Iraq

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with an enormous sense of déjà-vu that I speak yet again in this House about taking military action involving Iraq. Iraq first came into my life in 1990 with the invasion of Kuwait when I was in government service. It took over every waking moment of my life for more than a year. I learnt more about the horrific regime of Saddam than I ever wanted to know, before, during and after what has become known as the first Gulf War. I know, as did many others at the time, that we stopped at least 48 hours too early in that war. It was the soldiers’ decision of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, which was left to them by George Bush senior; we did not need to go to Baghdad but just stay in the south and let the Shia, rising already at our encouragement, get rid of Saddam. Because of that, the agony and slaughter of the Shia and the Marsh Arabs that followed was awful and leaves us all with bloodstained hands. To this day, it is why the Shia of Iraq will never trust the British or the Americans.

Our next military intervention was in 1998. Yet again, we missed an opportunity to depose Saddam. Then came 2003. I said then, many times, that military action against Saddam was politically, legally and morally the right thing to do and I do not resile from one word that I said in this House and elsewhere. I will not rehearse the reasons for all of those things now because there is not time and they are all in Hansard anyway. But I want to make one point: ISIL is not a result of anything that happened in 2003. It is the harvest that we are reaping for not having armed the secular rebels in Syria at the beginning of the troubles there.

I have two points to make about action against ISIL now. First, there is talk about needing to have a UN Security Council resolution if we expand our activities outside of Iraq. I say only this to the Government, as a lifelong supporter and enthusiast for the UN: please do not get too hung up on getting another UN Security Council resolution. They are not brought down a mountain like holy writ: there is nothing holy about the UN Security Council if you think about its composition.

No one now questions Tony Blair’s actions in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo, both of which were taken without a UN Security Council resolution. In 2003, we had 16 UN Security Council resolutions, all under Chapter VII, which enable you to use military force to achieve them, and then we could not get the 17th. Everyone screamed that it was bad to be illegal and then called the 17th the second, which confused everything.

If I sound less than enthusiastic about what the Government are proposing, that is because, I have to say, I am a bit underwhelmed: it is not as much as I would have wanted, it is later than I would have wanted and it does not have the scope I would have wanted. Having said that, it is better than nothing.