There was a statement in the House on Thursday about our future involvement in Iraq and the question of an inquiry. I am in support of an inquiry but it has to be wider than the issue of the post conflict management.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/81218-0009.htm
This whole issue raises the question of how we deal with really gross dictators of whom there are a relatively small number but the world community has not yet found a way of dealing with them. Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a current example and one where in my view the neighbouring countries do have a duty to intervene.
Personally, I think until we are able to conceive of a method of “intervention” that doesn’t involve some form of burning down the village to save it that we might want to think quite carefully about asserting our “duty” and implied right to intervene.
The problems in Zimbabwe are real, but unless we can demonstrate not just an ability to recognise the problems in other countries but a capacity to fix them we might be better off reigning in the hubris a little. It’s worth considering whether we are intervening to actually make things better or just so we can say we didn’t stand by and do nothing.
Our track record does not recommend us as the best plumbers to fix the world’s busted pipes.
You say: “There was a statement in the House on Thursday about our future involvement in Iraq and the question of an inquiry.”
Did we miss statements about armed forces leave over Christmas; not even a mention of the Taliban over cooking some turkeys? We are indeed dealing with a dastardly enemy; if they took any home then they should get stuffed.
Joyeux Noël we think of you.
Ref:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/nov/23/armed-forces-christmas-leave
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/oct/18/extra-christmas-fare
http://www.modoracle.com/news/Taliban-Blows-Up-Christmas-Turkey_17122.html
It is a difficult issue but there have been many successful interventions and not just by the West – think of Tanzania intervening to remove Idi Amin and India intervening to create Bangladesh out of the former despotic East Pakistan. There are other examples too.
One intervention we sadly forget changed attitudes around the world.It grew out ofthe world’s first mass protest movement which led to an Act of Parliament in 1807 banning participation in the Trans Atlantic slave. The Royal Navy began intercepting slave traders on the high seas (illegal) and entering the harbours of other countries and burning the slave ships (very illegal!) I think it ranks as the first humanitarian intervention but there may be others. It eventually led to the abolition of the slave trade by all nations but many people here and abroad resisted it at the time and claimed that such intervention was wrong.