Abstract
On 20 March 2003, US, British and Australian troops invaded Iraq as part of a US-led coalition. The stated objective was to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to implement the demands set out in a series of UN Security Council resolutions. Britain was the only state other than the US to ‘commit more than a token military force’, comprising nearly one-third of the invasion’s land power and ‘a significant portion of the air power’.1 Within four weeks US forces had taken control of Baghdad and on 2 May President Bush declared that major combat operations were over and the coalition was victorious. Victory did not mean the end of violence and by 10 May 2005, 1785 coalition troops were dead, including 88 Britons and 1606 Americans, the vast majority of whom died after Bush’s declaration of victory. In a breach of Article 16 of the First Geneva Convention of 1949, the coalition made no attempt to count the number of Iraqi casualties.
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Notes
Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales, The War in Iraq (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 132.
For example, William Shawcross, Allies (New York: Public Affairs, 2004) and The Economist magazine, especially the 22 Feb. 2003 issue. For Blair’s retrospective defence of the war see ‘The global threat of terrorism’, speech, Sedgefield, 4 March 2003.
David Coates and Joel Krieger, Blair’s War (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 92.
Cited in Michael Byers, ‘Agreeing to disagree: Security Council Resolution 1441 and intentional ambiguity’, Global Governance, 10: 2 (2004), p. 184 note 32.
Jane M.O. Sharp, ‘Tony Blair, Iraq and the special relationship’, International Journal, 59: 1 (2003–04), p. 84.
See Lawrence Freedman, ‘War in Iraq: selling the threat’, Survival, 46: 2 (2004), p. 25.
William Wallace, ‘Broken Bridges’, World Today, 60: 12 (2004), pp. 13–15.
Tony Blair, ‘The opportunity society’ speech to Labour party conference, Brighton, 28 Sept. 2004.
Tony Blair, ‘I want to solve the Iraq issue via the UN’, speech to Labour party conference, Glasgow, 15 Feb. 2003.
Mark Curtis, The Web of Deceit (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 45.
George Robertson, Hansard (Commons), 17 Dec. 1998, col. 652.
Tony Blair, Hansard (Commons), 17 Dec. 1998, col. 1097.
John Kampfner, Blair’s Wars (London: The Free Press, 2003), pp. 153, 349.
Cited in Marc Weller, ‘The US, Iraq and the use of force in a unipolar world’, Survival, 41: 4 (1999–2000), p. 84.
Rosalyn Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use It (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 259.
Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 201. It should be noted that the Secretary-General’s statements do not determine international law.
Adam Roberts, ‘Law and the use of force after Iraq’, Survival, 45: 2 (2003), p. 42.
Frank Berman, ‘The authorization model: Resolution 678 and its effects’, in David M. Malone (ed.), The UN Security Council (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), p. 164 note 28.
Abbas Alnaswari, ‘Iraq: economic embargo and predatory rule’, in E. Wayne Nafziger, Frances Stewart and Raimo Vayrynen (eds), War, Hunger, and Displacement: The Origins of Humanitarian Emergencies Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 89–118.
David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 56–7.
Tony Lloyd, Hansard (Commons), 15 March 1999, cols 515–16.
Patrick Wintour and Martin Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat: Part 2’, Guardian, 26 April 2003.
James P. Rubin, ‘Stumbling into war’, Foreign Affairs, 82: 5 (2003), pp. 46–66.
Cited in Patrick Wintour and Martin Kettle, ‘Brought to the brink of defeat: Part 1’, Guardian, 26 April 2003.
Christoph Bluth, ‘The British road to war’, International Affairs, 80: 5 (2004), p. 882; see also p. 884.
Tony Blair, Hansard (Commons), 18 March 2003, col. 768.
For Blair, Saddam’s continued intransigence was clear from the 12,000 page document about Iraq’s WML) submitted on 7 December 2002 in response to resolution 1441. Blair told his staff, this was ‘the defining moment. That was his [Saddam’s] big opportunity. He’s blown it.’ Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p. 230.
See Gerard Baker, James Blitz, Judy Dempsey, Robert Graham, Quentin Peel and Mark Turner, ‘Blair’s mission impossible: the doomed effort to win a second UN resolution’, Financial Times, 29 May 2003.
Roberts, ‘Law and the use of force’, p. 44 and ‘Adam Roberts replies’, Survival, 45: 4 (2003), p. 230. The doubtful quality of the evidence about Iraq’s WMD capabilities was reflected in the fact that by August 2003, not one of the nine main conclusions of the September 2002 dossier had been proven. See Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p. 347. Blair later confirmed that ‘The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong. I acknowledge that and accept it. I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community. … I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can’t, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam. The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.’ Blair, ‘The opportunity society’.
Byers, ‘Agreeing to disagree’, p. 173. Byers’ emphasis on the importance of plausibility stems from Sir Arthur Watt’s contention that states needed only ‘to advance a legal justification for their conduct which is not demonstrably rubbish. Thereafter, political factors can take over. … In light of this, if politics is the art of the possible, then international law is merely the art of the plausible.’ Sir Arthur Watts, ‘The importance of international law’, in Michael Byers (ed.), The Role of Law in International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 8.
Charles Tripp, ‘The US and state-building in Iraq’, Review of International Studies, 30: 4 (2004), pp. 545–58.
Rosemary Hollis, ‘A fateful decision for Britain’, in Rick Fawn and Ray Hinnebusch (eds), The Iraq War: Causes and Consequences (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming).
See Ingrid van Biezen, ‘Terrorism and democratic legitimacy: conflicting interpretations of the Spanish elections’, Mediterranean Politics, 10: 1 (2005), pp. 99–108.
Fred Halliday, ‘Terrorism and World Politics’, World Today, 61: 5 (2005), p. 16.
Edward Said, ‘A road map to where?’, London Review of Books: Online, 25: 12 (19 June 2003).
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© 2005 Paul D. Williams
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Williams, P.D. (2005). Iraq and Labour’s Moment in the Middle East. In: British Foreign Policy Under New Labour, 1997–2005. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514690_10
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