Chilcot Report: Arabs Respond
BY Andrew Hansen/ Contributing Writer
“I wish Saddam would return…”
These chilling words display the sentiment that many Iraqis feel following the release of the Chilcot Report, a 2.6 million worded report condemning former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for entering the Iraq war on false pretenses.
THE REPORT
The inquiry, which took seven years to complete, has found that the UK committed to entering Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein before formal peaceful negotiations had concluded. Without accurate information regarding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program, Blair agreed with former U.S. President George W. Bush that war with Iraq was imminent. At the time, most Parliament officials, “could not be convinced that peaceful options to disarm Iraq had been exhausted and that military action was therefore justified.”
In the most popular statement in Chilcot, Blair pledges his support to President Bush’s plan to invade Iraq months before inspections had concluded, saying, “We are with you, whatever.” This statement signaled Blair’s willingness to plunge into Iraq with full knowledge that their intelligence reports regarding the country’s situation were faulty at best, and incomplete.
In fact, there were major miscommunications between what classified intelligence reports suggested, versus what was being told to the public.
While President Bush publicly stated that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, but chose to label Iraq’s then president, Saddam Hussein, as the enemy to attack. The British Parliament worried that expelling Saddam would leave a vacuum for al-Qaeda to infiltrate Iraq, insinuating that the British government knew all along that Saddam had no concrete links to al-Qaeda.
According to the Chilcot Report, Blair justified the invasion of Iraq by claiming that the possibility of terrorist networks acquiring a nuclear weapon directly threatened British national security. However, top security advisors actually preached the opposite information to Blair behind closed doors, telling him that invading Iraq would give terrorist groups a larger incentive to attack the UK.
Statements by Blair given before and after the invasion of Iraq identified some major discrepancies in the reasons why the U.S. and the UK were able to justify their actions.
In 2002, Blair and Bush embarked on an aggressive media campaign informing their constituents that the Saddam regime had “vast stocks” of chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear weapons with clear intent to use them on Western countries. Yet, according to intelligence reports in the same time frame, the previous sanctions on Iraq remained intact, meaning the country did not have the capability to complete a nuclear weapon. It would take “several years” for them to develop long-range missiles with the sanctions in place.
After the invasion was complete, Blair changed his justification.
In an address in 2004, Blair told the House of Commons that, “although Iraq might not have had ‘stockpiles of actually deployable weapons’, Saddam Hussein, ‘retained the intent and the capability…and was in breach of United Nations resolutions.”
Despite the many doubts expressed by Blair’s Administration regarding the overall plan of invasion proposed by the U.S., the Prime Minister chose to proceed anyway. The main point of British contention regarding the invasion plan of Iraq was for lack of an exit strategy. Senior Parliament officials were reportedly uneasy with the lack of influence the UK had on the U.S. invasion strategy; specifically, in what was to happen after the conquest had been won. Considering how quickly and easily the U.S. and UK armies overran Iraqi forces, their lack of ability to insert a new system in the invaded country was a deadly mistake that has taken millions of lives in its aftermath.
ARABS RESPOND
“I wish Saddam would return; he executed many of my family but he is still better than these politicians and clerics who got Iraq to the way it is,” says by Kadhim Hassan al-Jabouri, a young Iraqi man captured in the newsreel of youths taking a sledgehammer to the iconic Saddam Hussein statue.
This powerful statement relays how many Iraqis still feel today. They would be willing to return to a horrific dictatorship over the lack of governance and threat of ISIL in the failed state. Dealing with constant insurgency, sectarianism, widespread violence, and lack of basic human amenities has left many Iraqis with the impression that life under Saddam was better than it is now. Due to these testimonies, it is obvious that the Iraqi War left the region worse off than it was prior to the invasion.
Yet, when responding to the Chilcot Report, many Arabs reacted with a sort of dark humor. On Twitter, one young Arab man mocked the irony behind the report.
(1/2) Gr8 so 14yrs after u destroyed & exploited Iraq, completely (further) destabilizing the entire region, u wrote a report blaming Blair
— hamed sinno (@hamedleila) July 6, 2016
Another young man took the satire one step further, tweeting, “Major ISIS statement expected soon. Probably a thank you note to Tony Blair”.
Major ISIS statement expected soon. Probably a thank you note to Tony Blair.
— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) July 6, 2016
Based on these reactions of Arab youth, many people are apathetic toward the report, stating that the damage has already been done, and asking what use the report has in blaming someone else for actions that have already been done. These tweets by Arab youth imply that perhaps instead of spending valuable time and government money writing a report such as this, efforts would be better directed at resolving the horrible state that countries like Iraq are in today.