>>Winston S. Churchill: Not an unnecessary war
March 21, 2003
WITH war commencing in Iraq, the US, Britain and Australia stand once again shoulder to shoulder preparing to draw the sword in defence of freedom, democracy and human rights. We are committing to battle some 200,000 US troops, along with more than 40,000 British and 2000 Australian.
Meanwhile, I have a confession to make: It was my grandfather, Winston Churchill, who invented Iraq and laid the foundation for much of the modern Middle East. In 1921, as British colonial secretary, Churchill was responsible for creating Jordan and Iraq and for placing the Hashemite rulers, Abdullah and Feisal, on their respective thrones in Amman and Baghdad.
Furthermore, he delineated for the first time the political boundaries of biblical Palestine. Eighty years later, it falls to us to liberate Iraq from the scourge of one of the most ruthless dictators in history. As we stand poised on the brink of war, my grandfather's experience has lessons for us.
The parallels between Saddam Hussein's repeated flouting of UN resolutions – 17 over the past 12 years – calls to mind the impotence of the UN forerunner, the League of Nations. In the 1930s, the victors of World War I – Britain, France and the US – fecklessly allowed the League of Nations' resolutions to be flouted. This was done first by the Japanese, who invaded Manchuria, then by the Italian dictator Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and, most gravely, by Nazi Germany.
Had the Allies held firm and shown the same resolve to uphold the rule of law among nations that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are demonstrating today, there is little doubt that World War II, with all its horrors, could have been avoided. Indeed it was for that reason that Churchill called World War II the "Unnecessary War."
The Middle East was one of the great disappointments of my grandfather's career. After the creation of Iraq, Iran and Palestine, he wanted to create a fourth political entity in the region, Kurdistan. Against his better judgment, he allowed himself to be overruled by the officials of the colonial office, a tragic decision which, to this day, has deprived the Kurds of a nation of their own and caused them to be split up under Iran, Iraq and Turkey, each of which has persecuted them for their aspiration to self-determination – none more so than Hussein.
MY grandfather's resolve and leadership offer a second parallel to today's situation – one that confronted the world 55 years ago, when the US was on the point of losing its monopoly of the atomic bomb. As leader of the opposition in the British parliament, Churchill was gravely alarmed at the prospect of the Soviet Union acquiring atomic, and eventually nuclear, weapons of its own. He said at the time: "What will happen when they get the atomic bomb themselves and have accumulated a large store? No one in his senses can believe that we have a limitless period of time before us."
As Bush, Blair and John Howard intend today in the case of Iraq, Churchill in 1948 favoured the threat and – if need be the reality – of a pre-emptive strike to safeguard the interests of the free world. Aware of the dangers ahead, Churchill believed that the US – while it still had a monopoly of atomic power – should require the Soviet Union to abandon the development of these weapons, if need be by threatening their use.
The Truman administration chose not to heed his advice. The result was the Cold War, in the course of which the world – on more than one occasion – came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust.
It is no great surprise that the nations which long toiled under the yoke of communism during the Cold War are our greatest supporters today. Unlike the French, Germans and Belgians, the East Europeans have not forgotten the debt of gratitude they owe to the US, first for liberating them from the Nazis and, most recently, from Soviet domination.
Like president Ronald Reagan before him, Bush has what my grandfather would have called "the root of the matter" in him. He is able to discern the most important issues of the day and to stand firm by his beliefs. Likewise, Blair. On Iraq and the Anglo-US alliance, the British prime minister has got it absolutely right: He is pursuing the true nat ional interest of Great Britain, which is to stand at the side of the Great Republic, as my grandfather was fond of calling the land of his mother's birth.
The coalition of the willing is rightly dealing with this monster Hussein once and for all. Were we to shirk from this duty, the UN would go the way of the League. More gravely, a marriage of convenience would be consummated between the terrorist forces of al-Qa'ida and the arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities which Hussein possesses.
We have business to do and I believe that together, the US and Britain, and those of our allies who share our sense of urgency and strength of commitment, will soon rid the world of this demented despot, liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny, and strike a further blow against the ambitions of fundamentalist terror.
Winston Churchill, a former British MP, is the editor of Never Give In!, a collection of Winston Churchill's speeches, (forthcoming, Hyperion). This is adapted from a speech at the Houston Forum in Texas in March.<<
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