A very strange argument indeed

Thanks to Justin McKeating's brilliant tweet:

One for @MalkyMuscular this: http://bit.ly/aaWJKk. Someone's been and borrowed the Decent Tardis (http://bit.ly/bonDqd).

The good thing about borrowing a Tardis is that one can bring it back at the very moment one took it, so the owner need never know. Still, it would have been nice to ask. (Taking this metaphor a bit literally, aren't we? - Ed) If those links don't work for you, the first goes to John Rentoul: The moral case for the Iraq war (that is, John Rentoul wrote it on the Independent's livejournal). Rentoul:

Fine analysis of the moral case for the invasion of Iraq by Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, in today's Financial Times. He begins thus:

The surfeit of moral certainty among the commentators is suspect; the zealous clarity of their moral waters needs muddying.

The professor, in muddying those waters, does not shy away from the terrible death toll that followed the invasion. But he deals with it in a clear-minded way, asking how one can judge whether it is disproportionate.

Granted, I'm hostile to theologians generally, but it seems an odd approach to an argument to call for lack of clarity. You have facts and reason, damn you! (But this may be how theologians always argue. That's certainly the impression I get from Andrew Brown in the Guardian and Thought for the Day. Reason and logic are the enemies of religion.) Not only does John Rentoul (who surely qualifies as a Decent) call this a 'Fine analysis', but Norman Geras says, "Guardianistas be on your guard! It may contain more complexity than you can handle." It contains more something than I can handle, though I wouldn't call it complexity.

Maybe critics of the war view with equanimity what might have happened without the 2003 invasion, trusting that the secular rationality of Realpolitik would have prevented the rivalry between Iraq’s atrocious Saddam and Iran’s millenarian Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad from turning catastrophically nuclear. In this age of suicide bombers, however, such faith is hard to credit.

I don't know anyone who has argued that we invaded Iraq to prevent conflict, nuclear or otherwise, with Iran. Given that Iran and Iraq had already fought a long and pointless war, and neither side had gained from it, another conflict seems very unlikely. And, assuming this war had happened, would it have been nuclear? Even if Iran is developing nuclear weapons now, no one claims that it has a working bomb.

Now add the concern about weapons of mass destruction. This was sufficiently grave to rouse the UN to litter the period 1991-2003 with 17 resolutions calling on Saddam to disarm permanently. Given the shocking discovery in the mid-1990s of Iraq’s success in enriching uranium and coming within 24 months of nuclear armament, and given the regime’s persistent flouting of the UN’s will, there was good reason to withhold benefit of doubt and to suppose that it was developing WMDs. It was not just Messrs Bush and Blair who supposed this. So did Jacques Chirac, then French president, and Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector.

Is anyone prepared to argue that this isn't a complete list of Security Council Resolutions (SCRs) involving Iraq [1991-2004]? There may have been resolutions on the floor of the UN but if these weren't made by the Security Council (the only body capable of enforcing disarmament), they wouldn't have been anything other than hot air. And does anyone know what "the shocking discovery in the mid-1990s of Iraq’s success in enriching uranium and coming within 24 months of nuclear armament" refers to? Osirak was in 1980 and 1981 and it doesn't seem fanciful that, if Iraq came close to nuclear armament again, both Israel and Iran would take pre-emptive action again. And Iraq couldn't stop them when it was fighting a war with Iran and receiving backing from the US. Oh and what does Hans Blix say now? Hans Blix answers Tony Blair's '2010 question'. "Iraq was, as I said, on its knees in 2003..." Does "coming within 24 months of nuclear armament" even matter when Iraq was subject to sanctions and US flyovers?

We now know this reasonable supposition was mistaken and that the problem was less urgent than it appeared. But it was still urgent. Saddam was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and support for containment was dissolving.

Oh really?

Who knew, back in 2003, all the things the invasion would achieve? Looks at Alastair Campbell. I'm really disappointed in you, Alastair, why didn't you tell us it was all about stopping a nuclear war? Oh, you'd have looked ridiculous and the NHS may have struggled to treat all the hilarity induced injuries. That's actually a good reason.