|
CounterPunch
March 18,
2003
Why I Had to Leave Blair's Cabinet
This Will be
a War Without Support at Home or Agreement Abroad
by ROBIN COOK
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe
that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been
violated. If we believe in an international community based on
binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside
when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.
I cannot defend a war with neither international
agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts
of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second
resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we
cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has been at the
receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is
not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany
is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time
have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second
resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international
hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the
fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that Britain is
being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the
international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato.
Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such
diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we
and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was
wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible.
History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations
that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower. Our interests
are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral
agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the
international partnerships most important to us are weakened.
The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate.
Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being
fired.
The threshold for war should always be
high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the
forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing
campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely
that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands.
Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the
time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's
military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion.
And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so
badly equipped that the war will be over in days.
We cannot base our military strategy
on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify
pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat.
Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly
understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable
of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably
does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions.
But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the
anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical
and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should
take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been
there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is
it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition
to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence
of UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that Iraq has had
not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience
is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242 called
on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
We do not express the same impatience
with the persis tent refusal of Israel to comply. What has come
to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the
hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had
been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops
to action in Iraq.
I believe the prevailing mood of the
British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam Hussein
is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear
and present danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be
given a chance. And they are suspicious that they are being pushed
hurriedly into conflict by a US administration with an agenda
of its own. Above all, they are uneasy at Britain taking part
in a military adventure without a broader international coalition
and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies.
It has been a favourite theme of commentators that the House
of Commons has lost its central role in British politics. Nothing
could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for parliament
to stop the commitment of British troops to a war that has neither
international authority nor domestic support.
Robin Cook
was, until yesterday, leader of the House of Commons.
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
Website of the Day
Give
War a Chance: the Anti-Peace Anthem
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Turkish Delights: a Pre-War Diary by Tariq Ali;
- The Plot to Frame the
Zapatistas: Talkers
and Cowards;
- Drugging Kids: The Plague of Neuroleptics;
- The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal:
a New Investigation.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
Take a Bite Out of Phil Knight's Bottom Line: Buy No Sweat Apparel!
March 8 /
9, 2003
Edward Said
Who's
In Charge?
Bruce Jackson
Elegy
for Two Giraffes and a Zebra
Perry Anderson
The Casuistries of Peace and
War
Joanne Mariner
Patriot
Act II's Attack on Punishment
William Lind
A Warning from Clausewitz on 4th Generation Warfare
Sam Husseini
Why
So Long for Iraq to Comply? Follow the Policy
Forrest Hylton
Business as Usual in Bolivia?
David Lindorff
Race and the Death Penalty in Pennsylvania
Ben Tripp
Is There
a Eurologist in the House?
Anthony Gancarski
W's Personal Jesus
Jon Elmer
An Interview with William Blum
Douglas Valentine
The Clash of the Icons
Norman Madarasz
Radical Politics and the Writer:
Maurice Blanchot
Gordon Solberg
There's
Got to be a Better Way
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Engel, Bernard
Weekend Website
The
White House
February 28,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet
the New Yorker's Chief Hack: Jeffrey Goldberg
Saul Landau
Now
It's Personal
Michael Neumann
A Plea for Hysteria
Karima Bennoume
The UN: Tool for Peace or War?
The Black
Commentator
The Rev. Sharpton and the Soul of the Democrats
Jennifer Loewenstein
Don't Turn Off the War
Richard Levins
Cuba's Biological Weapons: Why the World Needs More of Them
M. Shahid Alam
Is This a Clash of Civilizations?
Clay Conrad
Juries
and Judges: What's Relevant?
Ben Tripp
Speaking in Tongues: a Guide to Gibberish in the Age of Bush
Eliot Katz
To Declare Preemptive War is to Declare a Bankrupt Imagination
Kurt Nimmo
Paying Through the Nose to Kill Iraqi Kids
Matt Vidal
George W. Bonaparte
Mark Zepezauer
Why the Right Hates America
Mickey Z.
The Anti----War Talk I Never Gave
Jerry Kroth
Jung and the Space Shuttle Revisited
Shyam Oberoi
Chronicle of a War Foretold
Ron Jacobs
What If the Firebombing of Baghdad Were a Nightclub Fire?
Poets' Basement
Eliot Katz and Jim Cohn
Website of
the Weekend
Defense
Tech
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|