I wish I’d been in London to grab the first copies of the Guardian’s version of Sir Christopher Meyer’s memoirs. Sure, I know I could have gotten them on-line just as fast– or faster. But still, there’s something delicious about ink on paper.
Here is the Guardian’s portal to the serialization.
I think it’s unprecedented for a recently retired British ambassador to publish such a frank memoir about his recent service. I seem to recall that the Blair government tried to prevent publication of the whole book (which isn’t out yet, I don’t think.) But here, anyway, are the first parts of the serialization.
The main highlight so far is the considered judgment of this seasoned diplomat that Blair had potential leverage with Bush that he could have used to win a better war plan– but that Blair failed to use it.
This, from one of yesterday’s excerpts:
- By the early autumn of 2002, despite Blair’s earlier expressions of unconditional support, Britain should have made its participation in any war dependent on a fully worked-out plan, agreed by both sides, for the rehabilitation of Iraq after Saddam’s demise.
This would have been the appropriate quid pro quo for Blair’s display of “cojones”. We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise, but the ace up our sleeves was that America did not want to go it alone. Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise. Unfortunately, and unavoidably, at precisely this moment, political energy in London had become consumed by a titanic struggle to keep public opinion, parliament and the Labour party onside for war. There was little energy left in No 10 to think about the aftermath. Since Downing Street drove Iraq policy, efforts made by the Foreign Office to engage with the Americans on the subject came to nothing.
He then suggests clearly that the “diplomatic” advice Blair was getting from the Foreign Office was crowded out in Balir’s mind by the more “seductive” kinds of info he was getting from his military and intel people…
- The more interesting question is whether No 10, relying heavily – maybe too heavily – on the views of these military and intelligence advisers, as a consequence underestimated its political leverage and ability to affect the course of events. I believe the US and the UK would have stood a better chance of going to war in good order had they planned the campaign not for the spring of 2003, but the autumn – the next spell of cool weather in Iraq.
Besides giving more time to prepare for the aftermath of war, a more deliberate timetable might have made it possible to reach agreement on a second UN resolution. Once that happened, Saddam would have known the game was up. It might have sufficiently ratcheted up the pressure to lead to a coup against him or his flight into exile.
I never interpreted the French refusal to accept the draft of a second resolution as a refusal for ever and a day. In diplomacy, you never say never. Talking to me in private, French officials accuse America and Britain of deliberately exaggerating France’s position to justify going to war without further UN cover. We will know the full truth only when the archives are opened.
Crucially, a slower timetable for war would have avoided that frantic search for a “smoking gun” between December 2002 and the outbreak of war. By going down that road, the Americans and British shifted the burden of proof from Saddam to themselves. We had to show that he was guilty. This turned out to be a strategic error, which to this day, in the absence of WMD, continues cruelly to torment Blair and Bush.
It was precisely these pressures which led to the mistakes and misjudgments of the two British dossiers on Saddam’s WMD.
Enormous controversy surrounds the intelligence on which Blair and Bush relied. I saw a great deal of intelligence material in 2002, and I was myself persuaded that Iraq had WMD.
There is nothing of which I am aware that Blair said publicly about the intelligence for which he did not have cover either from the joint intelligence committee (JIC) or from its chairman, John Scarlett. If either succumbed to political pressure, that is another story.
Had I been in Alastair Campbell’s place, I too would have wanted as categorical a public depiction of Saddam’s threat as possible. Equally I would have expected the JIC to be rigorous in telling me how far I could go.
Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to the idea that Blair was merely the president’s poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power.But the high moral ground, and the pure white flame of unconditional support to an ally in service of an idea, have their disadvantages.
They place your destiny in the hands of the ally. They fly above the tangled history of Sunni, Shia and Kurd. They discourage descent into the dull detail of tough and necessary bargaining: meat and drink to Margaret Thatcher, but, so it seemed, uncongenial to Tony Blair.
Well, lots more to read and reflect on there. But I need to run.
But still:
“Certain binding legal principles, affirmed unanimously by the UN, emerged from the Nuremberg trials”
http://billmon.org/archives/002335.html
Or perhaps bliar, same as bush, *wasn’t interested* in planning for the aftermath. After all, in all the war movies they’ve seen there is no aftermath – good guy kills bad guy, saves girl, credits roll.
I wonder how similar Blair is to the democrats. The democrats have not taken this war very seriously, in my opinion. Sen. Byrd has pointed out that most municipalities spend more time planning their sewage systems then congress spent discussing the war resolution. The excuse some democrats make that they were fooled by the Bush administration intelligence isn’t tenable because anti-war congressmen pointed out its flaws at the time. Furthermore, as Democracy Now reported, the members of congress were being heavily lobbied against the war by about a 50-to-1 margin. As I undestand it, the democratic leadership at the time wanted to move the war out of the public spotlight so they could focus on economic issues during the midterm elections.
Of course I don’t think Britain has an analogue of AIPAC and that must make some difference.
I have not read Meyer’s book, but based on news reports like yours, I am not impressed with his “revelations.” First, the central thesis in these reported exerpts – that Blair gave up too much for too little in his dealings with W. – is a cheap shot, and obvious common knowledge. Second, Meyer appears to be just another of these people who want to criticize the methodology and “prepositioning” of the war, without examining the moral depravity and sheer lunacy of the underlying assumptions. I’m just sick and tired of this crap about how we should have had “a fully worked-out plan . . . for the rehabilitation of Iraq.” After all we’ve been through, can people not yet see the fatal arrogance in such notions? For God’s sake, there is no proper, respectable, honorable, gentlemanly, humanistic way to carry out mass murder and destruction. This guy Meyer apparently thinks everything would have been better “had they planned the campaign not for the spring of 2003, but the autumn – the next spell of cool weather in Iraq.” Yeah right, cool weather is just the thing for invading Arab countries! “Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside Bush from the highest of high moral ground,” he says. B***s**t! As the “Downing Street Memo” clearly shows, Tony Blair made his decision in pure cynicism and utter disdain for truth and human suffering. If I’m being unfair to Meyer, someone who has read his book please correct me.
I continue to vacillate between anger and depression – tonight, it’s anger. I refuse to move on to “acceptance.”
Bush is Meyers hero, lets not forget this. Meyers supported the war, and thought it was right ‘because Saddam had to be brought to heel’. He represents the worst of the British upper class, racist, stupid and completely blameless regardless of influence or involvement. Meyers belief that the invasion could have been done properly shows again the belief in imperialism and self righteousness that define British aristocracy.
What makes me sick is Meyers is getting wealthy because although he supported the war he slags of his fellow British team members who sold it to the public. As if anyone at the time actually believed the evidence… the reason the Brits were “pygmies” was probably due more to the fact they were more uncomfortable knowingly lying to the public.
I hope Meyer gets hit by a train and it train and it takes him a while to pass away painfully.
You all make excellent points. (Except the one about wishing for death for Meyer, which I don’t at all.) Certainly, in noting Meyer’s writings here I wasn’t intending to associate myself with his position… Should I have made that clearer? Yes.
John C., you get right to the nub of the matter when you say: For God’s sake, there is no proper, respectable, honorable, gentlemanly, humanistic way to carry out mass murder and destruction.
This has been my position on war of all kinds for many years now. I keep planning to do some “big” (ink-on-paper) writing that exposes the terribly damaging myth of “liberal militarism”… I have a couple of opportunities to do that coming up now… But I really need to do more of it.
Nonetheless, I take a perhaps childish glee in seeing the miserable warmongers wriggle and writhe and fall out among themselves.
Blair statements
ITS NOW OR NEVER!!!!!! Why NOW? Waite we will get some one speak about this
WE LEAVE UNTILL THE JOB DONE!!!What JOB? Waite we will know when some one speaks again, who looking for givens from the evil that made him wrongdoing either supporting the war or acting in supporting those orders
Yah, mass murders and destroy all Iraq and looted the entire asset and all the Oil that lost in 1950 after Gr Abdul Karim Kasim revolution
Meyers is correct that the aftermath of the war could have been better planned if an invasion had been put off till the fall. But it’s beside the point. The initial plan, as the Downing Street memos clearly show, was to use the United Nations to pass an intrusive inspection regime in the belief/hope that Iraq would reject the inspection regime, giving a cause for war. When Iraq accepted the inspections, the British and the Americans were faced with a dilemma–the need for a second resolution authorizing war in the face of ongoing inspections. The inspections thus became an obstacle to a war, not a pretext. They thus had to be overridden, even in the absence of a second UN resolution, through a rushed invasion in the spring (a date, incidentally, that had been set in the summer, before the UN was approached). Speculation that a second UN resolution would have been approved later is also beside the point. What would have happened, as we now know, is that the inspectors would have concluded that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist, obviating the need for a second resolution–and a war.
To continue: The fallacy in Meyers’ argument lies in Blair’s motives. If his motive was ending Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability and programs, then he would have supported the intrusive inspection regime (which required the threat of military force to be accepted by Iraq) and let the inspections take their course, basing the decision on whether to go to war on their conclusion. Adequate planning for a postwar ocupation would have been consistent with this approach. If his purpose was regime change, as it clearly was–for human rights reasons, as he stated–then war was the operative end. If Blair was focused on the intelligence needed to justify a war, that was understandable because it was the essential prerequisite to going to war.
To continue: Postwar planning posed a dilemma for the war planners. Their public stance was that they had not decided to go to war, with the result that postwar planning could not be as public or as extensive as would have been needed. On the other hand, because they had decided to go to war in secret, the bulk of their energies had to be devoted to overcoming resistance to the war through “fixing the intelligence” and countering military and political objections. The best way to evaluate Meyers’ viewpoint is to counterpose it with the Downing Street memo, especially as explictaed by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books (August 11, 2005, “The Memo, the Press, and the War”).
If Blair had not wanted to be Bush’s poodle, he would have responded to an invitation to join a war against Iraq with a counterproposal for intrusive inspections as a way to resolve whether Iraq had WMD capability (putting off the question of military action until the results of the inspections were in) and a public commitment to resolve the issue of Israel and Palestine with two states based essentially on the 1967 lines. At a minimum, he would have had to stick by his decision that a second UN resolution would be mandatory if the British were to participate in any war against Iraq. And that is something he certainly could have done, but in reality it would have meant continued inspections.
Any analysis of the prelude to the Iraq War that does not counterpose the decision to go to war with the alternative to war–continued inspections to verify the alleged reasons for war, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction–is historically incomplete, intellectually dishonest, and the product of willed amnesia about the causes of war and about the ways to prevent future wars.
I think there is a certain intellectual consistency in Meyer’s position. He himself says that he was convinced by the case for Saddam’s possession of WMD, which clears him of the charge of being two-faced.
In my experience of British public opinion an awful lot of people who were neither upper-class nor racist took a similar view to Meyer in that removal of Saddam was seen as a good thing. Many thought that the timing was wrong, not necessarily in terms of an invasion in Spring vs. an invasion in Autumn, but because the job should have been finished at the end of Gulf War I. The psuedolegal casus belli eventually constructed detracted from the strength of the case for war, if anything, since it looked like excuse-making by the political class for its earlier failings.
The really remarkable thing about Meyer’s book is that it is the first polemical memoir by a Civil Servant, and as such has attracted scorn from politicians who of course have been publishing such books themselves for over thirty years.