Following on from Dave's post:
The government's partial climbdown over whether to hold the Iraq war inquiry in public adds an impression of muddle and incompetence to the appearance of political cynicism that surrounded the original decision. This new move reinforces the sense that the decision was rushed through for no other reason than to appease unruly backbenchers and dampen down the 'Gordon must go' campaign. At a time when the reputation of politicians is at an all-time low, how can making important national decisions for blatantly self-serving reasons, rather than basing them on principle, do anything but make matters worse? (Mind you, the Tories are no better: for the party that, when last in power, burdened teachers and pupils with a raft of testing and inspection to declare its belated opposition to SATS was an act of pure political hypocrisy and cynical vote-chasing).
As for the Iraq inquiry itself, although I'm not opposed in principle, I wonder exactly what purpose it will serve. Those who have been most vociferous in calling for it appear to be an uneasy alliance of two groups. On the one hand are the trenchant 'stoppers' of the Lose The War Coalition who won't be happy with anything less than a full-scale condemnation of the decision to topple Saddam. The other group is made up of those who have lost relatives in the conflict and demand to know why their loved ones died. But public enquiries don't exist to provide vindication for the opponents of government policy, or (hard though it may be to accept it) therapeutic closure for the bereaved. I suspect neither group will be satisfied, whatever the outcome.
This post originally appeared at Martin in the Margins
About the author: Based in eastern England, I'm an academic, writer and blogger with an interest in UK and US politics, particularly the politics of culture and identity. A lifelong Labour supporter, I've moved from youthful Bennism through Gramscian Marxism to qualified (but increasingly critical) support for Blairite New Labour. I'd characterise my current political position as secular, liberal, anti-totalitarian, pro-feminist social-democratic centrism (phew!) Read more from this author
The purpose an inquiry into Iraq should serve is to analyse the preparation, execution and conclusion of the British military operation in Iraq.
Knowing what we know now, did we know enough to engage on the project; did we do enough to understand it; did we analyse it effectively; were all the different stages of implementation, including the on-the-job planning, adequately conducted; did we leave at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner?
Of course, that leads to a certain amount of fine detail. For instance, were vehicles sufficiently armoured? That cannot be conducted wholly in public because - with respectful regard to the families od the dead - too much information on, say, how we jury-rigged protection for vehicles could place people in the field and unnecessarily greater risk in future.
It is not to come up with a grand, political narrative but to identify failures, show best practice and so on.
A question I would ask of the Stop the War Coalition is whether any inquiry could find a result other than TB being culpable of war crimes. If the answer is 'no', as I suspect it would be, it would cast a certain light on all their protestations.
xD.
The importance of a final enquiry is to bind future Government's that they will not again lie about the reasons for a war, nor enter into one which they cannot really win in the long-term.
Iraq served little purpose, perhaps if democarcy thrives in 10 years I may say different, nbut for now I see only the human waste.