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5.24 pm
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife): The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, introduced an interesting historical dimension to our debate. I suspect that there will be few new arguments because, in truth, as the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out, we have dealt with this issue in the House on many occasions this year.
Today we are concerned not so much with the arguments as with the exercise of a judgment. I have already said today that the military action on which the Government have embarked has Liberal Democrat support. I see it as a painful necessity and a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
None of us has the right to endorse military action as if it were a matter of routine. We must search to be satisfied that military action is justified. In the context of our debate there are two areas in which that search must be carried out. The first is the conduct of Saddam Hussein. Both in the Prime Minister's statement and, to some extent, the Foreign Secretary's speech, and again in the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkstone and Hythe, there was set out the myriad opportunities that Saddam Hussein has had to implement the obligations imposed on him at the end of the Gulf war and to carry out his promises over the approximately eight years since the war ended. If Saddam Hussein's conduct is a reason for military action, we could argue, to adopt the argot of the courtroom, that the case has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt.
The second issue concerns the legal basis for the action. Some say that there is no proper legal basis because there is no single resolution of the United Nations Security Council that authorises the action taken during the past 24 hours. To them I say that, when considering the legal basis of the action, one must have regard to resolutions 687 and 688 with which the Gulf war was brought to an end, to the fact that they reflect voluntary undertakings freely entered into by the Iraqi Government to help bring the war to an end and that since then no resolution of the Security Council in respect of these matters has been anything other than entirely consistent with those obligations. When considering the legal basis of the action we must look at the body of resolutions as a whole and not seek to fasten on to one particular resolution or describe it or any other as deficient.
If Saddam Hussein had shown any willingness to deal with these matters, they would have been resolved long ere now and the people of Iraq would have been allowed to return to what passed for normality in their lives before the Gulf war. We need not be here. We are here because of the intransigence, deception and brinkmanship of Saddam Hussein, because of promises made and not kept, but principally because of the motive of a deliberate effort to maintain the capacity to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
Why does Saddam Hussein want that capacity? Is it to boast? He is good at that. Is it to swagger? He is good at that, too. It is not those superficial purposes that lie behind this motivation. It is the determination to be the dominant power in the region and to have available weapons of such terror and effect that he can exercise his will throughout the region, destabilise it if he chooses and, indeed, have the capacity to threaten an even wider area.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. This is the closest I can get to intervening on a Minister. Does he agree that the Prime Minister made it clear that we are now embarked on a long strategy of military intervention? That is the likely course of action. Vital to that is support in the Arab world--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I must interrupt the hon. Gentleman and take the opportunity to say that a great many hon. Members wish to speak, so I must require short speeches and short interventions.
Mr. Campbell:
If the hon. Gentleman could ensure that I receive the same salary as a Minister, I will ensure that I give way on every occasion on which he wishes to intervene. I shall address strategy later.
Saddam Hussein has had every opportunity to comply, but has chosen not to do so. He has had every opportunity to feed his people and to provide adequate supplies of medicine for them, but the money from the sale of oil has been diverted into replacing the military infrastructure that was so badly damaged in the Gulf war and into the so-called presidential palaces.
When one goes to war, there is always the risk of casualties. In one sense, the Gulf war did a disservice to those of us on the victorious side because the belief grew up that we could engage in modern military combat and that, somehow, that could be done without the downside--or the consequences--of substantial numbers of casualties. There is always a risk of casualties, always the risk of fatality. Pictures of so-called smart weapons filled the television screens in our houses, showing so-called smart bombs going down the chimneys of specified buildings, but they represented a very small fraction of the ordnance that was used. There is no such thing as the infallible weapon, nor is there any such thing as the so-called surgical strike--an expression that contains its own inherent paradox.
No matter how skilled, loyal and professional the crews of the Royal Air Force might be--and they are all of that, as we know--their lives are at risk. Therefore, it must be a matter for sober reflection in the House when we are asked to endorse a decision to put those lives at risk and to test that loyalty, professionalism and skill. It is a question of judgment and that is why we have been sent to the House: to exercise our judgment on behalf of our constituents. I do not believe that my judgment is superior to that of anyone else in the House, but in this matter, my judgment is that the risks to which I have referred are outweighed by the consequences of a successful operation, and more than outweighed by the fact that, if no action is taken, the authority of the United Nations will be for ever affected. Therefore, it is likely that Saddam Hussein's expansionist attitude--to which I have already referred and which lies behind his determination to have weapons of mass destruction--can only be enhanced.
What should be the objectives? They should be to destroy, as far as possible, the capacity to make chemical and biological weapons. We cannot guarantee that we will do that in every respect, but we should do it to the limit and extent of our ability. We should aim to discourage and inhibit any regeneration of that capacity. That is important; Saddam Hussein is a dictator, who has made ingenuity into an art form. We should also aim to inflict serious damage on the military infrastructure that underpins his regime.
The hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) asked me about strategy. If one reads the Prime Minister's statement carefully, one will see that he poses two alternatives. That is indicative of the fact that none of us is able to say here today precisely what the strategy will be after the operations are completed. I shall take what might be described as the worst case--or, perhaps more correctly, the worse case--and hope that I am wrong. I hope that UNSCOM will be restored, but if that is not possible and UNSCOM cannot return to fulfil its remit, the strategy might well have to be one of surveillance, containment and deterrence. Let us remind ourselves that in the Gulf war deterrence worked. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein might contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction--as we now know, to a greater extent even than we believed--the response of Mr. James Baker,
then the Secretary of State for the United States responsible for the majority of the negotiations with Mr. Tariq Aziz, was to say that, if there was any use of weapons of mass destruction, it would be met with a disproportionate response. Such a lack of specification is the very essence of deterrence.
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield):
I think that this is the sixth war that I have heard debated in the House: the Korean war was going on when I was elected; and on the day that I was elected, President Truman threatened to use atomic weapons in Korea. It was much to Clement Attlee's credit that he flew straight to Washington and warned Truman off. During debates about Suez, I heard Eden comparing Nasser with Hitler, just as many hon. Members have compared Saddam Hussein with Hitler.
The truth is that chairborne troops, who sit here planning strategy with their marvellous knowledge of military matters, are the ones who can betray the troops. The most scandalous thing that can be done is to commit troops to a war that is wrong and then shield behind them, saying that because they are on the front line we must never criticise. Our duty to the troops is to see that they are never put in a position in which they are endangered by being outside the law.
I shall be brief because I made many of the points that I shall make today when we last debated the matter. Article 46 of the United Nations charter states:
I do not want to rely too much on texts, but, a few years ago, the leader of the party of which I am a member insisted that we had a new clause in our constitution. I looked it up; it states:
"Plans for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee."
It is no good saying that a resolution that is seven years old provides a permanent permission for anyone in the UN to go to war. It is absolute nonsense and no one believes it for a moment. The plan to use armed force was not a decision taken by the Security Council. Why? It is because the Government and the American Government knew that they would never get the support of the Security Council. Israel has been protected by God knows how many vetoes--27, I was told when I asked the UN office in London. The Americans always veto to protect Israel: they make that their business. However, Russia, China and perhaps France would have protected Iraq for their own reasons.
"Labour is committed . . . to the United Nations . . . to secure peace, freedom, democracy".
It is with regret that I say to my colleagues that I am deeply affronted by what has been done. We talk about ethical foreign policy; this is an unethical thing to do. Why? Because wholly innocent people will be killed. Let us not pretend that, just because Saddam has killed people, we can do the same. We have killed far more Iraqis than Saddam has: we killed 200,000 during the Gulf war. That argument is not credible.
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