Exactly 20 years ago, on March 20, 2003, the United States launched a ground invasion of Iraq, vowing to end the government of President Saddam Hussein and destroy suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the oil-rich country. Much support for George W. Bush, the head of the White House at the time, was provided by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who replaced him as chief of staff at number 10 of Downing Street. . Monbiot believes that Brown bears the same responsibility for the invasion as Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser to George W. Bush at the time and succeeded Colin Powell as US secretary of state in 2005.
The seventh of the Nuremberg Tribunal principles, in particular, indicates that “complicity” in a war of aggression “is a crime under international law.” According to Mobiot, both officials would clearly qualify as his accomplices. Rice was one of the architects of the war. Brown, as a member of the British cabinet, had a hand in this decision. As Minister of Finance, he financed this war.
No one can credibly deny that the invasion of Iraq met the Nuremberg definition. Sir John Chilcot, a member of Britain’s so-called Privy Council, whose terms of inquiry had been determined by Brown when he was Prime Minister, was barred from speaking on the legality of war. But he concluded that “the UK decided to join the invasion of Iraq before peaceful disarmament options were exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.” In other words, the invasion did not meet the UN charter criteria for a legitimate war, the article notes.
Former Lord Justice Lord Stein came to the same conclusion: “In the absence of a second UN resolution authorizing the invasion, it was illegal.” Former Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham has called the war in Iraq “a serious breach of international law.” An investigation in the Netherlands by a former Supreme Court judge found that the invasion did not have a “reasonable mandate under international law.”
At the same time, the British newspaper observer emphasizes, the attackers did everything possible to exclude peaceful alternatives. Saddam Hussein desperately tried to negotiate and eventually offered what the US and British governments said they wanted, but “they punched him in the arm and then lied to us about it.” As the UN searched for diplomatic solutions, US officials entered what they called a “blockade”, sabotaging the negotiations. When the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, José Bustani, proposed to break the deadlock on weapons inspections in Iraq, the US administration illegally fired him. The first government to support his removal was the UK government, the author explains.
The British cabinet, of which Brown was chancellor, was repeatedly warned that the planned invasion would be illegal. A year before the war, then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw explained that for a war to be legal: “1) an armed attack against a state must occur or be imminent; 2) the use of force must be necessary and no other means to repel/prevent an attack must be available; 3) acting in self-defense must be proportionate and strictly limited to the purpose of stopping the attack”.
None of these conditions apply. The Foreign Office, according to then Associate Counsel Elizabeth Wilmshurst, consistently pointed out that the invasion would be illegal without a new UN resolution. She explained that “the unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of assault.” A memo from cabinet advisers warned: “A legal justification for trespass is required. On the advice of law enforcement officials, currently none exists.”
As for the “advice from law enforcement officials”, then-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned that there were only three ways a trespass could be legally justified, Monbiot continues. It was “self-defense, humanitarian intervention or permission of the UN Security Council. Neither the first nor the second could be the basis in this case.” The British government did not obtain permission from the UN Security Council. At Sir Chilcot’s inquest, Lord Goldsmith testified that after giving advice that Tony Blair did not want to listen to, the Prime Minister stopped asking him anything. Shortly before the war, although the facts had not changed, Goldsmith changed his mind and went back on his words.
“Instead of being judged, the murderers walk among us, respected, revered, treated like old statesmen, to whom the media and governments turn for advice,” the journalist concluded, adding that this is the greatest of crimes for what is thoroughly retouched. that its performers can be called angels of revenge for other people’s atrocities.
