The Iraq Inquiry and the Aftermath of a Never Ending War

Did this war help the world? Not really. It is true that a dictator was taken down, but at what cost? Over a million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 and two other million are refugees to other countries. Almost two million have been internally displaced. A million U.S. officers were injured and more than four thousand never returned home alive. Anti-western sentiment grew exponentially and now we have several terrorist attacks on European countries as revenge for military interventions. Seeing all these consequences on the aftermath, how can we justify a war in the future?

Announced in 2009, the Iraq Inquiry or the Chilcot report was published on 6 July 2016 along with a public statement by its chairman, Sir John Chilcot. The main purpose of the 2.6 million-word-report is to assess the United Kingdom’s involvement in Iraq from 2001 to 2009, the decision making process during this period covering the conflict, the military actions, the proper preparation of troops, the aftermath of the conflict, and to learn from it in order to better respond to similar situations in the future.

Many witnesses were questioned, including politicians, civil servants, lawyers, intelligence chiefs, diplomats and high-ranking military officers. Some of the highlights of the inquiry were the former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his decision to take the UK to war, and who, during the six-hour-questioning, stated that he had no regrets about removing Saddam Hussein as he considered him a threat to security. Other senior Ministers also appeared in the report, such as the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, the International Development Secretary Clare Short, and the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith who advised ministers that he war was inside the scope of the law.

Among the report’s findings, we have that at the moment of making the decision of invading Iraq, Saddam Hussein did not represent an urgent threat to the UK interests and that the information regarding weapons of mass destruction was not certain. Additionally, the report recognizes that not all the peaceful and diplomatic alternatives were exhausted and that they failed at identifying the legality of the war. Two of the most important points that were recognized by the report was that the war on Iraq was unnecessary at that point and that both the United Kingdom and the United States undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council when invading Iraq without authorization, as the majority of members of the Council wanted to continue inspection and monitoring of weapons.

There has been major criticism on the alleged intelligence on the existence of weapons of mass destructions in Iraq, which was one of the main excuses for the war and for the involvement of the United Kingdom in it, as it was later known that they never existed. Another point that faced a major backlash was the actual legality of such war, given the fact that it was never explicitly authorized by the United Nations.

So why did the United Kingdom decide to get involved in what the report calls an unnecessary war?

What can be told to the families of the 200 British citizens who died during the invasion and to those 150,000 Iraqi casualties?

And most importantly, what did the world gain from such a war?

First of all, we painfully have to acknowledge that the decision of going to war was based on questionable intelligence. Furthermore, according to the report, the personal intervention of Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, had strong influence on the evidence that was not properly evaluated choosing war, even though it was not the last alternative that could have taken. But they already knew this back then.

There is no war without suffering, and dealing with the aftermath of the war has been one of the most difficult things for the parties involved. The report states that there were warnings about the possible consequences of this decision, and that both planning and preparation for it were very inadequate. One of these warnings was that military action would only increase the threat from Al Qaida to the United Kingdom and that it would lead to the transferring of the existing weapons to terrorists. After the attacks on 11 September 2001, Tony Blair suggested that the United Kingdom and the United States should work together for regime change in Iraq, and by 2002 the Joint Intelligence Committee had already concluded that in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power, there should be an invasion.

But is it really the duty of the powerful countries to spread democracy all over the world?

Can democracy be imposed by bombs and tanks?

Will the people of a country that has been destroyed by military interventions still believe in democracy?

Did this war help the world?

It is true that a dictator was taken down, but at what cost?

The war has not ended in Iraq, and the U.S. State Department said they would not respond to the report as for their main preoccupations now are Iraq and Syria.

Over a million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 and two other million are refugees to other countries. Almost two million have been internally displaced. A million U.S. officers were injured and more than four thousand never returned home. Not only that. Anti-western sentiment grew exponentially and now we have several terrorist attacks on European countries as revenge for military intervention, leading to the conventional wisdom of “violence can only lead to more violence”.

Seeing all these consequences on the aftermath, how can we justify a war in the future? Weapons, terrorism, removing a leader who does no align with our western values? We should know better by now.

Dott.ssa Ana Figueroa