi was about to use his air force to bomb his own citizens in retribution, the UN authorized NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Libyan soil.
The UN never authorized NATO to drop bombs and engage in combat yet that is exactly what they began doing immediately. The NATO allied task force was commanded by Canadian Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard. On the diplomatic front the international effort to oust Gadhaffi was spearheaded by Canada’s foreign minister John Baird.
Despite deploying the most sophisticated aerial arsenal ever seen, NATO’s Libyan rebel allies still took nearly 10 months to defeat the Gadhaffi loyalists. It was NATO airstrikes that allowed the Libyan rebels to capture Gadhaffi and brutally murder him on the streets of Sirte on Oct. 20, 2011.
Canada celebrated this war ‘triumph’ with a victory parade on Parliament Hill, the only NATO ally to do so.
Reality was quick to unravel into violent anarchy across the post-Gadhaffi Libyan landscape, resulting in thousands of deaths, lawlessness and terror for the Libyan people, which nearly a decade later persists unabated.
We were so focused on removing an autocrat that no one groomed Gadhaffi’s successor. As a result the Libyan people were plunged from the proverbial frying pan straight into the fire of anarchy.
The U.K. at least had the courage to examine their moral failings in Iraq with the commission of the Chilcot Inquiry. Perhaps it is time for Canada to do the same with our role in the Libyan intervention of 2011.
It was unnecessary and undermined the UN authority. It too has an incalculable magnitude in terms of criminal liability as the killing and chaos continue to this day.
